Getting the Photography Bug... Again

Is my life just running in big circles? When I was a kid, I always dreamt of being able to have my own camera and take my own pictures. During the 1970s, when my age sat comfortably in single figures, film was expensive and the last thing my parents needed was me getting trigger happy with their instamatic. The mantra was simple to remember, "film costs money you know!"

I did eventually get one of my own in my early teens, a really simple unit without anything we take for granted today on a digital camera. Something more akin to those disposable units you buy at concerts, and I mean the ones without a flash. I can't say it was what I really wanted, and I doubt I took more than a single roll of film with it.

Roll on my late teens and early twenties, here is where I really got something worthwhile. A proper SLR camera, and it had Pentax written on it and everything. In the late eighties, a trip down to the local camera shop (Paul Hancock Photographic was its name) led to the good advice and purchase for somewhere around £60-70 of a second hand ME Super. It looked the part, did the job, and is still an excellent camera to this day. It works as good now as it did then, I'll be sorry to see it go when I ebay it later this week.

I took that thing halfway around the world, it went to all sorts of canyons and such like in New Mexico and Arizona, I took it up mountains and down into meteor craters. My best photographs where with that camera, the greatest shots I ever took where with it. And I'd take quite literally hundreds per holiday. Then around the turn of the century, digital cameras where just becoming useful, I spent a few years not going to places like America, and it fell into dis-use.

It's replacement was a Ricoh 2MP unit which claimed to have some level of manual features, none of which really delivered anything of value. The pictures where okay in the right light. Then a few years later I got a 4MP Olympus C-4000Z, which compared to anything I'd seen before that was digital, delivered stunning pictures. And yet, despite the fact taking loads of shots was free, even though you could see exactly the framed image it would shoot when you hit the shutter button, nothing quite compared with that Pentax ME Super.

Sure you could sharpen the images in Photoshop, make cloudy days in England look warm and inviting, but something was missing. Even an upgrade to the Olympus C-765, with its amazing zoom, still never managed to catch those magic photies that my one and only SLR achieved.

I can think of many reasons why this might be the case, none of them would perhaps be all of the reason, but perhaps all added up they make the big difference. Here is some of what I have come up with:

1) The CCD sensors just don't compete with film for colour reproduction, clarity or resolution

2) Looking at an LCD screen instead of a view finder disconnects you too much from your subject

3) Nothing beats a whopping great slab of glass for a lens

4) SLRs are just better designed for you to control what sort of image they take

About 3 years ago now, I said to myself, if a good quality digital SLR came out around the £500 price point, I'd get one. Well a few weeks ago, spurred on by the other half getting a new compact camera for £50, I started doing some research. To cut a long story short, all of this led to a bargain on ebay, I managed to get myself a brand new Pentax K20D digital SLR for just over £500.

Having spent some of the weekend learning how it all works, plus comparing photographs from it with the other half's new compact, my reaction would perhaps be best put as Jesus H. Christ on a Bloody Great Bike. To give you an idea of the impact it has left on me, before I bought this the thought of selling my ME Super would have sent shivers down my back. Now I have it, I cannot see me using a film camera ever again.

Yet again my life appears to be going round in circles, much like I re-discovered my Amiga 1200 I have rediscovered my love for photography. Don't get me wrong, I didn't spend my wilderness years on my compact digital cameras taking nothing. I took loads of pictures, some of them I'm very happy with. But all of them left me slightly disappointed, as if they'd have been a better picture if only I had a better camera.

Now I feel if the picture isn't right, it's pretty much either my fault or bad luck, and highly likely to be the former. I'm having to think about shutter speeds and aperture all over again, depth of field is now a reality when it comes to controlling what I'm shooting rather than a side effect. But most of all I've taken pictures of people, ones which have had that certain magic I've not seen since the ME Super days. If I can get permission from those I shot, I may be able to share them with you.

It's good to be excited about shooting piccies again, only this time it's without the £10 every 36 shots, oh and I get to develop them myself! I'll try and do some comparison shots for anyone interested in a later update, which may be a fun task as I try and get around JPEG compression ruining them. If only all browsers supported RAW!

This Week's Videos

Since today's theme is somewhat about how technology has progressed, why not have a bit of nostalgia which dates to just before the time I got that ME Super camera, when the Amiga home computer first arrived. Compare this wonderful naive piece of programming with the modern day equivalent, BBC News 24's Click.



There are loads of other clips from that classic piece of TV history, from a time when PCs where a new thing, all on YouTube. And very addictive it is watching them too! I particularly enjoyed the one about Computer Animation and the other which covered Computer Music.

And secondly, a trailer for The King of Kong: Fistful of Quarters. I know, I know, linking in a trailer is lame, it's just doing the PR companies work for them. But seriously, this is over a year old now, so it's okay. If you haven't seen this documentary film, now is the time to grab it on rental, or buy it cheap. Really is the best documentary I've seen since Outfoxed!