Photoclubalpha

I joined the forum a little while ago and it seems very remiss of me that since then I have not introduced myself. I live in North Essex close to the boundary with Suffolk and not far from Britains oldest recorded town, Colchester.

Along with circa 40 of my colleagues I was made redundant in late 2005 and luckily was able to take early retirement. Over the years I have dabbled on and off with photography primarily related to holidays. Finding myself in the position of having so much time available I needed to decide on what to do with it and decided to resurrect my interest in photography. I saw it as a means of getting out and about and offering a constantly challenging activity and have not been disappointed. At the same time I joined my local photographic society hoping to improve my skills by learning from other people more experienced than I and making new friends. Taking part in the society's in-house competitions has added a little more spice to the experience. It has been and is great fun and my only regret is that I didn't join years earlier.

Starting in the 1950's with a Kodak point and shoot I have moved on via a Praktica SLR (1970's) to an Olympus OM10 (1980's), Sony DSC V1 before arriving at my present camera the Sony a100 and two kit lenses. I have owned the a100 for almost 2 years and generally I am very pleased with it. My involvement with the camera club and competitions has certainly been of great help to me and one benefit has been to become more critical of the photographs I take. Recently that has led me changing the 18 - 70 kit lens (with which I took some very pleasing images) to the 16 - 80CZ. The results from the latter are a considerable improvement on the performance of the kit lens. I am hoping to change the 70-300 zoom (which I have not been very happy with) for the 70-300 G ssm.

My involvement with photography is purely as a hobby for the fun and pleasure it brings me. I enjoy reading the posts here and have already picked up a number of useful tips.

Welcome Ossie - I have deleted your duplicate post. Of course you are right in Sony Alpha heartland with London Camera Exchange in Colchester as about the most active and committed Alpha dealer in the country right now!

David

Welcome from me too Ossie.

I am one of the Rutlanders on board so technically I don't live in East Anglia, but I was born and grew up in Essex, Clacton to be precise. Looking forward to seeing some of your shots with your new CZ.

Welcome from me too Ossie and do upload pictures of your hometown in "Welcome to My World" section of this forum.

Yet another one!hiccup! And thick and fast they came.... For such a moderately small region, East Anglia is very well represented on this site. It's a good hobby to have, and if my wife didn't require my presence a lot of the time, I would be shooting more as well.
But welcome and enjoy the company!
I echo Dr. Harout's comment, pics please.... Though Dr. Harout might also consider posting in "Welcome to my world"???

You should welcome Dr Harout Tanielian to East Anglia - where he'd be quite happily known as Harry Daniels

David

Thank you all for the welcome

Well I've done it. Raided the piggy bank, re-mortgaged the house and part exchanged the 70-300mm kit lens to purchase the 70-300mm G. If I had one I may well have sold the wife too if needed. London Camera Exchange in Colchester (thank you David) did me what I think was a good deal on the lens, plus 2 Zeiss filters (lens protection and polariser) and a remote release (not Sony).

I think that will be it for now…………….but then again the A700 body is coming down in price, that extra weight will need a better tripod to support it, and perhaps the bag is now getting a bit tight for space and may be a wide angle prime etc., etc.

I suppose at some stage I should think about taking some photographs. Roll on September, Venice, and October, India.

Mentioning photographs I have posted (I hope) some taken with the 70-300G in "Welcome to my world" and a few of my particular favourites in "Give it your best shot".

Cogito wrote:Though Dr. Harout might also consider posting in "Welcome to my world"???

Sure will, just been too busy these few days. I'll bombard that section with heavy (light ) artillery.

You should welcome Dr Harout Tanielian to East Anglia - where he'd be quite happily known as Harry Daniels

David

Cheers. Been in UK once and liked it very much. Will definitely agree to visit again.
By the way, anyone would care to join for a cup of drink

Had too many tonight anyway - four pints of Tennants (very weak Scottish lager), one half of Erdinger Weissbrau (excellent German cloudy wheat beer), and one large Bushmills single malt Irish whiskey. That is the correct spelling for Irish - whiskey - Scotch must be spelled whisky with no e. My usual Friday night out playing music with friends and visitors (one very good girl singer from France, one equally good jazz singer lady from England).

David

Yes, we too have that word in ancient Armenian, spelled "Tski" it's like whiskey without "e" and in front the spelling "ts". In old manuscripts it implied a kind of beverage, probably a kind of beer or wine, because at the time of that manuscript's writing there wasn't yet the alambic, so distillation to have present whiskey, vodka, brandy or whatever was not known.
By the way, did you know that the oldest mention about beer was in Xenophone's book "Anabasis" (or sometimes referred as "Retreat of the Ten Thousand"?

David Kilpatrick wrote:.... That is the correct spelling for Irish - whiskey - Scotch must be spelled whisky with no e.
David

I always remember that there's an "e" in "Ireland", not in "Scotland".

Interesting that the Armenian word has a slight resemblance to the Cretan word for a grappa-type spirit - tsikudi.

Here's one my shots from the distant days of film, hard to remember now what camera would have been used, but the lens is fitted with a Cromofilter (early Cokin in a screw fit rim) graded sky filter, so it is almost certainly the 24mm f2.8 AF. But the angles of the shot look more like the 20mm f2.8 from the MD system, that could also have been used with the Cromofilter. I can't remember ever using the 7000 for this kind of photograph, it was probably the 9000, and the date was 1986 - we could have been using MD and AF systems side by side in that year:
I just don't seem to get this type of shot using digital SLRs, but I also found it difficult with film SLRs, and abadoned using them around 1996 - instead, I used Minolta CLE bodies and lenses from 20mm to just 135mm (even that was not recommended for focus accuracy). I remember on this trip to Crete I used the first auto-exposure Mamiya 645.

David