My Camera Gear

One of the things I am working on doing here is to get myself taking photographs again. When I graduated form college I received a Minolta Maxxum 7000i & an introductory lens as a gift. I went out with and starting snapping photos and started to become serious about the art.

Then a year or two afterwords I attended a lecture our local museum sponsored on photography. It was a basic lecture by a professional and he focused on exposure,then went into the basics of photographic composition, and then presented a quick overview of the photographic industry — namely stock photography.

Then I got a job teaching overseas.

Then I could afford to buy glass for my Minolta body. My big boy is a 300mm telephoto F/2.8 (plus a 2x teleconverter extending my reach to 600 mm f/5.6) and I have a 70-210 mm f/2.8, 50mm macro (can not recall its speed), and a wide angle at about 18mm but that was a cheap lens and is in pieces. That collection has been collecting dust (at least their cases) and not working for me. In addition to that gear, I have tripods, monopods, filters, and so on. I used this camera when I was in Africa (the big lens was not yet in my possession but the 70-210 lens was) and I got some pretty neat animal shots on that trip.

The cost of film and processing caught up with my and my interest in photography faded.

Enter digital photography.

The camera I now use to photograph in general and what I use for the work here is a Panasonic Lumix DFZ20. The lenses is a fixed lens and according to my exif data has a large zoom range beating out my big Minolta (actually it is a Sigma lens) boy by 50%. The Minolta with its teleconverter, though will put a licking on the Lumix lens. The Lumix is a 5 Mpixel camera and I can fire off about four shots when I drop the hammer. The Lumix, with the exception of its fixed lens, has the flexibility found on most SLRs and I can choose program mode, aperture priority, shutter priority, or complete manual mode. The Lumix offers a number of different metering and focus zones and I am starting to learn how to work that camera.

I am now once again looking at upgrading my camera to a DSLR and yes, I am constrained by my glass. This means I am looking at Sony bodies. I see Sony has a model at about 15 Mpixel and can fire off about 7 frames per second, that appeals to me, though I know that is probably under ideal circumstances and super fast SD cards.

One thing I dislike about digital cameras is their rinky-dink toy feel they have, especially in comparison to film SLRs.

Good Stuff!

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