Little Welsh boy on photography
An interview conducted with Little Welsh boy, mostly via e-mail in November 2004, starting with some question like “tell me about the cameras you've used”.
I have a Zenith 12XP and have used a 1960's Konica range finder.
Q: What is the story behind these two camera's - nostalgia / fill me in?
A: I was 16 with an interest in photography. There was a chemist in my local town that got out of selling photographic equipment that had a few 1987 Russian cameras for half their original price. Japanese camera is my Dad’s.
Now I’m using a Olympus m[mju:]-II ZOOM 80 that I managed to break on my trip to India. I fact I’ve managed to break my Zenith a few times too and the Konica broke while I was using it a while back...
Q: Um, I’m guessing here, feel free to set me straight. When you take your film in, they (the shop) transfer the info to CD?
A: Yes, now I’ve even managed to find a shop that will give me TIFFs as well as JPEGs.
Q: This interests me, moving film to 1's & 0's. I give you credit for sticking with film.
A: Thank you, I'm waiting until digital settles down a bit. I was just reading a review of the first digital range finder and I hear that SLRs are moving up above 10 mega pixels, top end pro kit now 16 MP.
People seem to forget 35mm cameras were first developed for testing cinema film, which means there is enough detail on film to blow up to a movie theatre size screen.
Having learnt most of my photography skills on a manual SLR I kinda miss the creative control now, but I think, as with any tool it’s a question of knowing how to handle it. The Olympus has a slow F4 – F9 lens and a tiny zoom in comparison to my partner’s Minolta Dynax 3 with Tokina 28-210 zoom.