The Holding Tank
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My Old Hardware
This page provides a little background to
the hardware I use and my photographic history.
Film Equipment
I first became seriously interested in
photography in about 1980 when I treated myself to a Canon
A1 with the 50mm
f/1.8 kit lens.
After a while I got a 70-210mm
f/4 zoom lens. Although ok image wise, it was so large and heavy I decided
to get some prime lenses ending up with 28mm
f/2.8, 85mm
f/1.8, 135mm
f/2.8 as well as a Tokina 17mm f/3.5.
I found a lovely second hand Canon
Ftb as a second body. This is a full manual camera with centre area matched
needle metering and in fact became my preferred body over the A1.
In addition this I collected various other
bits and bobs including Vivitar extension tubes, Vivitar 2X converter
(Seriously soft but light), Vivitar 283 Flash (That I replaced a few years back
with the same version). Set of bellows by a small independent manufacture.
Benbo Tripod with a Gitzo Offset Ball Head.
I had a lovely Vivitar natural and flash
exposure meter with a 1 degree spot meter attachment. This worked well for a
few of years but then died. Vivitar had no parts and so could not repair it but
they gave me a full refund – well done Vivitar! With the refund I got a Gossen
LunasixF with 7.5 degree spot attachment (not as nice as the Vivitar prism spot
attachment).
With this equipment I have had many years of
trouble free photography using mostly Kodachrome 64 and Ilford FP4.
In addition I had a little Richo rangefinder
compact that I called my poor man’s Leica.
This was small, silent and produced excellent results. Unfortunately it did not
stand the test of time and the light proofing material turned to mush. At
twenty years down the road Richo had no spares so that was that.
I also a had a few cheap medium format
cameras like the Lubital and an old fold up camera second hand that was probably
sold just after the war.
Digital Darkroom
I had a lovely medium format colour enlarger
and all the darkroom kit that I had not used for years so in 2001 I invested in
a Minolta Dimagescan 2 Film Scanner
and an Epson Stylus Photo 1290 printer (this is
the latest version,
can’t see much that is different).
There were better
scanners at the time but I did not want to spend too much as I had seen the
specifications for the Canon
1Ds and could see I would be switching to digital quite soon.
The printer was arguably
the best photo inkjet at the time, and one of the first with archival inks and
papers. This printer is capable of A3+ prints although I have only printed up
to A3 on it.
Digital Cameras
I had acquired a
2Mp fujifilm point- and- shoot for family snaps sometime in 2000.
My wife and I then
in 2004 had a long weekend trip booked to
I had resolved to
wait for a reasonably affordable full frame 35mm DSLR with about 15Mp
resolution as a reasonable transition point from film. The 1Ds Mk2 makes this
available but not affordable, or arguably liftable.
Now, the Canon 20D announcement was enough to tempt me. Major factors were:
a) the very fast start-up
b) fast shutter response
c) always on power consumption level with standby and exit standby with shutter button
d) despite 1.6X crop factor sensor, availability of the EF-S 10-22mm to permit reasonable wide angle
e) Canon's continuing commitment to 1X crop factor (full frame) sensor cameras in the professional range.
A major problem
for me is that my film-system glass is all “New FD” mount. I had only found out
in the late 90s that Canon had abandoned the FD system in favour of the EF
mount. This pissed me off and is going to be very expensive. I had more or less
resolved to go Nikon next time, however:
i) Canon seems
to be leading the DSLR field (sorry Nikon)
ii) Nikon seem
to have no ambitions for a full 35mm frame camera (there is pro’s and con’s to
this, see Depth of Field).
iii)
The Canon EF lens solution seems to me to be technically
superior for auto focus capability.
I downloaded some
20D test images from a review web site and printed them, I was impressed. My
conclusion was that the performance was at least comparable to film 35mm. It
may be possible to do better with film in terms of sharpness, but only with
first class technique, heavy tripod, top film, top lens, good light and shutter
speeds and minimal subject movement.
So I was hooked
and just needed to negotiate over the spouse funding threshold.
If you are interest in my system choices as they develop take a look at My New Hardware.
Here are my
thoughts on lens selection. I am still struggling
with the primes vs. zooms issue, but it seems to come down to primes every
time, despite me trying to convince myself on zooms to cut down on sensor dust
contamination.
Last Updated 05/06/2008
All Content © 2005-16 Lester Wareham All Rights
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use at your own risk.
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