One of the things I said in my New Year’s Resolution was that I’d take more photos.  And Just a few weeks ago I got a new camera and have been experimenting with it.

This got me thinking about the different cameras I’ve had, so here’s a quick tour through them.

I got my first camera in 1986.  Ahem.  I was in 5th year in secondary school, and one of the teachers set up a photography club.  We had a darkroom and learned how to develop black and white photos.  I loved seeing the image materialise on the photographic paper, and the whole process of converting negatives into positive images.

My first camera was a Zenit 11.

It was a heavy machine.  And a really, really basic camera.  The light meter was external and gave the result on  a dial at the left of the camera.  You then had to set the camera to whatever film speed you had loaded and adjust shutter and aperture to match.

In other words, totally manual and a great, great teacher in how to photograph.

Such a pity that it was stolen from me on the Tube in London one day!

My second camera was from Vivitar

This, for me, was dead posh.  I had received a backdated bonus in work and splashed out on a camera with an external flash, a zoom lens and <gasp> through-the-lens (TTL) light metering.  You still had to set the film speed but the lenses were good, and I managed to get some lovely photos with this camera.

Finally, old-age got to this one and the shutter started to fail in 2006.  Just about the time that film photography went out.

Next up was my Fujifilm 9600

My first child, Andrea, was born in 2007, and I got this camera a few weeks before her birth.  I figured I’d be taking a lot of photos!  And yes, I have taken A LOT of photos with this one.  The lens is very versatile.  It’s my first digital camera, and has been a great workhorse.  If you look at other pages in this blog, then the photos are probably taken with this camera.

The downside is that the processor is now getting slow, and the lens quality is not as good as something from Canon or Nikon.  So I’ve been itching to get something new, and have saved up for my fourth camera.

And the latest… The Canon EOS 600D

This is my first proper DSLR and the nicest camera I’ve ever had.  I really like the speed of it for shooting, the clarity of the lens and the fact that I still have to learn so much in order to use it right.

So.  Instead of me writing about education all the time, I’m going to start posting more photos about places and themes.

Maybe for the first time in 40 years I’m actually going to follow through on a New Year’s Resolution!