"What" Made Me Who I Am? Part 2

This morning, I was watching some Youtube videos by a guy who collects a lot of things that I enjoy, such as console radios/tvs, computers and other electronic gear. It started me thinking quite a bit on why I like what I do. Of course, there is natural inclination. I like things that do something. I like intricate mechanisms. I like well-fitted enclosures that protect, hide and enhance. All these things, I feel like I was born with a natural propensity toward. However, you can't leave out environment. I'm the son of an engineer with an engineer brother, so all my life, I've been surrounded, or more accurately immersed in technology. You can pretty much say that it started with this..... a Telefunken Sonata stereo console "system". Within this cabinet was a receiver, turntable, and 2 oval speakers. I can remember sitting in front of it in our living room (both in Hong Kong and later in Texas), listening to my Dad's records. It was a seminal moment in my life, when Dad allowed me to put on records and start it under his watchful eye. It's still in our house today! Although the receiver has long-since died from lack of replacement tubes, we have the cabinet in my son's room holding up his LCD TV/Monitor that his old video game consoles are hooked up to. It had been stored in the garage for a number of years, but I recently refinished it and brought it inside. It gave me a sense of continuity and warmth, just to still have it almost 50 years down the road.

Some of you will recognize the Voigtlander Bessamatic Deluxe, that was another "Dad-instrument". I believe that I not only learned the love of photography on this camera, but also the love of fine instruments. This thing was absolutely 100% mechanical, built in the post-war West Germany that was renowned for such things (as was the Telefunken). This camera was built in the last years of the here-to-fore dominant German camera industry right around the time that it was surpassed by the rising tide of Japanese electronic and manufacturing prowess. The things that I take away from this camera is the feel of fine mechanical construction that's indescribable, and oddly; that distinctly smell of German leather from the case!

Then came this...... "Are you kidding me?", you say? It was the first half of the 70's and American console TVs still dominated that landscape. I clearly remember my dad taking me to a store (which no longer exist) on Ave Q in Lubbock, Texas that sold (as was common in those days) appliances as well as televisions. This was not only to be our TV for the next 20-or-so years, but my Christmas present that year as well. A big (25") Zenith (it was either Zenith or RCA then) console TV in those days was a "capitol" purchase. This was the set I remember sitting in my parent's home for virtually the entirety of my teenage years onwards. It was what I religiously watch the daily reruns of the original Star Trek episodes as well as Batman with Adam West. For a few years during my Junior High years, shows like Emergency, and Happy Days. And yes, for a time, it did indeed serve as the stand for their new TV!

And then came the "teen" years. If you were a teen in the U.S. of the 70's, there was one important thing.... and that was "cool", as in being cool, and having cool stuff. Like the kids running around wearing their giant headphones now, it was cool to have component stereo equipment. Most of you remember the ads in just about every magazine..... of the obviously cool guy with the "hot" girl (or at least that's what we say now), in the cool apartment with the cool stereo equipment in the background!?! The more components, the better, the more knobs and switches, the better, and by the later part of the decade; if it was BLACK, even better! I bought a used receiver from my brother's friend Richard. It was a fairly high-end piece by Kenwood that was branded Realistic (Radio Shack). It looked somewhat like the one above, but bigger, with more...you guessed it.... knobs and switches, plus an unusual feature of that time..... a remote control. 

And if you wanted to separate yourself from the crowd, you had multiple components variously stacked all over your built-in bookcase. For me, this ranged from a Dual 1215 (actually my dads), a Advent Cassette deck (that originally belonged to my sister), and a 8-Track deck (that belonged to my other sister before they moved away). I was one of the few people who I knew who could record on 8-track, which most car of the day, came factory equipped.

All this played through a pair of KLH, 2-way "bookshelf" speakers. For Abernathy, Texas in the late 70's, this equipment separate me from the pack, and was one of the few "cool" things in my life. Most people still had the old consoles in their living room that had the stereo, record player AND TV all in one big cabinet!

A few years down the road, this came into my life. A TI 99/4A of the early 80's. I was back home at the time, having done a "reboot" on my academic pursuits by going back to get a teaching certification. My brother was working at Texas Intruments as a design engineer and thus had access to all things TI. This ranged from weird LCD watches to TI's foray into home computing. I played games on it, and even learned a little bit of programming in Basic before it went into to my friend's Mom a few years later. 

But it was actually about 10 years later when I bought an IBM ThinkPad 701c that I really fell in love with computers. Now, many years later, it's considered a work of art and resides in museums. For me though, it was the computer that changed how saw and dealt with an entire category of devices. This became the first digital device that pretty much went with me everywhere. Due to it's amazing folding keyboard (hence the "Butterfly" name), it's compact dimensions allowed it to easily travel. From the arrival of this machine till today's X301, there's been very few periods in my life where I didn't have an "Ultra-portable" in my possession. 

No, I wasn't just born a full-blown Propellerhead. From those days of sitting with my dad listening to music on the Telefunken or out shooting photographs on the Voigtlander, till now, these are the products that have shaped me. If I wasn't married with kids, I could completely see myself being just like the guy who made those videos.... maybe with the exception of collecting vacuum cleaners!

My Life In Cameras

My days of camera love began here. Strange isn't it? Of course, being a child of the 60's and 70's, it should be no surprise given the dominance of Kodak in those days. I don't remember where it came from or what the circumstances were surrounding this 126 cartridge loading Instamatic. I just remember it being around the house when I was young. It was heavy. Everything had a weight to it back in those days when most anything even remotely substantial was made of metal. Anyway, I also remember that I never could get it to work right so I took most of my pictures on this.....

I know, I know... these were barely cameras. But hey, it was cheap (mowing lawns didn't pay a lot), and the film was cheap to buy and have processed. Plus it was very small and portable. I mostly went everywhere on my Sears "Free Spirit" 10-Speed, so something that fit in my overly-tight bluejeans pocket was perfect. Only super geeks wore backpacks and no self-respecting teenage boy had a luggage rack, much less a basket on his bike! On a regular basis, I road down to the train depot, took pictures of the passing freight engines and chatted with the station master. Little did I know that it was the last of those days as well. Both station and master are long gone now from little towns in the Texas panhandle like Abernathy. On the way back, I'd swing by the library and pick up some "Rick Brant Electronic Adventures" or "Hardy Boys Mysteries" that I'd already read several times.You know; I still read to books for relaxation.

Real photography came in this form. My dad's Voigtlander Bessamatic Deluxe. I can't imagine a better camera on which to learn photography. It had one lens, a 50mm f/2.8 Color-Skopar. It had a coupled "match-needle" selenium meter visible in the viewfinder. This "deluxe" version had a reflecting mirror system which gave the ability to see the aperture and shutter speed in the finder. The Synchro-Compur leaf shutter allowed flash synchronization at all shutter speeds. For a late 60's and early 70's kid, I was photographically spoiled. I got to use this camera under the supervision of my father on our seemingly annual summer trips into mountains of northern New Mexico and Colorado. For those of you who have been up there in the summer time, you won't be surprised that experience helped me learn to handle rapidly changing lighting conditions. I sometimes tell people that I "cut my photographic teeth" on that camera. Although I had loan of it any time I wanted; of course this wasn't my camera. That would come later.

In a dusty little West Texas town like ours, there were very few kids who grew up handling a SLR (single lens reflex), so I supposed it shouldn't surprise anyone that I landed the post of "Annual Staff Photographer" my Freshman year of high school. The school owned a Mamiya/Sekor 1000DTL, along with the requisite 50mm f/1.8 and 135mm f/2.8 lens, as well as a Yashica Mat 124G twin lens reflex. My 14 year-old self though, turned up his nose at them, and continued to use my dad's Voigtlander instead. If I knew then what I know now, I'd have jumped all over that 1000DTL with it's built-in spot metering. The whole time though, I was pining away for the latest and the greatest from the "land of the rising sun". This was the later part of the 70's and the electronic revolution was sweeping the photographic industry. It had begun almost a decade before with cameras like the Pentax ES, and Nikkormat EL, but after the middle part of the decade when Olympus turned every other company on it's ear with the M-1 (OM-1, Olympus Model 1) with it's compact size and every feature under the sun, the handwriting was on the wall. Everyone needed to get smaller, lighter and more electronic! In April of 1976, Canon took things to the "next level" with the AE-1. Relatively small, light, and electronically advanced, with the ability to take most of the professional grade Canon system. However it's real secret was really the construction technology which jumped to a different level entirely with polycarbonate body components! Canon didn't invent these things. They're just the ones that combined it all together. This completely shifted the SLR market from typically doctors, engineers, scientist and such to include the everyday common man/woman. They invented today's DSLR-toting soccer moms. Although, I was able to talk the school into this camera the following fall, it wasn't my camera either. What I wanted came along in the Spring of '78. The great Canon A-1. Although, it shot film; this camera can be considered the progenitor of today's DSLRs. All electronic, with the now familiar PASM shooting modes, controlled by a control wheel for every function. Yes; you are correct, that the Minolta XD-11 of 1977 came first, but it's functional layout for controls was traditional and it never dominated the top end of what would later become know as the "pro-sumer" market like the Canon. The A-1 was the camera I had to have. After a lot of scraping and scrounging from working part-time jobs and the participation of my brother who was also fascinated by the camera, I bought it during the summer of 1978. I actually shot with it for less than 2 years, it had a major impact on my Psyche. 

Although, the A-1 was the camera that I remember so completely it seems that it was around longer than it really was; it was this camera that changed me as a photographer. The Canon 7s, introduced in 1961! If the A-1 was the "bombshell cheerleader" dream-date that makes everybody stare and drool everywhere you go (make no mistake: when I went anywhere shooting yearbook photos with it, every other yearbook photographer wanted to talk about it!), then this was the girl next door. One the eye-catching (with the blond Farrah Fawcett hair-do), the other the slender brunette with her hair pulled back in a pony-tail and no make-up. It was a little angular, with very few controls, but everything operated smoothly and quietly (almost silently). The summer after I graduated before heading off to college, I worked in the booming metropolis of Lubbock, at a photo studio long since gone called Reeves Photography, as the "black and white" technician. When I wasn't standing in the darkroom over a Dektol tray or prowling the basement full of old equipment, I haunted the camera shops all over town....both of them. One day, as I was hanging around in Plains Camera on 34th St., I spotted it; the Canon 7s in a glass case. It was mounted with the 50mm f/1.2 lens. I think I went back every day for a week to look at that camera. In the end, I cut a deal with my brother, where he help me buy it, and we'd split the cameras up when I went to college in the fall. I kept the 7s and he got the A-1. Shooting with this camera was at once, both work and joy. You had to know the light in your head and set the controls accordingly. When you knew what you were doing, this camera became a part of you. When you didn't, the results weren't very good. Unlike the A-1 with all the automation, there was no safety net. At this point, I might have been the best photographer that I ever was or will be. No, really; I'm just being honest. I've always had a "good eye", but at that point, I hadn't yet over developed my left-brain with the abundance of Masters Degree analytics followed by decades of classroom and administrative work.

Speaking of classroom. I eventually got out of college.... twice. By the late 80's, ensconced in a paying position as a teacher and coach, I was finally in a position take my old hobby back up. In case you haven't heard, photography can be a little expensive! Although I wanted to take up where I left off, it's not as easy as that. A decade before, in the last years of high school, I was as close as I ever would be to professional photography. I was in the darkroom every day, and shot lots of photos, especially model portfolio regularly. After a decade hiatus; it doesn't just all come back. On top of that, I was a teacher, a coach, and a student again, pursuing his Master's Degree..... all at the same time. One of things I learned at that time is that a rangefinder camera, is not something you just kind of pick up randomly and get good results. You have to kind of become "one" with the camera. Besides which, I wasn't shooting much (if any) portraiture and that bit of "softness" from the Canon was unneeded and unwanted for what I was doing. What I needed and wanted was a relatively "up-to-date" system SLR that was quick to use and had some basic metering capability. So I made the decision to sell the Canon 7s, which made me sad (then and now). Around this time, I had found a little camera shop on the outskirts of town that dealt exclusively in used equipment. There was a lot of that in those "Mind of Minolta", and "EOS Rebel" (remember those Agassi commercials?) days. People were dumping older non-auto-focusing/non-automatic exposure cameras right and left! I knew I didn't have the money for the Nikon FM/FM2 that I wanted. Well, actually, I did have the money for the camera and a lens, but not for any other Nikon lenses. After all; what's the point of owning a Nikon if you don't put Nikon glass on it! Small, light camera with a good system and had excellent glass: not surprisingly, it came down to Olympus (OM-1n, OM-2n), or Pentax (MX, ME-Super). I bought an MX in nice condition with a SMC-M 50mm f/1.4 for $140. Later I traded it for an almost identical black-bodied version, then came the ME-Super and eventually about 12 lenses, ranging from 24mm to 200mm, plus various zooms. This went on happily for almost 2 decades.

Then came digital. In an early post, I had talked about my progression beginning with a Kodak DC4800. I'll at least hit the high points here. I was working at the University of Illinois at the time as the Area Coordinator for IT. Under my purview was all items digital, including the cameras. No one was an expert photographer in our department so we used the fairly nice performing Kodak DC cameras of that time to shoot photos of events that we could use in our literature and website. Of course, since I was in charge of them, I had access. I soon found that the only photos I ever did anything with were the ones that were digital. So, I started doing research. I learned the the 3Mp was the break point where you just generally couldn't tell the difference between film and digital. The DSLR market at that time was still over the $2000 per, so that was out. Almost all the other cameras were completely automated and really not suited for a photographer (vs. a snap-shooter). So, I got a DC4800 and shot digital increasingly as my film use decreased over the next several years. My detour into the compact "super-zoom" cameras in the form of the Nikon CoolPix 8800 has been previously covered enough so I won't get into that again other than to say that I did manage to catch my mistake quickly enough to land on my feet and purchase the Nikon D70. Although, I've moved on from that model, it sure fired-off my continued affection for 6 megapixel DSLRs though!

The first 5 or 10 post of this blog details how I went from the 8800 to the D70, then on to this camera, the D200. I probably consider this my first real Nikon. Not that the D70 was deficient in any way. It was just that this magnesium bodied "pro-sumer" camera embodied the sense of what I always felt using a Nikon was all about. That came through in every Nikon I've touched ranging from my friend Eric's mom's "F", to the "FM" that I owned for a while a few years ago. I'll probably always consider this model to be my first "big boy" Nikon. 

Today, I have these to use. The D300 (successor to the D200) and the newly acquired "walk-around" camera, the D40. It's been a long road to get here over these last 45 years or so. It's been an enjoyable hobby, as much for the equipment as the photography. This last Saturday, I met a father who had come with his daughter to buy the "plastic fantastic" D50. I had a good time just sitting with them and watching her hold and try that camera out then nodding to her dad when she had decided that it "was the one". I pegged her at somewhere between 18 and 20. She was excited and her dad was happy that she was happy. I'm just glad that the camera went to somebody that had to scrape and work to get it, just like all those cameras have been a part of my life these last 45 years.