Photography

I have been interested in photography most of my life and used a variety of cameras, my first being a Franka Solida III (right), a 120mm roll-film, medium format folding camera with an f2.8/80mm Radionar lens by Schneider-Kreuznach, in the early 1950s.

This camera was stolen from a locked hotel room in Vancouver in 1957. "An inside job", said the RCMP constable who came to investigate.

I then bought an Agfa Colorflex on a visit to Detroit from my home in Ontario, one of the world's first consumer 35mm SLR cameras (below), shown here with a ground glass vertically-viewed viewfinder, to which I later added an optional, penterprism viewfinder.

I was then a committed single lens reflex devotee and passed through a variety of Nikons and Canons finally ending my film days with a Contax, a really beautiful piece of engineering. It was introduced in 1979 and called the Contax 139Q; it was the smallest top quality SLR in the world. With that camera, designed by Carl Zeiss and Porsche, built by Yashica under strict quality assurance from Germany, I used two prime lenses, a Zeiss Planar T* 1.4/50mm and a Zeiss Sonnar T* 2.8/135mm and never felt the need for compromise with zoom lenses.

Being technically orientated I was intrigued by digital photography as soon as digital cameras began to appear and bought a Sony DSC-F1 when it came on the market in 1996, although I was not prepared to accept the limited resolution that 1.2 megapixels offered for my normal photography. I lost this camera to a very quick thief in Zurich airport, who swiftly lifed my briefcase from my baggage trolley as I turned my head to look in a shop window of the concourse there.

SONY Cybershot DSC-F1 - 1996. 1/3-inch, 640 x 480 pixel CCD. Stored up to 108 640 x 480 images on 4MB of internal flash memory. Fixed-focus and macro 35mm swivel lens. Built-in flash and self-timer. AE or shutter priority. Shutter 1/7.5 to 1/1000 second.
As the resolution of new digital cameras improved I owned some of the Olympus range and soon came to accept that digital photography had equalled 35mm film for detailed resolution and surpassed it for convenience and creativity, especially with the immediate gratification and post processing in the computer. Therefore, since 2001 I have used digital exclusively; first an Olympus E-10, a 4 megapixels SLR digital camera, a magnificent piece of engineering -

Then in November 2004 I bought a 5 megapixel Panasonic DMC-FZ20 with a 12x Leica zoom objective.

I moved on from the the Olympus E-10, not because I was dissatisfied with the quality of pictures, far from it, but because it was heavy, slow to write to memory and with high noise in low light conditions with limited ISO variation. I had heard great things about the Panasonic DMC-FZ20 with the long zoom, fast Leica lens with image stabilisation and it was relatively inexpensive, so I ordered it.

I tried hard to like this camera and made some great pictures with it under optimal conditions in the three months I owned it. But in February 2005 I reluctantly decided I had had enough of the tiny sensor with its high noise in lower light conditions and irritating ergonomics, selling it, along with the Olympus, trading them both in (plus some film SLR cameras) for a Canon 20D DSLR.

I bought the camera body with the kit lens (18-55mm) because that was the only possibility in that camera shop, and as they had accepted my trade-ins I had little option. However, I immediately ordered two more lenses from an internet supplier, at considerable cost difference to the shop, they were the Canon EF-S 17-85mm USM IS and the Canon EF 75-300mm USM IS. I am very pleased with the results from both.