Bolo and Photography

I've been interested in Photography for many years. When I was younger I had a simple TLR medium format (6x6) camera, complete with a flash-bulb flash with round reflector. Although the equipment was rather limited, it was fun to try and record things with it. Some things went OK. Other times, I would see something really neat ... and then loose it; this was a bit frustrating. Occasionaly I could recreate (stage) the image over again, but I don't think it was as good as the original.

I didn't have the funds to get better equipment back in those days. All I could do was read books about photography and think about it. Save some money for the occasional roll of film and processing. Eventually the shutter in the camera died, part of the flash broke, and the old gear was put away to be looked at wistfully from time to time. I still look at it that way! I borrowed a Leica on occasion, but it always felt like I was carrying around bars of gold with me. I worried more about the equipment than about what I did with it. :) For a long time, I thought about photography, but never did anything about it.

Then, in 1998, I went on a trip and borrowed a friend's constant focus point-and-shoot camera. I ran 14 rolls of film through it on the trip. I got the results back and was ... not satisfied. Some were OK, not great, but OK. In others though ... the subjects were so small in the images, the exposure was off quite a bit due to the complex lighting situation. I was showing my photos to John Wardale, a friend and long time amateur photographer, so I could get some advice about what I was doing wrong. After looking at a lot of my photos, he could see that what I was trying to do was more complex than the equipment I was using allowed for. So, one day he dragged out his spare body, a Pentax K1000 and off we went to the zoo to introduce me to SLR photography. This was more versatile than the point and shoot; it was also quite different from the range-finder Leica and my Medium-Format gear. After that introduction, he loaned me the body, a trio of lenses (28mm, 50mm, 135mm, and a 2xTC), and an old automatic potato-masher flash for my next trip. The results were much better than the last time! That, even though it turned out that the K1000 needed a CLA, for it's shutter was off by several stops at the higher shutter speeds!

A few months later I was between jobs for an extended period of time because of some legal mumbo-jumbo. I was going flying, but the costs of flight were a bit high compared to my financial state at the time. I stumbled across a used Super Program body at the local camera shop, complete with a SMCP-A 5mm f/2.0 lens. As I still had John's lenses, I decided to try out the newer body and see if I liked it. I did, and the rest is history!

In retrospect ...

In retrospect, the reason that it took me so long to start photography again was a simple one. Cost and Uncertainty. Almost every year throughout this long time span I would take a look at cameras and lenses. I would always be appalled at the prices for the equipment. The other problem was choosing which brand of equipment to buy. Yah, sure, cameras are just light-tight boxes, and that is right to a point. They are also systems were you are stuck buying lenses and flashes and other accessories for that system for a long time. Or you switch systems and start over. I knew I would be into photographic equipment for the long haul once I had it around, and I didn't want to make a costly mistake.

When JohnW loaned me his K1000, it broke through a lot of the purchase barriers. I didn't have to spend my money on equipment sight-unseen. Instead I could go out and use some with little risk, and form opinions on what I was looking for. It worked quite well for me in many ways.

Originally I was intending on purchasing Nikon equipment. I was going to purchase a newer (used) autofocus body (8008s) and a decent multi-purpose lens (24-85 f/3.5-4.5). I kept on waffling because of the price. To some extent, my choice of Pentax gear is because JohnW had Pentax, and I could borrow lenses from him and vice-versa. But I think the real reason was because of the cost involved. I purchased, used, two bodies, a 50mm lens, two flashes, a 70-210 zoom and a 35-105 zoom for well under the cost of the 8008s and the 24-85 zoom lens. The lower cost let me gradually absorb my equipment instead of having initial sticker shock.

Later in the game, the same sticker shock still effects me. Finding additional Pentax equipment is difficult and, at the least, expensive as Nikon gear, if not more expensive. In some ways the tables have turned on me. For the higher up-front cost of a Nikon body and lens, I would have the choice of a wide array of available lenses. Pentax made a lot of excellent lenses, but finding them is difficult; in the last 3 years the availability of Pentax optics has shrunk enormously. I now wish that I had spent more money on equipment a couple of years ago, so that I could have it now. Oh well.


Photography
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Last Updated: Sat Jan 13 14:43:55 CST 2001
Bolo (Josef T. Burger) <bolo@cs.wisc.edu>