Down memory lane

I was watching this YouTube video by photographer Matt Irwin about the cameras he has owned during his career.

Fascinating the cameras he had and the reasons why he got them.

So what is my list of cameras that have shaped my career?

Well, the first camera I can remember using, when I was a child, was a Minolta 35mm film camera with a 50mm lens. I can’t remember what model it was but what I realised years later was that the lens was stuck wide open. This really confused me at the time as I never got a shoot that had a deep depth of field.

I stuck with the Minolta brand when I started earning money by getting a second body. Again I can’t remember which one and now has since long gone.

It must have been a year or two later when I seriously started getting into photography with the hope of it turning into a job that I purchased a Nikon F301 film camera. And as it was during the film days, it was essential to have a second body for when you either ran out of 36 frames or wanted a different ISO or colour/black & white, so a Nikon F501 was also purchased.

My next film camera was the Nikon F90x followed by an upgrade to the Nikon F4s. And this turned out to be my last film camera.

The first ever digital camera I got was the Nikon Coolpix 950 at the turn of the century. It wasn’t very good. But to be able to transmit pictures without having to process and scan film was an amazing thing to do when using dial up internet.

This led to me owning a Nikon D1 and later adding a D1H to the mix.

My employer then purchased a Nikon D2H and when it was time to upgrade decided to move to the Canon system. And even today I am using a variety of Canon bodies.

For my personal use I purchased the full frame Nikon D3 which is arguably when Nikon moved from making digital cameras that were sub par to top of the game.

I then added the Fuji XE-1 and then the Nikon D850 to my collection.

Counting up the cameras I had over the years, it isn’t really all that many. I have always believed in getting better lenses over having the latest camera. Lenses you keep but cameras you don’t.

I am certain that my camera collection would be different if my employer didn’t start to supply me with equipment. Certainly been fun going down this memory lane.