Welcome to The Photo Gallery!

I'm not a photoshop wiz either, but I still enjoy experimenting. You never know what you can do, until you do it. I have owned several cameras over the years, and I still use my polaroid, just not as much. I did carry a digital camera with me till I got a camera phone, and now I just carry it. The photos turn out every bit as good as they did on the polaroid and I can do so much more with them. Importing them into photo retouching software, sometimes I can make them look more like paintings than photos. I know I'm gonna love this group!

I'm not a photoshop wiz either, but I still enjoy experimenting. You never know what you can do, until you do it. I have owned several cameras over the years however my old Canon FtB cannot be beaten for reliability. As a former professional forensic photographer and a photography as art guy, I too appreciate the image manipulation that digital photography brings. I will enjoy this group!

I have that second Canon fTB in its case, and I'll never get rid of ti, even if film won't be available anymore (and I'm sure that day's coming!). In my heyday with cameras, I had a whole bunch of equipment -- long lenses, zoom lenses. My standard was a 24 mm f2.4 (I think) Canon wide angle on my F1. I had a Beseler 23CII enlarger and at my mom's house in suburban Denver i still have the darkroom setup sans enlarger. I have a 6-foot long, 5-inch deep stailess steel sink for devloping trays, and an accompaying 3x3 feet, 5-inch deep sink for washign prints. I boiught my Tri-X in bulk and loaded my film cassettes myself.

I was pretty much a semi-pro in my youth... my, how things have changed!

I'm looking forward to everyone's photos....

I didn't have a digital camera until a few months ago when I finally bought one online. I just love the digital camera and love taking pictures with it. Its fun to send photos to friends through e-mail and to take pictures of the grandkids and to print them out on photo paper with my printer. Or sometimes I upload them to Walgreens and get photos in various sizes for framing. The digital camera is so much easier to use than the old type of camera and I can take 100 photos with no film and just delete any I don't like and print or save the ones I do like. Photography was never so much fun! My camera is a Fujifilm S 3100.

I hope to get some info out of this group. I have a Sony Cybershot. It's cool because it's so small! The photos are really nice too, but there's so many features on it that I don't know about, it's confusing. Reading the manual it came with almost requires a PhD.

Great idea for a group. I have an Olympus OM1 SLR 35mm that I got as a high school graduation present in 1979. I love this camera. A few months ago an online friend send me a small inexpensive digital that I use when I want to take photos and not have to worry about the cost and time involved in getting them developed. I like it for what it is, but still prefer the OM1.

Hi Moggy, I loved those original OM1s -- I used to work in a camera shop in the mid-'70s when Olympus first came out with them. They were so small and light, but still rugged, with great lenses. Weiught-wise, it must be about half the weight of my Canon fTB! That's a great artifact. Welcome to the group, and I look forward to seeing your photos (scanned from the Olympus, or off your digital...)!

Well, folks, I've don't own an ftB or never even a Canon. My experience began with a Minolta SRT-101 the year it was named Camera of the Year by Pop Photog, 1972. Yeah, I still have it and 3 lenses, a few filters, ect and it works great. But yeah digital is the thing now. I have 3 Sonys starting with the old Pro DSC 707. It was top of the line pre-DSLR. Metal and heavy, with a tilt body (in relation to the long, finger focus-ring lens). It has an infra-red capability to shoot in pitch black- no flash. Circa 2001-02, and I do keep it and use it though it is an unusal antique already and made for only some 4 months. It's what many pros used when all lenses were attached only. Old as it is, try to pick a good one up for less than 3 bills! But that's my first digital. I mostly use a Sony DSC H5, 7mp with the 12X zoom. Not perfection, but beats many a D-SLR unless it has 3 lenses. Seeing the dates from my predecessors here, this is an old group. I may be writing something no one will read. Better check it out a bit before going on maybe talking to myself.

As a kid I facinated with old photographs, but strangley enough I never owned a camera until I was in my mid twenties. It was a Kodak instamatic and was so much fun, there I would be at parties waving the photo in the air to help it dry so we could all look at it. When it was stolen I never replaced it, in fact didn't own a camera until I was given an Olympus D-360 1.3 mega pixal digital for my fiftyith birthday.
In February of 2005 my brother lent me a Fuji Fine-pix S2Pro, 8 m/p 35mm DSLR. I was auditioning for a project he was doing and could not afford to pay a real photographer.
It was so great, I fell in love once more with photography. Less then a year later I bought my own Fuji S3Pro, 12 m/p and have taken over 10,000 shots in just over a year. I am still learning and there is Photoshop as a fallback, but I am using that less and less.

Thanks, everyone, for your memories of first cameras and why you're passionate about photography!

Hi,

I am a fashion, portrait and nude art photographer.
I will post something fro you....
Angelique

Shutterbug for many years, --I started with the iconic Pentax 1000 35mm film
camera --and after many years of use retired it. Mine had the 49mm screw type
lenses (which I surprisingly discovered fit my Russian friend's old Zenit)
Went to Pentax ZX-7 (in order to utilize all those Pentax lenses I had) and now
have an *ist D Pentax 6.1 megapixel 35mm digital. A 170mm-500mm telephoto
is my most used lens since I do a lot of nature photography. Enter a few contests,
never won much --just consolation prizes , --i.e. A Sigma shirt and cap with
their company logo on it just recently.

I have been delving in photography since Moby Dick was a sardine and still have so much to learn.
I started with a Nikormat and several lenses. Then I purchased a Nikon F SLF and a whole lot more lenses. I was working overseas for the Dept of the Army and had some great prices so I bought everything I could find and then experimented with some success. I eventually purchased 2 Rolliflex's and started to do a lot of shots at sporting events when my sons were participating. This led to doing Prom Shots at several years worth of HS graduations. This led to setting a a mini-photo lab and doing some experimenting with developing and printing.
Then I went to work in Germany from my job in Italy. And then disaster struck!! Our lower floor in our rental was flooded and I lost all of my negatives and many of my prints from past years. I was devastated. I completely stopped doing anything with my cameras which were safely stored in an upper floor at the time of the flood.
It wasn't until the early years of the digital fixed lens camera that I had a return of my love for photography. And here I am :) :) :).
Digital photographs are so much easier AND you can destroy any images not worth keeping. So here I am hoping to glean some info from the others on this site and possibly to lend some of my adventures of the past 30 years or so.
pj

My father always had a camera and he saved the old ones after he bought new ones. They all worked. He bought me a camera when I was in elementary school. My interest in photography increased in high school and while in college I purchased a "good" camera. A few years later I began developing and printing my own B&W prints.
Soon afterwards, I bought a film SLR. Everything went well for several years until I moved to the Washington DC area. I couldn't control dust in the darkroom. I stopped developing and printing my negatives. I lost interest in photography soon afterwards.
I watched digital cameras develop and recently bought a DSLR and Photoshop. I'm using my previous photography knowlege to jump-start my digital photography, although I know there are differences in the types of cameras. I'm also looking forward to my first dust-free prints!

Where I go a camera is by my side. I have 2 photo shop programs, but have never used them. I love the act of looking for the shot...and the thrill of getting the one I envisioned. Sometimes it even happens buy accident, but mostly I have to put elbow grease and gray matter into it. For many years I earned my living on the other side of the camera...pity I didn't pay attention when I was younger...I worked with many of the greats all around the world and could have learned so much.

My first camera, that made me look differently at the world, was a little Kodak that used 110 film. The a Yashika 35mm SLR that I carried while on duty in Iceland. It was stolen and replaced with a Canon FTB.The Canon served me on college where I took photography classes. I purchased my first digital, a Kodak DX 6490 EasyShare, took them both to China where the Canon bit the dust. That was two years ago and the Kodak, a 4 MP, served me well and now have that plus a DSLR, Canon Rebel XSi with the 18-55mm lens that comes with the kit. I also purchased a 75-300mm zoom in the EF series that does not have image stabilization. So far, I love this camera.
I do use photoshop and am still learning it. One of the things I wanted to do in the old darkroom dats I can now do at the computer.