On cameras

I miss the smell of photography.

I miss the shimmer of silver on paper.

I've always loved taking photos but the working in the darkroom was always my very favorite part of it -- making something from practically nothing, worrying if it was going to all work out okay.

When I was in college, every summer I would sign up for an independent study in photography which granted me my own key to the university's darkroom that I could use just about any time I wanted. I practically lived there.

I did make the jump to digital, begrudgingly, about 20 years ago. Professionally it was a godsend. Being able to immediately review the photo and check that your lighting was good and that a person hadn't blinked, or that the image was simply what I envisioned made life much easier.

It also made me much, much lazier. I knew I could change things, and fix things, and whatever, easily and cheaply. Now that I'm "retired" I'm trying to retrain myself to see again.

Right now I'm shooting with a Nikon D7000. It can do anything and everything, I use 4 functions on it: shutter, aperture, depth of field preview and focus -- the same 4 I used on my 35 year old Canon.

I have, I think, 8 cameras though.

i loved my pentax k1000


it got creamed falling off the back of a moving car (long story involving, nephews, loading a car with christmas stuff to take to my grandparents and just being in too much of a hurry)

Ahh, reading that brought back more memories, boomer. The smell of the chemicals in the darkoom. The weird infra-red light. Just imagine -- there's an entire generation out there who don't know what we're talking about!

The k1000 is a very fine camera, indeed, dj. IMO, anyway.

I so very much miss the darkroom s well and its been many years since Ive been in one...kinda nice idea boomerang about taking a class just to get that back even for just a little bit!!
Andrew--I've always thought having one of these would be just fabulous...maybe something new to play with would give you something of that real camera felling again..
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/112648-REG/Horseman_27191_4x5_Woodman_Wood_Field.html
I have a Canon--just went full digital a couple years back. Still a little put off by it..miss film and prints a great deal.

Yehhh.
And then it says, right beside it, in big red letters DISCONTINUED.

Sheesh.

http://able2know.org/topic/165994-2#post-4460337

the film advancer broke after about 20 years of me abusing the crap out of it.
it's funny just how heavy it is...

I think I used my mother's Brownie once or twice or maybe a dozen times. I had an instamatic of my own. Was given a Rolleiflex by a cameraman friend of my fathers, actually used it occasionally, but was a busy girl going to school and working.. so I gave it away (cripes!) to a friend who was fascinated by photography. I used my father's old Argus from the early 40's, which is how I learned about a lot of things, including a light meter, flash attachment too though I rarely used the attachment. That one was stolen from my first gallery studio. Grrrrr.

In the seventies, I bought a used Nikkormat, and then another one. One of them was better for my peculiar eyes re checking focus, and I now forget which was which. Those were tough old cameras. In the late nineties, I bought a Nikon N70, got to like it. I miss film, of course.

Now I have a Canon Digital G3 - it's ok, but I've only used it learning in a hurry and haven't really explored it. Meantime, in my last computer crash in 2009, I had to take the Mac to a Mac Fixer, and didn't catch on until I got around to wanting to put the photos I took on my california trip of late 2009 on my computer. Turns out that in the fixit, they had not gotten the I Photo program reinstalled, so I was out to lunch. It's a big deal for me to haul Mac to the fixit guy, in effort and in money, and I haven't figured out if I can reinstall it myself, if I need to buy that to do it. Yawn... I know I should ask this stuff at a mac type website. Yawns again.
But I would like to see those California photos.


On darkrooms - in high school I had a strange and wonderful job taking mini xrays at the local hospital, and part of that was developing the film. A dark room is especially dark for me, as I have wildly slow dark adaption (crummy rods - I didn't know I had RP then). But I got to like developing the little xrays in my groping way.

Decades later, I used a local photography shop's dark room, which you could rent out for an hour. That's when I learned to love watching a picture happening. Never had my own darkroom. My ambition along those lines was that I once wanted to own an etching press, which even then was horrendously expensive, but that's another story - printmaking is fun too.

Well..it doesnt have to be that EXACT one. Lets see....
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/215896-REG/Wista_214606_45DX_Ebony_4x5_Wooden.html

WOW!

And it's only $4,288!

But it is a beauty.

Okay, we've established you like it anyway.
You can certainly go with a less beautiful version and then not feel so bad dragging through the palms or something....
http://www.adorama.com/HMW45.html
Just in case you decide it might be worth a try

Are you really looking for a film camera, Lustig? I didn't get that impression. I thought your nostalgia was more like mine -- kind of a longing for the "craft" of photography.

Me too.

i am using my older cameras now, leaving the digital to collect dust. Nikon, olympus, tower and kodak .