I’ve always been interested in photography. I can remember getting my first own camera at age 8 or 9. It was a very simple instamatic camera, with a rotating flash cube, good for 4 flash photos.
A few years later (early 80’s) I got a huge plastic Kodamatic (Kodak’s version of a polaroid) camera, but it was a bit too expensive to buy cartridges for it, so I didn’t take many photos with it, and Kodak eventually lost a court case, forcing them to stop production of the cameras and cartridges.
My first introduction to “real” photography came in 1984, when we went on a big trip to the US. My dad bought a Sigma system camera for himself, and one for me too. My sister got a nice compact camera. I didn’t realize it at the time, but already then he made a very good choice (for both of us), which was to shoot with positive film (slides), which I later found out has much higher quality and much longer storage life. I used that camera for thousand of shots with 35-70 mm, 70-210 mm, tripod and a flash.
After having lost interest in photography for some years I bought a new Pentax MZ-5 system camera in 1995. It came with a kit lens, 35-80 mm, not very high quality. I soon bought a 70-200 mm lens, not very high quality either, but affordable. Then I eventually bought my first real quality lens, a 50 mm F1.4. I was totally amazed at the difference in quality and decided that I wouldn’t be using any cheap zoom lenses any more. I bought my to date most expensive lens, a 24 mm F2.0. With the 35 mm film format this is a good quality wide-angle lens. I also bought a flash with diffuser and a good quality 35 mm scanner, to get the most out of the quality of the film.
I continued shooting slide film (mostly Fuji velvia and provia) throughout most on the 90’s and early 00’s, until I received an e-mail in 2007 that I had won a digital Pentax camera in a competition! Since then I’ve taken more photos than ever before (about 15000 since then). One downside is that Pentax doesn’t have a system camera with full format sensor, so the quality of my 50 mm and 24 mm lenses aren’t being put to their full use. If my economy permits in the future I might try saving up to switch systems, both Canon and Nikon feels very interesting…
If you want to check out some of my recent photos, have a look at the Photo galleries in the menu on the top here.
My current setup;
- Pentax K10D (good value for money, especially for me, since I won mine)
- Pentax SMC-FA* 24mm F2.0 (wide angle lens with quite little distortion)
- Pentax SMC-FA 50mm F1.4 (my favourite lens, albeit a little too “soft” for my taste sometimes)
- Pentax SMC-FA 80-200 zoom (mostly just sitting in the photobag)
- Pentax MZ-5 (old 35mm camera)
- Pentax FTZ-330 flash (only for the 35mm)
- A few memory cards (2gb, 4gb and 8gb)
- Old big tripod (doesn’t get used very much)
- Bunch of filters (81A,81B,82A, skylight, circ.pol etc.etc.)