A little (abridged) camera history… pt 1: Film
The first camera I got to play with was a mid-1960’s Minolta AL. I was about 8 years old at the time, and the camera was my grandfather’s.
My parents bought me a Kodak Disc 6000 a couple years later (remember those?), which I really enjoyed using. The image quality was terrible, but it was a good place to start learning about composition. I took it on my first trip to Scotland, and I remember getting some landscape shots that would have looked really nice if it weren’t for the tiny, grainy little film negatives.
It wasn’t long before the Minolta AL rangefinder camera became mine, and it saw many years of service. Even in my teens, once I had collected three Minolta 35mm SLR bodies (XG-1, X-300, X-700), that little old rangefinder camera had a place in my bag. A week’s work experience in the photography department of a local newspaper, The Evening Herald, did give me the opportunity to handle some very well used Nikon F3’s though, which got me questioning my brand loyalty a little…
At 16, I was working for Dixons, a big electrical retail chain. I started there under the UK government’s Youth Training Scheme, a failed on-the-job training/slave labour plan…
Still, I had access to the latest 1990’s cameras, including Nikon’s F-801 / N-8008. This thing was incredible. Auto-focus, auto-wind, and matrix metering, all wrapped up in a professional metal chassis. It might not sound all that special now, but back then this was near the top of Nikon’s range for specification, second only to the legendary F-4. The F-6 model is still available to buy, even though it was released some 14 years ago.
Eventually, I exchanged my three Minolta bodies and six lenses in for an F-801 body and one 50mm lens.
A little (abridged) camera history… pt 2: Digital
The first commercially available digital cameras were much like that old disc camera I had, with grainy, tiny little images, and inaccurate colours. Here’s an image from my first digital camera in 2003, a Sony 1.3 Megapixel Cybershot. How things have moved on…
In 2004, I splashed out on a 5 Megapixel ‘Prosumer’ camera, a Sony DSC-V1. It was one of the best compact digital cameras of the time and a big improvement, but I still held on to my trusty old Nikon F-801. The small size made the Sony a useful travel companion though, and I got some nice images on my travels to Spain and France.
Image from my Sony DSC-V1, taken near the summit of Mont Blanc, France
From 1995 until 2014, when I left England, I worked at Wants Second Hand Store in Plymouth. Buying in camera gear all the time was a sure-fire way of tempting me out of all my wages, but at least I was able to borrow stuff when it came in. If only I could have afforded that Nikon 400mm f 1:2.8 lens that came in… and that Mamiya RZ67…
My first digital SLR camera was a 6 Megapixel Nikon D50 from Wants. The quality was pretty good, as long as you didn’t need to print big, or crop the images too much. I used it for my first digital wedding shoot. Being able to take hundreds of images without changing film was a definite bonus when doing that kind of work. I traded in my F-801 to get this camera.
A slightly cropped image from my first wedding shoot
When I upgraded, it was to a 10 Megapixel Nikon D200. The semi-professional build of this camera felt much more like my old F-801, and the results were excellent as long as ISO sensitivity was kept below 400. Pushing the ISO high meant for very noisy, grainy images, making low light or high-speed work a challenge. Digital technology was definitely getting better, but there was still lots of room for improvement.
A cropped image from the Nikon D200 at ISO 400. Speckly image noise is visible in the background.
A Nikon D7000 came next, which I still have. It’s not as heavily built as the old D200, but the images are cleaner and higher resolution at 16 Megapixel. Most of the images I have printed so far were taken with this camera. I was unsure at first about ‘downgrading’ to a lighter-built model, but comparison tests proved the newer D7000 model had the better image quality.
Cleaner images with more tonal range. Changing to the D7000 (right) had to be done. The image on the left was taken with the D200.
The first chance I got to play with a full-frame sensor (same size as 35mm film) digital camera was a Nikon Df I borrowed from Wants. It has 16 Megapixels just like the D7000, but the sharpness and tonal range was a definite improvement over the D7000. I would have bought that one but some things were more important, like saving up to immigrate to America…
This model is still available to buy new and has an awesome retro design.
Crownhill Road, Plymouth. Taken with the Nikon Df
The latest and greatest (so far)
So here we are in November 2018. Inheritance money we had put aside for a new kitchen island got repurposed to get me a camera upgrade. I still feel a little bad about that, but this is a professional investment after all.
Nikon’s full-frame D850 was released towards the end of last year and is still recognised as having the best image quality available on the market with this size image sensor. It even matches some medium-format digital cameras costing considerably more money. This camera has a native resolution approaching 46 megapixels, plus all the latest processing technology to match. I’ve always wanted to be able to print big without worrying about noise and pixels showing, and this camera should enable me to do that.
For my review of this camera and comparison to the D7000, click here.
If you’ve had enough camera talk and need a drink, take a look at some of my wine reviews on my blog.
“Busy” A cropped image taken with the Nikon D850 at ISO 640