Article:Photography - Synopsis
This is a brief article detailing how I got into photography, the cameras I use and why I switched from one to the other, as well as my own experience/preferences with what I photograph.
How I Got Started
Summer 2001. I am thirteen years old, between junior high and high school. My family makes it a point to take vacations every summer, and this year's destination was our then-native Southern California (I say "then-native" because while I lived in California until I was eight years old, considering I have spent all my years since then in Springfield, I consider Springfield to be my "hometown" now, even though I didn't at the time we took the trip). We spent two weeks visiting family, friends, family friends, and just generally retracing our old stomping grounds. It was a good time, for the duration of the trip I had borrowed my mom's old camera (a Canon). That trip was where I first came into true contact with photography. One moment in particular will always stand out to me; I was standing on a beach, looking down the shoreline at a seaside cliff. As I stood there, listening to the sea breeze, surrounded by family and friends, my mom explaining how panoramic photography works, I came to a sudden realization: I want to do this. Maybe not as a living, but I wanted a piece of it. When our trip ended, I convinced my mom to lend me her camera on semi-permanent loan until I could acquire my own equipment.
The Minolta X-700 photo
After a few months of using my mom's camera, my birthday came up, providing the perfect opportunity to get a camera of my own. Gotten from the pseudo-illegal clutches of a local pawn shop was a Minolta X-700. It smelled like smoke and at first I wouldn't touch it. After we cleaned it up and it stopped smelling like an eighty-year-old with lung cancer, I came to enjoy it. Eventually I came to love it. It's a perfect camera.. brilliantly designed, dependable, and can get you some really killer photos. My original lens was the one it came with, a standard lens that was 55-70 mm. I loved the lens, but soon I began to realize I needed something a bit more powerful. The camera I had used previously had had a telephoto lens, so I was familiar with the possible capabilities of my camera. About a year after I got the Minolta, I received a telephoto lens by Vivitar that was 70-210 mm, with macro built in. I fell in love with it. I took my Minolta everywhere with me.. it has been to Germany, Austria, France, Italy, Monaco, Switzerland, Canada, Mexico, and most of the continental United States. I never really had a problem with the X-700,but there were a few minor annoyances, which led me to the next step...
Transition to Digital photo
For a while, I had been envious of digital photographers. Mostly I was jealous because they could easily get their photos onto digital medium (read: the internet), while I had to spend almost four hours scanning photos and making them presentable. This was a minor annoyance, but not enough to get me going and thinking about switching to digital. I also envied the fact that they could take hundreds of photos on one "roll" (I was annoyed at being limited to 24 photos, because it means you have to be very careful about what you take pictures of, and by how many angles, forcing you to really prioritize your photos). Again, however, my pictures weren't suffering as a result of this annoyance, so it was annoyance I could deal with. The thing that finally set me off was one time during a storm, I ran outside to take some pictures. (The sun was setting and was going to be gone in a short amount of time, meaning I had a very small window and was forced to go out in the storm). I took about half a roll, then went back inside. When I finally got inside, I was horrified to find that there were droplets on the lens. This was horrifying because it meant that most-or all-of the photos I had just taken were ruined, and I hadn't noticed because the viewfinder doesn't show stuff that's on the lens, but not on the viewfinder. It was then and there that I decided that I needed the feature of digital cameras that impresses me the most: being able to see the picture you've taken right after you've taken it, so you know if you s crewed up and can do a retake. I did a few days' worth of research and asked a few friends who are also into photography, and finally settled on the Konica-Minolta DiMage Z2, which I purchased in July 2004 and use to this day.