| Still
Learning After 30 Years
by Paul Perton
username (paulperton)
Nikonian
in South Africa
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Still Learning After 30 Years
I
was about seventeen when I first found myself fascinated by
the ability to capture images on film with a camera.
Soon,
people, places and many other things became subjects for my
photographic my canvases. Those early attempts at art are
long gone — discarded as being too amateurish. They seemed
badly exposed, poorly developed, or crudely enlarged by my
ill-skilled hands in a bathroom darkroom.
The
‘70s dawned and work replaced the student life while
photography saw the rangefinder camera joined by the
single lens reflex. My very first SLR was sold very
quickly, replaced by a spanking new Pentax Spotmatic
— the camera that (for me) first defined serious 35mm
photography for the non-professional.
I
used the Spotmatic for several years and even brought
it to South Africa in 1974. Soon after, while walking
downtown Johannesburg I came face-to-face with what
would make a radical change in my photographic thinking;
the Nikon F, complete with a Photomic metering head
and a 50mm f/2 Nikkor lens.
It
then cost about US$100 and I went without beer for a
good couple of weeks to pay for it. |
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Where
the Spotmatic was lithe and easy in the hand, the Nikon was
hard, heavy and absolutely reassuring in its ability to get
the job done. We made a great pair. The Nikon ensured that
my amateurish fumblings looked their best regardless of how
artless I’d been when framing the shot.
I
still have that Nikon F, as well as an F2 with a motor
drive. I also have a bag of lenses that allow me to
take photographs just about anywhere. Neither camera
has ever been serviced and (apart from batteries) have
cost nothing in maintenance for more than thirty years.
I
celebrated the arrival of digital photography by doing
absolutely nothing. My interest in photography had waned
for some years and apart from the odd trip to the bush
in the hope of capturing that elusive “kill” picture,
I’d left my cameras in the cupboard and my interest
in things digital strictly in the office.
My
first venture into digital photography was a very expensive
Kodak camera which is now best left unmentioned. It
was so useless that several years slid by before I was
prepared to try my hand again. This time, I went back
to a Nikon; a Coolpix 5700, the 5 megapixel digital
zoom camera that completely restored my faith in where
this new technology was headed. |
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I
have an enlarged Coolpix image hanging in my home. It has
been Photoshopped to 540mm x 840mm (21x33”) and was ink jet
printed in Cape Town. At this level of magnification and on
very close inspection, the image shows tiny areas of artifact
distortion, typical of JPEG compression, but as an image,
it’s a monument to Nikon’s digital and optical technology.
| I’ve
trailed the Coolpix around Europe and many parts of Africa
and it has performed flawlessly. It still does. It now
lives in my car, ready to photograph whatever catches
my eye as I go about my daily routines. I suppose you
could think that it has been relegated to this role, but
you’d be wrong — it’s too useful for that, it has just
been replaced as my camera of choice. |
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What
replaced it was another Nikon. A D70. The camera that re-cast
the way I regard digital photography. So much so, that it
is hard to go anywhere in the world and not find myself looking
at a landmark — and glancing around to find someone holding
a D70 of their own.
The
D70 offered three things that surpassed the Coolpix;
higher resolution, almost instantaneous on/off and shutter
response and the ability to use existing Nikon SLR lenses.
If, like me you have several expensive pieces of glass
gathering dust in the cupboard, this is a real plus.
I
added a 12-24mm zoom to the kit 18-55mm lens late in
2004. Happy with the transition, the D70 shot images
everywhere; Europe, the U.S, and more recently, Asia.
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While
I was in Singapore in September 2005, I spotted a sparkling
new Nikon D2x body in a shop window. I wrangled with both
my conscience and finances for a couple of days, but knew
I’d have to give in. If I was happy with the D70, I am delirious
with the D2x; 12 megapixels, a magnesium alloy body and a
shutter that works and sounds like, well a shutter should.
It’s what we call “totally fab” in my part of the world.
Home
from Asia, I wondered what to do with my pictures. I’d
seen a number of images on a friend’s Mac Web site and
decided to give it a try on my own.
I
spent a few weeks deciding which other pictures I should
post. The digital colour images were easy enough to
choose. So were the images I’d been experimenting with
in Photoshop. There were also some digital images I’d
been fooling with that I’d converted to black and white.
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Could
I add these and some of my (by now) very old original black
and white shots? A week of scanning prints and Photoshopping
the digital files to remove the dust and scratches and the
answer was a clear “yes.”
So,
now I have four
albums on the Web. There’s a button on each page to send
me a message. Your feedback will be most welcome.
A
copy of Photoshop and a Mac would have been handy when some
of my earlier black and white images were first taken, but
combining my film experiences with modern tools has been interesting,
and it is good to know that after more than 30 years — I’m
still learning.
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