Photography

I caught the photo bug from my father, who used both Contax and Leica (IIIg) rangefinders. My first camera was a plastic rollfilm wotsit, which I gave up on when our dog chewed up my films. When I started College, I joined their photgraphic society, and bought a Zenit-B SLR and a Weston Master lightmeter which I kept for a few years, and then swapped it (big mistake!) for a Kowa SET SLR.

When I started work at UMRCC (see 'My Background'), I bought a Pentax Spotmatic 500 (right) with the contents my first wage packet. and then added a couple of lenses: SMC Takumar 28mm and SMC Takumar 200mm.

When I became interested in Motor Racing, I bought a Pentax Program-A with a motor wind, and then later on Tokina 70mm-200mm and Sigma 28mm-70mm zoom lenses.

Up until the last couple of years I did use both Pentax cameras fairly equally, and in some cases, I would rather use the 32+ year old SP 500 without all the automatic gizmo's of modern cameras. But a good photographer could take good pictures with any camera, so judge for yourself, and let me know if you like them. (and even if you don't, I don't mind the criticism...)

As you'll have gathered from my Gallery, I've been seduced my the dark side and gone Digital (almost). My first digital camera was an Olympus C900 zoom (1.3 MegaPixels) and the second was a Canon IXUS 500 (5 MegaPixels). The latest is a Canon 20D SLR (8.2 MegaPixels) which I like a lot.

I did buy a Bronica ETRSi and do use it sometimes but its a bit of a beast to carry around with a set of accessories. On some Photography breaks I found its size a bit of an hindrance in some places and as such it slowed me down quite a lot.

In 1995 I joined the Royal Photographic Society, but have not had the time to go in for any of their distinctions yet, but I hope to soon.