The gear that changed my (photographic) life: reader responses

As a photo hobbyist I was also a collector (budget!) and while most are 50's chromies, I also acquired med format stuff just for display (I called them big-boys toys as they would have originally cost half a car).
Then about 2003, an epiphany: 120 film is in common use!! (well I am a bit slow!)
So a whole new world suddenly opened up, and those toys then travelled with me on our outback trips. The heavily-engineered mechanisms and square format were a challenge and a revelation.
My heart would race when the processed film came back. The detail and quality never disappointed.

In 2005 I took the plunge and bought a Nikon D70s with kit lens, even though I had purchased a used F90x a year before. Before that I had owned a Nikon F1 and F2 (Still have the F1). I now realize if I had not switched to Digital, photography would have just fizzled away for me. Learning post processing revitalized everything for me. I just did not want to set up another darkroom, never, ever.

Switching from film camera to digital photography was huge changed however still to today I miss the true colors of film cameras .

2 cameras that changed my photography were a Kowa SET fixed lens SLR in 1969 which was replaced with a Minolta SRT 101 in 1970. I used the Minolta until 2005 when I sold it along with 3 lenses. Back in those days Canon was a bit player in the US behind Minolta, Nikon and Pentax or even Yashica.

Diary of an addict. Part 1

I curse the day I laid eyes on the LX-5. I had various small cameras before but none of them engaged me like the Panny. I started looking around for the next, better fix. Zoomed in on the 7D and D7000. Went with the Nikon. Enticed by the hype I bought (and kept) an EM-5 and an X100. Got married.
3 more Nikons were bought. “Why would you think they are new cameras? Look at the red swoosh and the Nikon-logo. Yes it’s the same camera I had back then”. Kept the D7200 and D750. Hid them in the basement.

I found peace. I was content for this first time in a while. I settled with the mandatory 2.8 zooms, various primes, flashes and 16 camera bags.

The first professional camera I could use was a Canon F1 New. I thought it was a fantastic piece of equipment. I still can use it, despite my father bought it in 1985. It is perfectly working.

Panasonic Lumix GF-1 is definitely the game changer in my case, it made me cross the border from consumer compacts with integrated zoom to another level in control of shooting parameters and image quality without the bulk-ness of reflex cameras.
Since then I haven't stopped in search of balance between photographic performance while trying to keep compactness, there are now huge choice possibilities but this little (old) camera is still one of my favourites.

My friend Peter. He is about 5 yrs older than me and for 40+ years has been a mentor and someone I have looked up to. The first time we met, he walked into the room and mumbled something like 5.6 under his breath. He later explained that he was teaching himself to quantify light In his mind’s eye so he would always be ready to get a good exposure. I practised for a month or more and eventually got very good at it. I ended up using an F2AS, 645 and then a 500CM. My cameras were always ready because I was unconsciously presetting everything as light changed. He really helped make my photos more consistently exposed and thus less wasted images.

I still miss those three cameras plus my Nikkormat FT2 and Fujica ST801.

Canon 40D. This is where I accelerated my photography and started shooting in RAW and created some of my most memorable images. From here I became a professional photographer and became the creative that was always in me. Some of my best selling images were shot with the 40D and 17-40 L lens. Loved it.

I have loved all the cameras I have used but the game changer for me,as a wedding photographer using film, was the underrated Pentax SFXn. It was the first time I used autofocus. As a person wearing glasses and struggling to achieve sharp focus as it got dark towards the end of the after ceremony shots it made all the difference.It prolonged my wedding career. I then moved up to e Pentax Mzs which was and still is a briliant camera. Also a quantum battery 2 powerpack, a metz 45 flash
https://geoffthompsonphotographics.blogspot.com/2019/11/a-marriage-of-technology-metz-45-flash.html
and a minolta light meter were great accessories that I used constantly. Non technical stuff was a portable polystyrene foam board I took with me and was able to use it on most wedding shoots.

For me it was my parents Nikon F501 that I used to shoot my first photographs, but it was a Pentax ist DL2 that made it easy for me to do so. I started to fall in love with photography and enjoyed to see my results directly after a day of shooting.

The start of my photographing life was with the Minolta SRT 201. But the change of my photographing life was with my first DSLR, the first Canon Rebel. Digital changed a lot of things for me. Then, the first Canon 5D for the full frame quality change and then the 1DX for allowing me to shoot wildlife at more than 6400 ISO with decent quality.

5D Mk II changed everyone`s photographic life.

In 1995, I took a job with Digital Prepress International in San Francisco as their resident Digital Photography. DPI had purchased a Dicomed (Later Better Light) Scanning Back which required a 4x5 studio camera and continuous lighting to operate. The scanning back and it's tethered control box had a retail price of $32,500.00. No camera, no lens; nothing else. I bought a Horseman 4x5, 65mm Fuji f5.6, Schneider 90mm f5.6, Schneider 150mm f5.6 and a rolling studio stand.
My computer was a Mac 2Cii and the lighting was 4 - 1,000 watt Tungsten Hot lights in a frame with a diffusion screen. It was very much like making photographs with an oven. I melted a number of plastic products waiting for the 5 to 10 minute scans to complete, including an Apple Newton, the new and, yes, hottest Personal Digital Assistant. Clients were very keen to not pay film, processing and scanning costs if they could get digital files direct from the photographer. I miss being across the Embarcadero from Red's.

The Fuji X100 changed my photographic life. I found that I was using it to the exclusion of all else - and in the end traded in my 5D, 7D and a number of L lenses for an X Pro 1 and some fuji primes. I've never regretted it for a second, and my back aches less.

What changed my life was the Sharp Viewcam. No viewfinder, LCD on the back. It was the model for what I had always wanted in a camcorder, and later in a digital camera. As a viewfinder hater since I first picked up an Instamatic and stared through that tiny peephole, the LCD is what made photography fun for me.

Three things changed the way I shoot images: 1. Olympus 75-300mm telephoto lens. 2. Panaosonic GX85. 3. DXO Photolab.
The Olympus lens got to me to an equivalent of 600mm. The shutter mechanism of the GX85 eliminated shutter shock at long focal lengths. The IBIS of the GX85 meant nearly every shot was sharp. The RAW files of the GX85 have incredible dynamic range: the best I’ve seen in M43 cameras, and equal to some APS-C cameras. DXO Photolab’s superb noise reduction helps me gain more detail and less grain, which enables me to process the images without them falling apart. I now shoot quite a lot of landscapes at extreme telephoto.

Probably a Nikon Coolpix 4300 I bought in 2004. It was on sales for over 400 Euros, a significant dent in my meager PhD scholarship. I had had a few single use cameras - the green ones from Fuji - then I long term borrowed a canon EOS from my parents, which I could never really warm up to. The Coolpix was the first camera with which I started to really started to try making the pictures I liked. It died after a long and intensive service, and was replaced by a Nikon P50. At some point I found image quality in the dark really limiting and got an Olympus PEN E-PL7. Finally a digital camera that did deliver quality pictures, and took the shot when the shutter button was pressed, not sometime later.
In 2015 I bought a Recesky TLR camera kit to build with my kid, then figured a good film camera might be nice to have, and this started a long string of film cameras purchases at the flea market and on eBay.
So, Coolpix 4300, E-PL7 or Recesky?

I migrated to digital very late. My Nikon FE2 and F4 stayed with me until very late. They are still around, together with the amazing F6. Dabbled with a couple of digital and dslr cameras, without success.
But the Olympus EM5 marked the full stepping to digital. And later a Mark II as well.
Until then I always thought digital was too expensive.
And then, lo and behold, there it was: a digital camera that could use all my older lenses as well as newer ones and with tremendous quality and capable of the odd bit of astro-photography at high ISO as well!

My photography started with a 110 camera and lasted for about a year when I got to know about the bigger format of 35mm. The camera? A zenith b, a camera made from T34 tank steel. Mock it if you will but it taught me about shutter speeds and apertures and all that. The camera that really got my juices flowing was the Minolta X-G9.
Black version which I had that long that the edges started to lose their paint and the brass showed through. I could use it without thinking. For me It became second nature.
I still have a used one bought on E-Bay. My black XG9 eventually gave up the ghost and needed repairing but alas I couldn't afford it, I was told it would cost me more to get it repaired compared to the price of a new camera. Auto focus came next and then digital. I fell in love with the retro looks of the Fuji X system about three yes ago and now use the X-T3. But it's my Minolta XG9 that has a special place in my heart.

Canon Ixus v2 was my first digital & Nikon D3200 take me to 24mp world . Still practice with my D800 ...

Pentax MX was my first real camera. I worked the entire summer after school to save up enough to buy the camera with a "coke bottle" Sigma 39-80 zoom. It was stolen less than a year later. On the advice of an opinionated buddy, my next camera ended up being a "real professional camera", a Nikon FM2, followed by an FE2, an F3T and the rest is history. Forty years, six system changes and some 20 film and digital bodies later, I still miss my MX.

Ricoh R4. Small, light, discrete, long zoom (for its time). My wife was a pro photographer in Japan in the 70's, so I missed all that film and pro camera stuff. I still shoot every single day, but always with small, light, and discreet gigs, often with primes now.

Right after high school a friend of mine joined the military. He was stationed nearby so I visited him on base. He took me to the store on base and there I spotted a DSLR. He purchased it for me at military discount then I paid him back. It was a Yashica Electro-X with a 50mm lens. Using that camera and lens got me started in photography. Years, later I ended up with Pentax gear.

It is a little surprising that the Canon AE1 is not here. So many photographers who are in their 50's started with it or inherited it from a parent. At least that is my experience.

Olympus C2. First digital, went for a decent quality fixed lens on a 2Mp camera as I should be capable of printing to B5 size... The little Oly allowed me to capture family stuff digitally, so volume of family archive goes up quite dramatically in the early 2000s. From there I started to get 'arty' again, as I had in my teens and I got into using the panorama function to produce some 'different' shots.