My Camera History
Since the Kodak 110 with it’s flip-over case cum hand grip, I’ve owned (in approximate chronological order):
- Olympus mju – A popular clamshell 35mm film camera that was capable of taking well-exposed and sharp photos.
- Olympus mju II – The successor of the original mju still retained the clamshell design, but also gained a pop-up flash, a zoom lens, and a significant amount of bulk. This was the mju on steriods… And viagra!
- Minolta SRT 101b – This was my first SLR. I bought this second-hand from a friend’s dad for £100 back in the early 90’s.
- Olympus XA – My first and only rangefinder came with the A11 flash unit. Solidly built, but not so easy to focus with such a small viewfinder.
- Olympus XA2 – Another clamshell!
- Olympus Trip – Another Olympus!
- Centon DF-300 – Jessops own brand SLR that shared the Minolta MD lens mount.
- Canon EOS 1000FN – This was an amazing SLR for its time and it was priced keenly too. I bought mine as a student and burnt a lot of film.
- Canon EOS 10 – This was the camera that really got me hooked on the EOS range. The pro-spec features and level of control offered were great. I was sad to put this on eBay, but by then I’d had enough of shooting with film.
- Fujifilm FinePix 4700 Zoom – My first digital camera and the first camera to feature Fuji’s somewhat controversial SupperCCD technology that aligned cells in the image sensor in such a way as to produce images of a pixel higher resolution, by way of interpolation, than there were actual image capturing pixels. This camera used postage stamp-sized SmartMedia cards for storage. As I recall, it also chomped very quickly through 4 rechargeable AA batteries.
- Fujifilm FinePix F601Z – A Porsche designed evolution of the FinePix 4700. Nice design, but the painfully slow menu controls finally got to me and off to eBay it headed. Unfortunately, it returned weeks later, broken.
- Canon G3 – Amazing prosumer level compact zoom digital camera. Great level of manual controls available and the swivel out LCD viewfinder made taking shots from normally difficult angles very easy. Although only half the resolution of entry level DSLRs of today, the lens is sharp and the camera software exposes accurately.
- Canon Digital IXUS 50 – A very pocketable camera that I still use to this day. Great for snapshots and when you don’t want to lug anything too bulky, but the exposure can be a little off some times and the lens isn’t as sharp as the likes of the G3.
- Canon EOS 40D – After a prolonged break from SLR-based photography, I decided to plunge right back in with a camera system that would allow me a good level of control, with good flexibility and a wide selection of lenses so going back to Canon was an easy choice to make.
- Canon EOS 5D – Having had the taste for digital, I decided to explore the quality enhancements offered by a full frame sensor in the form of a 5D (mark 1) and found it to be an immensely capable piece of equipment. It’s no wonder it’s so highly praised by those who have used it.
My current kit consists of:
