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Biography
I bought my first camera in Doncaster while shopping with my Mam in Doncaster for 20 pence. My Mam thought it was a toy, it took black and white photos. She bought me a book on photography which was a good start to understanding photography. I bought my first SLR a while later a Chinon CE-4. It came with a 50mm Chinon lens, I bought a Pentax 100mm lens which was a great portrait lens. There was no such thing as autofocus, just manual.
A while later I bought a Rollei 6x7 enlarger from Kays catalogue. I wanted a good enlarger lens so I bought a Nikon 50mm f2.8. I wanted to print in colour so I used Photocolor II which was very easy to use and produced good results. I converted the bathroom to a darkroom. I really enjoyed developing and printing photos, as you can see the results before your very eyes.
I attended Doncaster camera club for a while, which was then situated on the North Bridge.
I had the Chinon camera for many years before the back would no longer close. I stopped taking photos for a number of years until I got a new camera. I eventually went Digital with an Olympus C-5000Z with a dedicated FL-20 flash. I found it very slow at taking pictures and most of the pictures where out of focus. I started to attend Pontefract Camera Club. I had a very big shock on my first studio night when most of the members had very large Canon and Nikon SLR cameras, both digital and film. It was not long before I upgraded to a Canon EOS 3 film camera. I took all my photos using slide film, but was disappointed as the companies I used to develop the slides were poor quality, they had scratches and chemical stains. Also it was an expensive way to take photos. I eventually stopped taking photos and also stopped attending the camera club
To continue my love of photography I needed to get a digital SLR. I really wanted a camera with a full frame senor. I originally wanted a Canon 5D, but as time went on it got more and more out of date compared with new and much cheaper cameras. After reaching 50 years old, I got a lump sum from my pension. I looked at lots of cameras, and settled for a Nikon D700. I started to attend Ponte Camera Club again. I take on average 1,000 photos a month, they cost nothing to take and a little to print. One of the things I like about digital is you can experiment and see the results instantly. I take all my photos in JPEG and 14 bit RAW, I then edit then in Photoshop CS4, I also use Lightroom 2.
In the future I want to make money from photography and work for myself rather than someone else.
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