So, What was your first Camera Setup and how have you changed?

[Paul]

After I Hijcaked MTnets thread about focusing, I thought it would be kind of fun to start a thread about were we all started. I know many of us have been shooting for years and some of us have been shooting for months. Let's hear your story. Proffesional, Amatuer, etc...

Here is mine:

1982, I was 9 years old and in 4-H and cub scouts. My Dad was heavy into photography. I was intrigued by the thousands of slides he had of the orient during his career in the Marines. So when he bought a new camera, he gave me his old Minolta SRT101 fully manual 35 mmm SLR. the only battery operated thing on the camera was the light meter. YOu even had to use a dial for film advance. I took my first photo of my dog, standing on the woodpile behind the house and entered it into the county fair 4-H competition. I earned a blue ribbon and was hooked. the next year, I got a purple ribbon for a shot of a deer from my deer stand and earned a trip to the great MN get together.

IN 1998 I bought a Canon Rebel 2000. WOW I was in the automatic world now, but I hated automatic at first. Soon I was becoming lazy and useing automatic for everything because it was so easy. losing a lot of what I had learned before.

In 2004, I made a trip to ALaska, and carrying my Canon Rebel 2000 35mm and my girlfriends oplymus 5 mb digital point and shoot, I fell in love with digital. I was amazed at how easy it was to not have to scan photos to adjust them. When my Canon Rebel started acting up I started to investigate digital SLR cameras. I noticed canon had their new XTI coming out the following month, so I saved up some ching, and placed an order with B&H. 35 days later I had my new XTI body only and a few memory cards. Not realizing the true effect of the 1.4 crop till after viewing my picutres I realized by existing lenses were not going to cut it so I found my 17-85 IS USM. Then after seeing all the great shots people here would produce with the 100-400L I had to have one. The rest is history and can be seen at www.pbase.com/paulhagen.

Well that is my story and I am sticking to it.

[Yellowhead]

My first 35 was an Argus C3, perhaps the ugliest camera ever made. My next camera was a Nikon F1, after that there were more Nikons. Today I have a Nikon D80 and a D90 and I still have that first F1 and it still works just great. It has to be one of the best cameras ever built.