Tour de Camera. Part Three. And In My Bag

In 2002 I made the leap to digital photography and have never looked back. The money spent on my Nikon D70 was worth every penny. For years I declared it was the best purchase I have ever made. And I really love to make purchases. So that is saying A LOT.

I shot with my D70 for 5 1/2 years and loved every minute of it. I learned so much with that camera: How to meter. How to choose a focal point. What aperture and shutter speed and ISO were all about. How to shoot in RAW. How to compose in camera. How good lenses really do make a world of difference. How to push myself ... and my camera ... as far as possible.

I learned so much in fact, that I finally outgrew it. And sold it in December '09. Here's a parting shot my sister snapped for me, right before I gently placed it in the hands of its new owner:

Wow, I'm still feeling a bit nostalgic about my old Nikon. It was very hard letting it go :). But it was for a good cause ... it rescued a family from the plight of blurry pictures due to a not-so-great camera.

And that finally brings us ... after three days of my "Tour de Camera" ... to now. And the entire reason I started posting this "flashback series".

{Drumroll, please}:

What's In My Bag?

In October 2009 my incredibly supportive husband bought me a Nikon D700, which I love, love, love, love, love. It is a fabulous camera and I know I'm just starting to scratch the surface of what it can do:

I have all prime lenses. I'm so used to my own feet doin' the zooming that when a friend recently handed me her camera I was kind of startled that I could just rotate the lens to zoom in and out :). I have my eye on a zoom lens, but it is a couple thousand dollars, so I think I'll stick with my primes for now. They are:

Nikkor 28mm f2.8
Nikkor 50mm f1.8
Nikkkor 85mm f1.8
Nikkor 60mm f2.8 macro

I also have a Nikon SB600 speedlight (just returned yesterday from a trip back to Nikon for repair after a painful crash to the hardwood floor), a Nikon SB900 speedlight, and a Gary Fong lightsphere.

Okay. So that doesn't all fit in my bag at one time. I'm actually coming to the sad realization that I just might need a new bag. Because mine is on the small side. But I really love it. My mom bought it for me at least 10 years ago and I can't bear to part with it. It's an adorable black Kipling bag just recently decorated with some lovely glitter in the lower right-hand corner. Hmmm. Not sure which of my kids added that.

And let me just say ... in conclusion ... that it is quite incredibly challenging to take a picture of your current camera. With said camera. Let's just say these shots involved some fancy mirror tricks, and lots of trial and error. Quite the exercise for yesterday afternoon:



And that is the end of my tour. Miss any of the posts? Check out part one {here} and part two {here}.

Tour de Camera. Part Two.

After my adored Fisher-Price camera ...

... I moved on to a series of 35mm cameras. I just don't have accurate documentation ... or a good enough memory to recall them all. I did find this classic picture of me in 9th grade. With my friend Jeff Jackson. One of the funniest guys ever. I can't believe I'm posting this picture for the world to see. My awkward years really extended from about the time I was 10 until in my mid-20s. Sad. Please note that I'm holding a hand-me-down 35mm camera that I used for years. It got so loved that I had to duct tape the battery cover closed or it wouldn't work. I'm pretty sure it was a Vivitar. What memories!

We better move on quick before that image of my brace face starts freaking people out.

I got my first SLR as a Christmas gift when I was in high school. About the same time I rediscovered the stash of National Geographic magazines in my basement (thousands of them. My dad didn't like throwing magazines out). I decided I had found my future career. I would be a National Geographic photographer and travel the world. I still think that would be amazing. I'll keep it on my wishlist. I still have that first SLR ~ a Ricoh KR-5 Super II. With manual everything, including focus. I pulled it out for the first time in forever and snapped these pictures of it just the other day:


Sadly enough I never learned how to use this camera to its full potential. I'm very tempted to pop a roll of film in there now that I actually know a thing or two and see what I can do with it. But back when I first got it I basically kept it constantly on a shutter speed of 125 and then rotated the aperture ring until the camera gave me the green light. Literally. There was a meter on the far left side that showed a red + sign if you were overexposed, a red - sign if you were underexposed, and a big green circle if you were properly exposed.

Despite never going beyond the basics of learning how to focus, I did get lucky once or twice and have some pictures I took with that camera that I still love -- such as this one of the Colosseum in Rome:

And here's proof that my love for silhouetted trees in sunsets started a long time ago, with this shot from 1994:

This was also the camera that got me through a few photo classes in college. The only one available to me as a non-photography major was a photojournalism class. Once you took it for a grade you could repeat it as many times as you wanted to just for fun ~ which gave you access to the darkroom. Plus you got to work on assignment for the university newspaper. So I just kept on repeating it over and over :). I absolutely loved learning how to develop my own film, "push" process, recycle film canisters and roll my own film ... ahhh, those were the days.

Hope you are all enjoying the tour of my cameras. We'll wrap it up tomorrow with my venture into digital, which is where my passion exploded and I finally actually learned somethin'. I am a visual learner, after all. AND a post all about what's in my bag RIGHT NOW. Fun, fun, fun!

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Tour de Camera. Part one.

Looking back. Way back.

Way back to 1984? 85?, when one Christmas morning I woke up to see Santa had delivered THIS:

picture borrowed from {here}

A Fisher-Price 110 format camera. Made by Kodak. With super cool rubber ends. AND a thin black strap so it could hang around your neck. Not only that, but it came with a disposable FLASH. You attached it on the top and then you could take about 10 or so pictures. Each time you used the flash one of the bulbs would pop inside, followed by a chemical smell that I can still remember. And a thin stream of smoke would trail out.

I'm sure I used up an entire roll of film AND flash unit taking blurry pictures that Christmas. I thought I was the coolest thing ever with my camera.

And it was pretty durable. Stuck around for a while. Here I am, sportin' it on a trip to Disneyland in 1986:

And my extreme apologies to any of my siblings who may not love the way they looked back in the '80s ...

I was only 10, but I was already hooked on the thrill of taking pictures. It was so exciting everytime I took my little plastic containers of film in to be developed. And then the agony of waiting for the pictures to be returned. My mom always insisted we develop all of our pictures in doubles, because she said it was much cheaper that way than having to get reprints done later. Although I'm not sure I ever actually wanted reprints of the shots I captured of random squirrels at Yellowstone ... or kids I met at overnight camp and 2 weeks later couldn't even remember their names anymore ... or out-of-focus, underexposed images of my siblings ~ often with their heads cut off. But just in case I ever find the beauty in those images, I have them in duplicate!

Of course, you can imagine what happened as soon as I pulled out my photo albums to find this picture of my first camera. I was sucked back in time and spent hours pouring over other old pictures. And was struck with awe yet again at how powerful images can be. I had so much fun, I decided I just HAD to share a few more "way back when" photos.

Like this gem:

Can anyone tell me why I am wearing a leash in this picture? This seems to contradict my mom's statement that I was a well-behaved child who always took care of myself. Maybe it was really for her benefit ... as I am frequently told the story of the time I got "lost" in Disneyland. (We went to Disneyland a lot ... my mom's favorite vacation spot). The family left me behind in a candy store. Apparently I was so enraptured by the cases of candy that I never even noticed they were all gone. My dad came back and I was still stuck in the same spot transfixed by everything around me. I can still get swept up things to such an intensity that I'm completely oblivious to anything else going on. Especially while reading a good book ...

Now if you are observent, you will notice that in the first photo I seem to be the oldest ... and in the second I seem to be the youngest. I am actually smack dab in the middle in my family. Number 6 out of 11 children. (Yes. You read that right). I loved growing up in a big family ... although I wonder if I was neglected just a bit. Because honestly. They let me out of the house looking like this?!

This picture makes me laugh every time I look at it. Because I remember how much I loved that shirt. It had an elephant on it. I'm really diggin' the knee-high striped socks with the shorts, too.

Just a couple more pictures that I found. This is one of my favorites. 1977. I had just turned one:

Easter, 1978. I can already see my little girl's smile in this one:

And finally, another favorite. Taken in Wyoming, about 1980:

Aaaah, that was fun. I really love looking back. And getting that little giggly feeling inside when thinking about my childhood. I was a pretty happy kid.

I have more "Tour de Camera" on the way tomorrow. With a glimpse at my first SLR. And some memories of just how useful duct tape can be. Stay tuned!