35mm Camera's

My very first camera whatsoever was an Instamatic, I recall it as being a 104 with external flashcubes. At the age of 4, I got my first system camera. This Nikon FE stayed with me for some 15 years without any overhaul. When it finally gave up during my stay in Southampton 1994, I decided to divert from Nikon to Canon as my lenses also needed some upgrading. 210mm tele was ok but not enough and they had pretty good deals with wide- and telezooms to 300mm at the time.

My EOS 100 stayed alive for some 8 years but when the autofocus no longer gave me 100% result I decided to replace it with an EOS 30. Much trouble with this new one. It went on repair several times for shutterproblems. I said all the time that the camerabody housed the problems but they didn't seem to find it. They even gave me a new wideanglelens in order to solve the problem. It didn't help and finally they decided to give me a new camera instead. That's how I got the 30V.
 

When it comes to the 35mm film used, the story is pretty simple. During my very first years I loaded the cameras with whatever I got from my stepfather who worked as photographer at one of the big newspapers. Thats why some of my earlier shots are black&white, some very grainy, some on negative colorfilm, some on high ASA slidefilm. 

When I started to do more regular trips to the airports I found out most of "us" used Kodachrome K64, or even K25. Said and done, K64 it was, buying 10 at the time the price was quite reasonable and included processing. Processing the films took a while since the process were only done by Kodak, first in Sweden, then in Switzerland and lateron only in USA before the Kodachrome production was terminated 2009. Anyway, I only used it until the end of 1995.

I thought I would stay forever with this one but one of my friends took the giant step away from the Kodak world and introduced Provia 100 in our community. Suddenly we realised the K64 were almost black&white! The K64s colors from back in the 1960 is not comparable at all with the quality they showed during my active time. Provia however showed some immaculate colors. On the edge of too much but still not turning over. From 1996 I used only Provia (or the LCC version Sensia) 100 ASA. Good thing also this film used the E6 process, meaning every lab could deal with it. The only thing we didn'nt know about was how long they would last. On the other hand, the longlasting K64 quality might have changed as well, none can tell for sure... Last years before I put my 30V aside, the prices of film as well as processing got unreasonably high and I'm happy now that I can spend the money on harddrives instead!
 

After using slidefilm since 1988 without any thoughts of buying a DSLR, the prices for film as well as development were increasing rapidly and I had no arguments left to stay with this media. When Canon launched the EOS 40D late 2007 I thought the DSLR's finally had a solution good enough for me. The main issue being the introduction of sensor cleaning functions. In the beginning of 2008 I took the biggest step in my photographic life and bought a 40D. So far I'm very happy with this decision...
 

As told above I started my carreer with an Instamatic, but I have also used pocket cameras for a long time, parallell to the big ones. My first "partycamera" was the small and handy Mju-1. This one however was stored many years ago when the digital cameras were introduced on the market.
 

After borrowing a C-1 from a friend for a couple of years I bought my first own digital camera. It was a P100. Great camera but lot's of dustspot problems. Sony even decided to switch the complete lens in order to solve the problems. During this maintneance I had a W12 on loan from Sony as needed a camera during my summer vacation 2005. Sony never solved the problems with my P100 and it was replaced by a P200 instead. This one is now used by my girlfriend and still works fine!

After reading several tests I choosed an Ixus 65 as replacement. Not very happy with the lousy edge sharpness on this one I decided to try yet another one. After reading more tests I finally bought a Nikon S200 but not happy at all with this one, crappy autofocus being the worst issue. As I now have my EOS40D I do not make any great efforts in finding a new pocket camera. I also tried my girlfriends Minolta when the interest of Cruiseships started. This one was great for this issue as it had a 420mm zoom.