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While going through some things, I stumbled across my old Canon Rebel. This old thing brings back a lot of memories. See, when I was a freshman in high school, I decided I wanted to try out photography, so I bought a cheap piece of crap single-reflex SLR camera and took Photojournalism.
There were maybe ten of us interested in the class that year so we were all incredibly close by the end of it (You try spending six to ten hours a week in a darkroom with someone and NOT learn their deepest darkest secrets after awhile *grin*)
Anyway, because of my vision problems, my photography instructor (who also happened to be our award-winning yearbook staff advisor :-)) suggested I look into a camera with auto-focus features to help ease up on potential eye strain.
One day that summer my parents and I just happened to be hopping pawn shops, and there in the display case they had a Canon EOS Rebel with a 35-80mm and 80-200mm zoom lens package deal for $100, guaranteed to work.
That camera served me well through the next three years of photographing football games, track meets, spirit weeks, and the occasional cute girl when she wasn't looking (We called those 'Student life' or 'human interest' *grin*)
After I graduated, I packed it away. I loved photography, and I still do, but I just couldn't afford to keep up with film and developing costs the way the school could.
Now, ten years later, digital cameras have come a looong way. Today I found an insanely good deal on a refurbished Canon Rebel XSI, which I've read can use the old EF lenses, and I just found my 15+ year old (It was old when I bought it 13 years ago :-P) camera kit, with EF lenses ;-)
I'm more than a little excited. We had an old saying back then, "Film is the cheapest part of photography", and that was true, but ten rolls of film a week being provided by someone else versus buying them yourself is a HUGE difference!
So, yeah, between the euphoric shock of getting a great camera, plus finding my old camera (and tons upon tons upon tons of excellent memories of my time on yearbook staff...)
There are times I wish I had 'come out' to my friends there. They even gave me a "Just one of the Girls" award one year because until my senior year I was the closest thing to 'male' they had on-staff :-D
Ah, anyway, I digress. I'm off to see if my old camera batteries still work. They've been in storage a long time, but if they still hold a charge I might be able to use them elsewhere.
Squee!
~Zoe
PS: Sadly, no, there wasn't any film in it, but that's no surprise since the last time I used it was to photograph a friend's wedding, so... :-D I do still have TONS of my old pictures in an old cigar box somewhere, though. Maybe someday if I ever get a decent photo scanner, I'll upload some of my favorites :-)
Comments
Congratulations on your find
Speaking as an amateur shutterbug I understand your excitement about your new artillery. :)
Canons are good cameras but I've gone with Nikons myself. (and I won't get into a slagging match about 'which' brand is better)
I love the 'digital' cameras simply because I can take hundreds of shots and load them onto the computer where I can pick and choose which ones I'll print. I even print most of mine at home on a HP Photosmart D7460. It does quick 4 X 6 and fairly quick 8.5 X 11 borderless prints fairly cheaply. Of course it will also do any size up to 8.5 X 11 but I figure if I'm going to use a full sheet anyways...
One tip about your old pics... you mentioned scanning them. Depending on your camera and how close it can focus, you might want to try 'taking a picture of your picture' as a way of transferring the old pics to digital format. I use my Nikon P80 on a short tripod for this kind of task. Works really well as long as I use a 'daylight' bulb to light the pic.
Some days you're the pigeon, some days you're the statue
Oh, no worries. I love Nikon too ;-)
... And ironically, about a year ago I almost bought a Pentax, but the pricetag scared me away.
I forget what it was, but there was something about the way Pentax DSLRs handled focus or lighting or something that really appealed to me at the time. :-D
That's actually a fantastic idea! Shooting in Macro mode with the 18-55mm lens might work for that. I'll have to experiment a little bit with it and see if I can get it to work. I already have two 2GB SD cards, a 2GB micro with adapter, and I have two 4GB cards in the mail as a package deal, so I'll have lots and lots of space to experiment and see what I can come up with. :-D
Maybe I'll donate my old film camera to the high school, if they haven't all gone digital too (I kind of doubt they have, though - I mean, sure, film SLR has the upkeep of film, paper, chemicals, etc. but DSLR has the sticker shock ;-))
Now I can't wait for the silly thing to get here so I can get started :-D
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Shooting in macro mode with
Shooting in macro mode with the 18 - 55... maybe it'll work with your Canon. You'll have to try it to see. It didn't work with my D3000. I wish it did, because the D3000 can shoot RAW files that are really easy for me to edit using photoshop elements. My problem was that I can't focus on anything closer than half a metre unless I went out and bought a 10 - 22 macro lens. And they wanted $1,200 for one at the camera shop. Too rich for me..! Oh well, my little P80 does a fine job on the close ups.
About donating your film camera body... it might be welcome. There are still some tricks you can do with film that digital simply can't do. Double exposures come to mind. We used to try for 'ghost' pics when I was a kid. Sometimes they even worked...
Some days you're the pigeon, some days you're the statue
Ack. I didn't think about
Ack. I didn't think about focus being a problem. I'll have to cross my fingers and hope for the best :-D
I never could get double-exposure to come out right, but it's an amazing effect when it works. One of my favorite tricks - one that I learned at photography camp, but never tried myself anyway - was to set the shutter to full open in a completely pitch-black room, nd use a mag-light flashlight to "paint" the scene. I wish I could remember the guy's name because it was really ingenius, and left an impact on me as to just how varied photography can be as an 'art' :-D
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Shutter full open in a black
Shutter full open in a black room... I remember reading about that trick. I've never tried it myself, I think because I've never had a camera that could be set for full open shutter until now. Maybe I'll try it this weekend... see if it works with digital.
Some days you're the pigeon, some days you're the statue
Double exposures...
...are really easy with digital editing software. Just make one of the images slightly transparent and overlay them. You can adjust the transparency and shift around the layer until it's perfect, whereas on a film camera you had to compose and shoot both pictures with perfect composition, adjust the exposure so the picture didn't blow out, and *then* cross your fingers.
With a little effort, you can even make portions of one image partially transparent to make a vignette effect but keep the double exposure, so fairies at the bottom of the garden are a piece of cake.
Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
-
Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
I haven't done photography for years
I took photography in highschool back in the old darkroom days. I have had a few camera's since then but No real skill for it. I love these great black and white pictures though, there's so much soul to them.
Bailey Summers
I couldn't agree more! I
I couldn't agree more! I certainly like color photos too, but to me there's just something almost magical about a black-and-white photo that's been properly exposed, especially if it's a photo of someone's face, reflecting every laugh-line or wrinkle, just... really bringing forth the emotion of the moment.
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I agree with you about black
I agree with you about black and whites. You can sometimes get really captivating shots using B/W and shadows.
The modern DSLR's will let you shoot colour, B/W, and sepia (sp?) but I mostly stick to colour shots. One thing I've learned since I started using a DSLR is that taking the shot is only half the job. Editing the shot after it's put onto a computer can make a real difference. You can change the feel of the picture simply by adjusting the lighting, or you can correct a minor flaw that you didn't notice when you shot the pic. Or, and I do a lot of this, you can crop the pic and print the 'good part' only. And the best part of it all... you don't have to send a film out for processing and cross your fingers hoping it turns out.
Some days you're the pigeon, some days you're the statue
On a related note
A story on the final roll of Kodachrome, Kodak's legacy to photography. Sadly, Paul Simon had it right :(
http://www.artsjournal.com/realcleararts/2010/08/farewell-kodachrome.html
Oh, wow
I didn't even realize they still made this as recently as '09. It's kind of sad to see such an important part of photographic history go like that, after standing the test of time for so long.
I kind of dread the days when film is completely gone, even if I have made the jump to digital myself. There's something special about the tactile process that I think everyone should experience at least once. Although I wouldn't wish the frustration of someone ignoring the "Darkroom in use!" light on anyone, either ;-)
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on another issue
Has digital made us lazy? Would we have had an Ansel Adams or Diane Arbus? I am sure they said the same thing about those new fangled tin-types; I am sure they will ruin the portrait market! We no longer need to worry about composition, we can add it later; Don't like the color, let's change it. Don't worry, we can take as many shots as we want, it isn't on film, ya know? No need to worry about that perfect shot, we can photoshop one! I don't know, it seems to make it too easy and no one will want to learn the right way of things if there are so many shortcuts :(
Diana
It's a fine line
I was just thinking about this earlier myself. I remember watching a documentary in the late 90's about how far digital editing had come. A great example they used was to take a photo of ... gah, some at the time celebrity, where she had her hands casually behind her head, and they were able to digitally clone the background to make it look like she had a more 'serious' pose.
They talked about things like editing out unwanted background noise (like a stop sign), and how far was 'too far'.
I guess I'm of the unique perspective that I did have to learn the right way, to the point that I was literally just laughing with a friend earlier about how, ten years later, I still have to catch myself or I'll make some off-comment about how, say, a photographer for BBC needs to check his angle or pay more attention to where the eye is drawn to in a picture.
My personal line is really drawn at "editing" people, where I'd rather do as much work at the camera level as possible because it's what I enjoy, but at the same time digital post-processing can't be counted out either.
I dunno. I guess I'm on the fence, but I completely understand what you mean as well. My instructor insisted we learn with a manual-focus lens for our first year for exactly the same reasons.
She didn't want us to get lazy and rely too much on auto-focus and camera-suggested metering, so I guess you could say I lean a little toward that end of things after all :-D
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Story possibility?
Just a wild thought that this scenario could form the basis of a story here...
Photographic Setting
Bike Resources
Bike Resources
Ooh. That's true.
Given that our class was basically two "boys" (in quotes because one of them was me :-P) and eight girls, and then yearbook staff, up until my senior year, being all girls (again, including me :-P), this has some very interesting potential.
Ironically that was the one secret they didn't get out of me, but we literally talked about anything and everything else, and there are times I lament not telling them because I really think it would've brought us all closer.
As it was they knew there was something that kept me from totally opening up to them, but never found out exactly what that was, or why I was so 'different' fom other guys.
I'll have to think on that now ^_~
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With decent lighting...
...any digital camera is a fairly decent photoscanner. All a scanner is is a specialised camera.
Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
-
Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
Old pictures - posting "rights" and the internet
So I went through my cigar box, and it seems I lost quite a few more than I realized. They're probably packed away in another box somewhere because these are things I would never even accidentally throw away.
I have about a dozen give or take, that stood out from the hundred or so in the stack, as being particularly good (Or not particularly awful first-prints, where I had to work my darkroom magic to get the image burned and dodged in just the right areas/amounts ;-))
There are two questions that arise from this though. Naturally because these are from my high school years, they're almost all student life photos that were either published for, or submitted for publishing in, the yearbook or newspaper (Or in one case, the local paper :-D)
Once I scan them I'm thinking of temporarily hosting them and posting 'em here just for fun, but should I be concerned about posting photos of other people without their consent, ten years later?
I doubt it would be an issue, especially in the age of Facebook and Flickr, but I don't use either of those services presently, so I have no idea. :-)
... And I typed all of that, only to remember at the very end the important news. I may have access to a photo scanner soon :-D
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For public posting....
One really *ought* have a signed model release, but people do that sort of thing all the time these days. There may be those who would be ticked off, though.
Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
-
Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
I LOVE this freaking camera! O_O
So my new camera arrived today. I bought it as part of a kit deal that came with, what I thought would be, a useless instructional DVD. Boy, was I mistaken. It's turned out to be a nice little primer on the XSi, including one very valuable piece of information that nobody told me about before ;-)
I don't know how much I've talked about this before, but I have really terrible eyesight, so when the bald man in the video made the comment that I need to "adjust the viewfinder to suit my eyesight", I had to pause it and check out what he was talking about.
I don't know if this dioptric adjustment is normal for all DSLRs, but for me, this just made my photographic life infinitely more enjoyable. Still need to do some more research on the whole system to see if it works with all lenses and the like, but for someone with the ... UNIQUE vision problems I have, this is a freaking Godsend ^_^
I'm going to take it on a proper test run this evening, after the sun's gotten a little closer to the horizon, but that little "Surprise!" moment made me so happy I just had to share. :-)
~Zoe
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