How did you start ?

My Dad was into photography, he took pictures when he was serving in WW2 as a Tank Commander. After he had a Rolliflex and took pictures of the flower he grew and had dark room equipment, enlarger and chemicals, which I and my brother carried on after he died.
I had a Zenit E,a Fujica St601, a Olympus OM10, then a Canon T90. A gave up after for a while and started again with digital using an olympus d400 which I had an under water case for when I went diving, this was follwed by a Olympus c4040 and then a c5050 also with underwater cases.
I have been in the nikon camp with DSLRs after going into the local jessops to try out the early nikon and canon DLSR's. I had an early d70 (helped that my younger brother was in Nikon Sales in "Europhoto Centre in Uxbridge" till they closed), a d200 and now a d800. Currently having a slow photographic time but will be building up again for when I retire in a few years time.

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I started out as a kid with a 110 film camera, then through various 35mm compact cameras. Got a digital camera (Fujifilm DX-10) around 1999, then a bridge camera and some better compact digital stuff. Never owned a film SLR. Bought my first DSLR (Canon 600D) as a present to myself for learning to drive, at the age of 42, just over 3 years ago.

In terms of what I photographed, family photos, snapshots until I got the bridge camera (Panasonic DMC-FZ8) around 2007. That camera really opened up my interest in taking photographs for both recording purposes, but also in many ways, for the sake of taking photographs in their own right.

When I bought the DSLR, I had some vague notion of really enjoying wildlife photography - but I've discovered actually I enjoy candid / street photography a lot more.
 
I was given my first camera when I was about 8 years old. It was an Ilford Sprite - it had two settings for the aperture - one for black and white pictures and the other for colour. I took some pictures on a school trip and that was not a success, so the Sprite got consigned to a cupboard never to see the light of day again.
Roll forward to about 1974/1975 and as I was now working, I decided to buy a camera. So I went and bought a FED4L. That was a great camera for taking snap shots and I was quite pleased with the results using the standard lens.
But I had no idea about composition, depth of field etc. Everything was experimental.

Then in the early 80's after i had got married, I bought a Petri GX-1 and a Praktica LTL3. And on the advice of somebody else, I started taking pictures using slide film. Processing prices started taking a hike and I got into developing my own slides. Great fun and games that was working blind in trying to get the film out of the canister and on to the development canister spool. But I managed and one of my slides did actually win a prize. As the years rolled on my interests went elsewhere and the cameras fell by the wayside. Not certain what happened to them but I no longer have them.

Ignoring the point and shoots jobbies I've had, roll forward tot this year and I decided that I needed to have a pictorial watch catalogue due to my burgeoning watch collection. So I did a bit of research and bought myself the Nikon D70S.
Along with the other gear that I have purchased, I should be able to learn to put together a decent pictorial catalogue of my collection.
 
As with most above, I started with a 110, taking snaps.
I'd just started bagging Munros in the 70's. I wanted something better to capture the landscapes and so bought a Yashica FR1.
A few years later I added a Contax 139.

My first digital was a Nikon D80 when it came out, but I've reverted back to film for personal stuff.
 
Brownie 127 (these seem to have been popular!) when I was probably about 7. Neither of my parents were interested in photography, it was just something you 'did' on holiday and at Christmas etc, but my old man came up with a Kodak folder when I was a few years older. It was completely manual of course, down to cocking the shutter, and had a piece of black insulating tape over a pinhole in the bellows. It was all a bit of a challenge for a kid with no idea what shutter speeds, aperture, exposure and focus were all about and the first results were pretty dismal, but the owner of the local camera shop was great. He explained it all, several times, and how to use Sunny 16 (11?) or the guidelines printed on the film box.

I used the Kodak for several years and learned a lot, much of which has stayed with me. One 'interesting' experiment was trying to photograph my hamster with a close up lens sellotaped over the front of the camera's lens! I think a couple of the shots came out surprisingly well, but that was more than 50 years ago. It was about the same time when I got into developing and contact printing the 120 negatives, which was quite easy, and I made some enlargements when I was at high school and had a friend who could use his father's darkroom.

There have been quite a few other cameras since then, but my all time favourite remains the Nikon F2.
 
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