| David Hay Jones | ||||
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Equipment
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CAMERA
EQUIPMENT
My first camera, given to me by my mother when I was a kid, was a little Halina rangefinder. At 16 or so, I bought my first SLR, a Russian Zenith with a pungent leather case. The camera was bulky, primitive, with screw in lenses but was good for learning the basics of exposure. A few years later I graduated to a Canon AE1, a camera I took on my first trips to the mountains of Lapland. It had great lenses, the metering was accurate and the camera began to persuade me that I might have some future in photography. I still have many photographs taken with that first Canon and I am surprised at the crispness of the images, something I was unable to achieve with the Zenith. At 20, I bought a Canon A1, which with its five exposure modes, was revolutionary. With an A1 slung over my shoulder and an AE1 stuffed into my camera bag, I felt like a pro while traveling in Europe -- and it was at that time that I sold, or rather had published, my first photographs. |
Canon
EOS3 (above) and EOS 1DS |
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In my mid-20s, I bought a Canon
T90, which like the A1 was a revolutionary camera, but not so much for its technical
gadgetry (it was an ultra-sophisticated manual camera) as its ergonomic design, which
foreshadowed the look of all later autofocus (AF) cameras. The T90 was in many ways the
last of the dinosaurs, a manual T-rex waiting to be wiped out and replaced by autofocus
mammals. I used it for many years, well into the autofocus era, and still use it today
when the speed and convenience of autofocus are not important.
I moved slowly into the autofocus age, not quite trusting the early slow and noisy AF cameras. My first AF was a Canon EOS 5, which despite it cheap-looking plastic body, featured five-point, eye-controlled AF and an almost silent shutter which became popular with wildlife photographers. I bought two EOS 5s before upgrading to the magnificent EOS 3, and that is where I am at today with non-digital cameras. I use the EOS 3 alongside a digital EOS 1DS, a superb workhorse of a camera, one of the best professional digital cameras on the market. For studio work and landscapes, I sometimes use a Fuji 6x9 and an AF Fuji 645. Both are excellent cameras. For family snaps and easy emailing of images worldwide, I have a tiny 6 meg Fuji. For a couple of years, it was the only camera I used because I had gotten bored with heavy SLRs. As for film it's almost always Fuju transparency, either Velvia 50, Provia 100 or Sensia 100 and 200. I also like Kodachrome 200 and some of the Ektachromes. Kodak Elite is a good budget slide film. For memory cards it's 4 and 8 gig compact flash cards from PNY and Lexar. My tripod is a Gitzo and my camera bag is a superb hunting bag made by Browning (Broken Birds Gear). I think it's intended for bird hunting with a shot gun (it has pockets for spent cartridges and a bag for downed birds), but I pack it with two camera bodies, two or three lenses and enough film for a day's shoot. As for clothing, anything warm, windproof and showerproof will do. I prefer outdoor gear made by the British company Craghoppers. |
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