My Camera History — Season 2 Episode 2
Season 2 Episode 2, Welcome to episode 2.2 — My Camera History. I typically talk about the Art I see or read but today I want to respond to follower questions about my Photography Gear. All of my Podcasts are intentionally short because I get bored listening to hour long podcasts. The scripts for each episode are published on my Patreon page prior to broadcasting and the scripts are also published on my Medium page following the broadcast. See the links at the end.
My CAMERA HISTORY
Part 1 — FILM
My journey in photography begins while I was at the University of North Texas in Denton, Texas. The year is 1980 and I bought a Pentax K2 SLR which of course used 35mm film, at least possibly, I’m not totally sure because it was a long time ago and I’m an old white guy relying upon my dear memory. Being a student I could not afford a Nikon so I tried to get as close as possible. I took classes in Black and White film, Color film and also Color slides. My favorite part of photography at that time was spending time in the dark room using Kodak film and paper for color prints and using Ilford film and paper for Black & White prints as well as slides shot with Kodak slide film and Cibachrome slide film paper. Cibachrome was bought by Ilford and became Ilfochrome. I really liked using contrast filters and pushing my Black and White prints as far as possible with lots of hard whites and hard blacks. I also really liked making prints from color slides on Cibachrome because I found the colors to be really beautiful.
Part 2 — DIGITAL
With the arrival of a new millennium I was drawn into the promise of Digital Cameras. I jumped into this new format in 2005 using a Kodak CD33, a 3 mp sensor camera. Kodak was still making cameras at the time and they offered very affordable cameras. The sensors were very small in the beginning but this was perfectly fine for using images I captured and posted on the internet. In 2013 I graduated to using the Lumia 1020 which was my Nokia Phone. This was my first foray into phones with cameras and this beauty had a 41mp sensor camera which rivals the sensors on DSLRs today. I found this phone to be way ahead of its time and it inspired me to dream of a future where visual artists could benefit from technology in much the same way as musicians had been benefiting from the introduction of MP3s. My vision of digital art was frustrated because technology wasn’t where I needed but I had high hopes for the future.
Part 3 — DSLR
In 2015 I bought my first DSLR, it was a Nikon D5300 with a 24 mp DX sensor. For those of you who aren’t very familiar with all the different types of cameras available today, Nikon classifies DX cameras as Cropped Sensor cameras and Nikon classifies FX cameras a Fun Frame Sensor cameras. Cropped Sensor cameras are typically less expensive and I opted for the DX as a good introduction into Nikon’s DSLR cameras. I had used my father’s Nikon back in the olden days so I was familiar enough to know Nikon cameras were my preferred choice. I bought 3 lenses and embarked on my modern camera experience.
Part 4 — MIRRORLESS
In 2019 Nikon entered the relatively new technology of Mirrorless cameras and I bought a Z7 with a 45mp FX sensor. This was my first experience with Full Frame sensors and the best part of this experience was shooting in RAW format which is a large file format and the editing options were vast when working in Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom. I then began collection different Z mount lenses which Nikon developed for their entire mirrorless camera line. I also then bought a Leica Q2 mirrorless camera with a 47pm Full Frame sensor which has a fixed 28mm lens. What a fixed lens camera means is I was not able to change the lens. EVER. Leica was always another high quality camera maker I admired but was usually priced out of their line as they are expensive.
In 2021 Nikon announced the Zfc 20mp DX sensor camera which had a retro style reminiscent of the film cameras of the past. Being another of their Z line meant that all Z mount lenses would work on this camera. The Zfc also has a fully articulating screen in the back which could flip out and rotate around so that when taking selfies or videos of myself to post on Social Media, I could see what I was filming while the camera was pointed at me! Since I had been posting videos on YouTube the past few years I decided I needed one of these.
Then in 2022 Nikon announced the Flagship of their mirrorless Z line, the Z9 with a 45mp FX sensor which could shoot 8k video. I bought one and this camera has become my Go-To camera.
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