Paul Lester Photo

Leica M6 – Ilford HP5+ – Rodinal 1:50

I was reading a post over at Shutterfinger. Gordon was talking about the cameras that he’s known and loved. In his post said that he made a list of all the cameras that he’s ever owned. That list came to 30 or so cameras; unfortunately, he didn’t share the entire list, but did share some information about a few of his favorites.

I began to think about how many cameras I’ve owned over the years and came up with slightly less than half that many, 14. Here is the list of the cameras that I owned at one time. They are in purchased order as I remember them.

1. Minolta XG-1
2. Minolta SRT-101
3. Minolta X-700
4. Minolta XD-11
5. Minolta XD-11
6. Yashica Mat 124g (6 x 6, film)
7. Canon Powershot ??? – My first digital
8. Minolta Dimage A1
9. Nikon D2x
10. Nikon D300
11. Nikon D40
12. Mamiya 645e (6 x 4.5, film)
13. Olympus 35 LC (film)
14. Leica M6 (film)

As you can see, I used to shoot nothing but Minolta. My first Nikon was, believe it or not, their flagship (at the time), the D2x. What a thrill that was!

The ones in bold are the ones that I still own. I’m sure that you probably wonder which was my favorite. Well, that’s hard to say. In the digital realm, I’d probably have to say the D2x. Man! That was a tank and an impressive camera; however, the D300 outperforms it every step of the way, but it was close to my heart as it was my first real digital camera.

My favorite film camera … Minolta XD-11. That camera was way ahead of its time and could seem to do no wrong, although I did enjoy my SRT-101. I know, you expected me to say the Leica, but it runs a close second. Also, I really liked the square frame of the Yashica Mat 124g.

Least favorite of the bunch? By far, the DiMAGE A1. I never did get to like electronic view finders. I know that EVFs have improved a lot, I’ve looked through them, but, I’m still not feeling them! I like to look through glass!

Sometimes it’s nice to take a trip back down memory lane. Let’s see. I’ve been shooting for about 31 years. 14 cameras, or about 1 every two years? I’m quite the moderate camera buyer!

Think you can remember all of the cameras that you ever bought?

Addendum: I forgot that I also owned two view cameras. A Sinar 4×5 monorail and a Shen Hao 4×5 wooden field camera. It was some kind of wonderful.

Wow! The last couple of posts were pretty intense in the comments section, but well worth the effort. So, now for something completely trivial and light.

I’m really curious about the age groups of those visiting this blog, whether they comment or not. Please take a second to ‘vote’ in the poll in the column on the right. It’s completely anonymous, so please click your real age range.

I can’t get these type of stats from Google Analytics and I’m really interested.

Thanks!

Last conversation of the evening.

A couple interesting things about writing a blog for a number of years:

• You are likely to repeat yourself, perhaps, by visiting a topic again.
• You are likely to contradict yourself

About two and half years ago, I wrote this post: Contemporary Photography. In it, I wrote that the photography that I viewed, that had been labeled as contemporary, I found banal and uninspired. During that time there was an entirely different group of people who commented. Looking back at the comments, none of my current, regular posters are listed, so this should be interesting. People come. People go. People bring different ideas.

Over the past 30 months, my ideas of things have changed greatly; however, I still stand in awe that anyone could like contemporary or postmodern photography. I still find it banal, uninspired, and generally lacking. It seems, to me, to be an exercise in intellectual self-gratification.

I came back around to this topic because of a number of posts that I read over the past few days:

• George Barr’s post: Is Crap Still Crap, Even When it’s Important
• George DeWolfe – Deconstructing Postmodernism

To give you a flavor of George Barr’s post, here is how it starts:

I have had the dubious privilege of looking at some thousands of bad images as I work to select images for “Why Photographs Work”. I had a look at Review Santa Fe as you can go to their website and look at previous accepted photographers – I was horrified at the quality of the images. (Behind The Lens – Is Crap Still Crap, Even When it’s Important, January 2010)

After reading his post, I went immediately to Review Santa Fe, clicked on the Photographer’s Listing and went through ALL of them. Out of the whole bunch, and there were quite a few, I found one, exactly one, that I thought had anything worth viewing. The rest were, you got it, banal, uninteresting, and …well, you get the idea. I won’t even mention the one that I liked. I’m curious about your take on them, should you decide to take the time to have a gander. I was able to speed through them because they were so uninteresting as to require only a very short view of each.

Continuing on with the other post, George DeWolfe’s – Deconstructing Postmodernism:

There are so many quotable passages in this post, which he says that he’s been writing over the course of several years. You can tell. It’s very well thought out and I shall have to visit it again to absorb a bit more. It’s not easy reading.

Without Form to add relationship and structure to an image Postmoderism reveals all chaos without connection. Without Form there is no “visual” message in the picture. Form holds the Content together. (Deconstructing Post Modernism – George’s Holler – January 2010)

I think that the above quote crystallizes what I feel when I view such works, nothing but chaos, noise. There’s little about the vision, all about the context, ideas, and the photographer’s opinion about what is important. The photos are so weakly structured as to not be able to stand on their own, crippled.

I wanted to keep this short. I’ve added lots of links, so you’ve got lots of reading to do, if you want. I guess that over the past 30 months, my opinion has not really changed, but I know now more of why I don’t care for this type of photography.

Of course, as always, I’d love to hear your opinions about what I’ve said, the articles that I’ve referenced, and your own opinions. And, of course, none of what I have said is to be construed as truth, just one man’s opinion.