This sounds about the same as my initial steps into digital. We weren't really a photographs kind of family; we had a Vivitar 110 which I took ownership of when we "upgraded" to a Kodak 110 but I didn't really get interested until the late 1990s. Bought a Canon Sure-Shot and annoyed everyone by taking lots of photos at work events and such. Not a great camera really, so when I encountered a digital camera for the first time, I was intrigued. My first (some Casio, a QV4000 maybe, I bought in 1999) was pretty meh, even the Canon outperformed it. But the instant feedback was gratifying.
Quickly replaced it with an Olympus C4000Z which was my only camera for almost a decade. I think that little camera is the reason I became actively interested in photography as something more than just a way to document everyday things. It had just enough capability to be interesting and provide a means to experiment with the medium, and was good enough to make quite pleasing 8x10 prints from.
Ha ha, upgrading from a Vivitar to a Kodak 110. The Sure-Shot would have been medium format by comparison. The Casio looks better on paper than it probably was in real life. Interesting that DPReview noted about the camera, F2-F8* and then explains the asterix saying (*reports F2.0 at wide or tele - something wrong there). Like my Nikon, your Olympus had pretty good macro, something these small sensors were good at. Both the Casio and Olympus were able to take 30 second film clips at 320x240px, but no audio. The Nikon took 45 second clips. Yup, early days. i don't think I ever shot a video with it.
Thank You Juliette. It's actually Topaz with a z, not that it matters as the company has abandoned their painterly studio program in 2020. I still use it however and it's a good one. I wonder however if it will survive the jump to my next machine/operating system. Topaz Studio 2 is no longer being developed or supported. It quietly disappeared from their website a couple of years back, abandoned in favour of more profitable ventures.
Unfortunately, Topaz Labs discontinued their Studio plugin around 2020. The company https://www.topazlabs.com/shop changed their focus at that time and is all about their AI upscaling and image refinement products these days, much to the dismay of their many loyal users. I can still download the product from my account page, but I'm not sure if my license agreement will allow me to share. DM me if you are interested, and we can try it out.
A generous offer John, but I will pass on that. It is a shame that some of these great tools fell by the wayside because of larger companies taking over the market. Corel used to be so good, got bought out and slid away. I use Affinity and quite like it, although I have an OLD version of Photoshop which allows me to use an almost equally old NIK Collection program which I like.
I recall the NIK collection being very good. Corel was a good program but had restrictive export features so couldn't be used in combination with other programs. I remember when working at the newspaper we would occasionally get CDR files of ads sent to us. These caused havoc as there was no way to import them into AdBuilder. About the only thing you can do with them is flatten them and export them as PDFs from inside Corel. If you didn't have the program at hand, you couldn't do anything with them.
Yeah, I pretty much did a similar thing, although I was lucky enough to have a great processing place not far away. They made incredible prints, and had a darkroom I could rent for black and white. I used Canon point and shoot cameras for digital work but was never happy with them and I used them out too quickly, so bought myself a Sony DSC-H90 when that came out and, with the sad closing of the printers shop, I went all digital, almost! I have been a Sony shooter since. Love their cameras.
Isn't it funny how we become brand loyal. I think when we buy a camera we love and it rewards us over time, we are most likely to stick within that family, even if it's not about lenses per say, which can also force us into brand loyalty. By rights I suppose I should be a Canon person because my first love was a Canon Ftb. But working in camera stores over the years opened me up to many temptations and so I've owned most major camera manufacturers' gear in the intervening years, although mostly through the 70s and 80s. Surprisingly perhaps, Sony has never been one of them. The Sony DSC-H90 had a killer 16x zoom on it with stabilization, and a respectable image size for a small sensor camera. And some 10 years after my purchase, you could buy a handful of these cameras for the price of a single 995. Early adoption is always expensive. Of course Sony today is at the vanguard of tech development with their focusing systems in particular being the envy of all other brands.
Excellent article, John, and I appreciated the words from Freeman Patterson. When my now digitally photographing older brother first started in photography, I remember him being enamoured with Patterson's books.
Thanks Steve. There are no other photographers who have influenced me as much by their words as their pictures. Patterson's spirituality is what always shines so brightly for me. Both God and the devil are in the details. And yes, my eyes rolled a bit when I started writing this article. I needed the content warning as much for myself to break through my own resistance to speak about gear, but the tools of the trade are not unimportant to our creative journeys. Some bits of kit, we love. Others, we'd just as soon forget. Equipment can be useful for dating purposes and in recalling the history of our development.
I am not a camera afficionado but my wonderful husband was. In his office are cameras dating back to the 1950's. When we first met I hated having my picture taken. There are a number of photos of my disappearing back. In the 1970's, when I began getting published, I learned, literally, to grin and bear it!
Freeman Patterson's talk is inspiring and delightful. I will share it with my writing colleagues. Thank you so much.
My wife was the same. Couldn't stand being photographed. She wasn't too bad about it in our early years, but became shyer with age. It makes me sad to think of it. All those photos that could not be brought into existence. Setting aside religious reasons which us a separate topic, I find it sad that some people refuse to be photographed. Of course, it is not always the right time, but if it's never the right time, that can be a problem. And the problem is not acknowledging one's own existence. Regardless of what we think of our reflection, it is evidence of our existence on this physical plane. For the subject, a photograph always says, I am here. I hope your writing group enjoys Freeman Patterson's short address. As you may know or imagine, he is much more than a photographer.
Because Jim was into photography, he bought each of our 3 children a camera early on so all 4 of them took pictures.
I think many women still don't like their picture taken. Advertising and pop culture still tells us we must look a certain way in order to be acceptable. I'm finally of the age that, most of the time, I don't worry about it. It has become what I call a Scarlett issue from Gone With the Wind. "Frankly Scarlett I don't give a damn."
I think it's so good you are making prints of your photographs. It's like me, as a writer, holding the copy of a new book in my hand. Magical!
Yes, a book or a photograph. When brought into the physical world. Magic.
I suppose a woman being photographed, of leaning into having her picture taken, is the ultimate act of saying screw you to societal expectation. This is who I am. Take it or leave it. Defiance looks good at any age. It's the look of personal power.
My first Post here ? Have to think about that ! There’s 80 + mebbe & in no particular ‘order.. mebbe viewing my Archive Section it will be ‘tail end ?
We had lots o fun there on King Street East of Parliament & across the street from A Moment In Time - Gallery & underneath was The Gallery Colour Lab - Archival Cibachromes from Transparency / Neg or InterNeg
.. & became ‘the house shooter somehow & mediocre ‘printer
But ! hung’ a Gallery Show of W Eugene Smith Prints one night .. by eye - as the entire building was askance & the ‘Show in agony & i offered to ‘freehand’ it .. forget the ‘carpenter’s level .. damn the torpedoes !
wuz a fine evening..
I had much white wine & nibbles .. things went well from there
Pattersons quote is a welcomed reminder that we all have been given the gift of creativity and finding our own muse is part of the joy of existence. Your grief journey thus far has allowed another pathway for you to honour your beloved Ruth, your relationship with her and how creatively you continue that relationship through your reflective narrative, inspiring images and relationship with nature.
Thanks for your comment Amanda. I carry her torch within me where it accompanies my own. It lights my way through the dark nights and sad days of my grief.
This sounds about the same as my initial steps into digital. We weren't really a photographs kind of family; we had a Vivitar 110 which I took ownership of when we "upgraded" to a Kodak 110 but I didn't really get interested until the late 1990s. Bought a Canon Sure-Shot and annoyed everyone by taking lots of photos at work events and such. Not a great camera really, so when I encountered a digital camera for the first time, I was intrigued. My first (some Casio, a QV4000 maybe, I bought in 1999) was pretty meh, even the Canon outperformed it. But the instant feedback was gratifying.
Quickly replaced it with an Olympus C4000Z which was my only camera for almost a decade. I think that little camera is the reason I became actively interested in photography as something more than just a way to document everyday things. It had just enough capability to be interesting and provide a means to experiment with the medium, and was good enough to make quite pleasing 8x10 prints from.
Ha ha, upgrading from a Vivitar to a Kodak 110. The Sure-Shot would have been medium format by comparison. The Casio looks better on paper than it probably was in real life. Interesting that DPReview noted about the camera, F2-F8* and then explains the asterix saying (*reports F2.0 at wide or tele - something wrong there). Like my Nikon, your Olympus had pretty good macro, something these small sensors were good at. Both the Casio and Olympus were able to take 30 second film clips at 320x240px, but no audio. The Nikon took 45 second clips. Yup, early days. i don't think I ever shot a video with it.
Very cool what you did with Topax!
Thank You Juliette. It's actually Topaz with a z, not that it matters as the company has abandoned their painterly studio program in 2020. I still use it however and it's a good one. I wonder however if it will survive the jump to my next machine/operating system. Topaz Studio 2 is no longer being developed or supported. It quietly disappeared from their website a couple of years back, abandoned in favour of more profitable ventures.
PS - loved what you did with the Coolpix and Topax. I have never heard of the program before. Will have to investigate!
Unfortunately, Topaz Labs discontinued their Studio plugin around 2020. The company https://www.topazlabs.com/shop changed their focus at that time and is all about their AI upscaling and image refinement products these days, much to the dismay of their many loyal users. I can still download the product from my account page, but I'm not sure if my license agreement will allow me to share. DM me if you are interested, and we can try it out.
A generous offer John, but I will pass on that. It is a shame that some of these great tools fell by the wayside because of larger companies taking over the market. Corel used to be so good, got bought out and slid away. I use Affinity and quite like it, although I have an OLD version of Photoshop which allows me to use an almost equally old NIK Collection program which I like.
I recall the NIK collection being very good. Corel was a good program but had restrictive export features so couldn't be used in combination with other programs. I remember when working at the newspaper we would occasionally get CDR files of ads sent to us. These caused havoc as there was no way to import them into AdBuilder. About the only thing you can do with them is flatten them and export them as PDFs from inside Corel. If you didn't have the program at hand, you couldn't do anything with them.
Yikes!
Yeah, I pretty much did a similar thing, although I was lucky enough to have a great processing place not far away. They made incredible prints, and had a darkroom I could rent for black and white. I used Canon point and shoot cameras for digital work but was never happy with them and I used them out too quickly, so bought myself a Sony DSC-H90 when that came out and, with the sad closing of the printers shop, I went all digital, almost! I have been a Sony shooter since. Love their cameras.
Isn't it funny how we become brand loyal. I think when we buy a camera we love and it rewards us over time, we are most likely to stick within that family, even if it's not about lenses per say, which can also force us into brand loyalty. By rights I suppose I should be a Canon person because my first love was a Canon Ftb. But working in camera stores over the years opened me up to many temptations and so I've owned most major camera manufacturers' gear in the intervening years, although mostly through the 70s and 80s. Surprisingly perhaps, Sony has never been one of them. The Sony DSC-H90 had a killer 16x zoom on it with stabilization, and a respectable image size for a small sensor camera. And some 10 years after my purchase, you could buy a handful of these cameras for the price of a single 995. Early adoption is always expensive. Of course Sony today is at the vanguard of tech development with their focusing systems in particular being the envy of all other brands.
Excellent article, John, and I appreciated the words from Freeman Patterson. When my now digitally photographing older brother first started in photography, I remember him being enamoured with Patterson's books.
PS: I appreciated the content warning! ;-)
Thanks Steve. There are no other photographers who have influenced me as much by their words as their pictures. Patterson's spirituality is what always shines so brightly for me. Both God and the devil are in the details. And yes, my eyes rolled a bit when I started writing this article. I needed the content warning as much for myself to break through my own resistance to speak about gear, but the tools of the trade are not unimportant to our creative journeys. Some bits of kit, we love. Others, we'd just as soon forget. Equipment can be useful for dating purposes and in recalling the history of our development.
I hear you, John... in my road biking, gear and clothing are so critical to being able to do what I love.
Be it photography or cycling as in many occupations I'm sure, gear can act as a talisman. Good gear that is. The best gear.
Absolutely… and an obsession!
I am not a camera afficionado but my wonderful husband was. In his office are cameras dating back to the 1950's. When we first met I hated having my picture taken. There are a number of photos of my disappearing back. In the 1970's, when I began getting published, I learned, literally, to grin and bear it!
Freeman Patterson's talk is inspiring and delightful. I will share it with my writing colleagues. Thank you so much.
My wife was the same. Couldn't stand being photographed. She wasn't too bad about it in our early years, but became shyer with age. It makes me sad to think of it. All those photos that could not be brought into existence. Setting aside religious reasons which us a separate topic, I find it sad that some people refuse to be photographed. Of course, it is not always the right time, but if it's never the right time, that can be a problem. And the problem is not acknowledging one's own existence. Regardless of what we think of our reflection, it is evidence of our existence on this physical plane. For the subject, a photograph always says, I am here. I hope your writing group enjoys Freeman Patterson's short address. As you may know or imagine, he is much more than a photographer.
Because Jim was into photography, he bought each of our 3 children a camera early on so all 4 of them took pictures.
I think many women still don't like their picture taken. Advertising and pop culture still tells us we must look a certain way in order to be acceptable. I'm finally of the age that, most of the time, I don't worry about it. It has become what I call a Scarlett issue from Gone With the Wind. "Frankly Scarlett I don't give a damn."
I think it's so good you are making prints of your photographs. It's like me, as a writer, holding the copy of a new book in my hand. Magical!
Yes, a book or a photograph. When brought into the physical world. Magic.
I suppose a woman being photographed, of leaning into having her picture taken, is the ultimate act of saying screw you to societal expectation. This is who I am. Take it or leave it. Defiance looks good at any age. It's the look of personal power.
my first ‘freelance paycheque’ was a flawed - framed Freeman Patterson Cibachrome print ..
🦎🏴☠️💋
Ha ha. Then you started well.
It’s a cool story .. how it was ‘earned
so much serendipity happenstance synchronicity 🦎🏴☠️💋
The subject of your first post perhaps. I'd love to hear all about it.
My first Post here ? Have to think about that ! There’s 80 + mebbe & in no particular ‘order.. mebbe viewing my Archive Section it will be ‘tail end ?
We had lots o fun there on King Street East of Parliament & across the street from A Moment In Time - Gallery & underneath was The Gallery Colour Lab - Archival Cibachromes from Transparency / Neg or InterNeg
.. & became ‘the house shooter somehow & mediocre ‘printer
But ! hung’ a Gallery Show of W Eugene Smith Prints one night .. by eye - as the entire building was askance & the ‘Show in agony & i offered to ‘freehand’ it .. forget the ‘carpenter’s level .. damn the torpedoes !
wuz a fine evening..
I had much white wine & nibbles .. things went well from there
Yup, that's a story waiting to be told. Sounds like pretty heady stuff. First, last, doesn't matter. Getting started. That's what matters.
Pattersons quote is a welcomed reminder that we all have been given the gift of creativity and finding our own muse is part of the joy of existence. Your grief journey thus far has allowed another pathway for you to honour your beloved Ruth, your relationship with her and how creatively you continue that relationship through your reflective narrative, inspiring images and relationship with nature.
You are finding her light ✨️.
Thanks for your comment Amanda. I carry her torch within me where it accompanies my own. It lights my way through the dark nights and sad days of my grief.