Camera Gear

 "Quality, brands, price etc. don’t make a great photograph, the photographer does!  A camera (any camera), creativity, vision and light are what a photograph is generated from.   How you combine those elements when you press the shutter button is the difference between an average picture or a great photograph.  Many great photos have been taken with cheap or inexpensive gear."

The gear you use and own is largely, if not totally dictated by budget, or…what your wife, girlfriend, husband or boyfriend will allow you to spend on it.

My first camera was a black piece of plastic shaped like a camera, which I got when I was about 10 years old.  I first saw it on the back of a cereal box. (It wasn’t inside!)  You had to collect labels from another product and send them into the cereal company to get the camera. We didn’t have a lot of money then, but my mom purchased the products over time, collected enough labels and sent them away.  I took six weeks it took to arrive and I couldn't wait to open it.  It looked like a camera but was very small and it fit into the palm of my hand.  It had no view finder, no focus ring on the lens, but it did have a strap, which connected the two little clips that held the back onto the camera where you put the film.  The film advance knob didn’t click or stop as you rolled the film, you had to guess how far to advance the film.  The shutter release was on the side of the lens and it just clicked…that’s it.  I wasted probably 4 rolls of film, because the clips that held the back on would slip off and expose the film to the light.  I did eventually get the hang of it, and took pictures with it for about 6 weeks before the clips broke.

My fondest memory of that little camera was my first experience taking pictures of wildlife.  My friend lived just outside of town and his father had come across a coyote family and a den with 8 little coyote pups.  One afternoon we hiked into the woods to see them.  We quietly approached so close I thought we would all be attacked and eaten by the mother coyote (remember...I was 10 years old).  I was small for my age, so my friend’s father decided I should lay in this small pit about 25 feet from the den with the cameras as they went back up the hill.  When the pups emerged, I was to take the pictures (with my little plastic camera and their Full Frame 35mm film camera.  I remember being so scared the adult coyotes would want me for lunch, I could barely hold the cameras still.  As the pups emerged when the adults returned I looked over the edge and snapped pictures with my little plastic camera and my friend’s father’s 35mm camera.  In the end, when the film was developed, my little piece of black plastic took a remarkable picture of a coyote pup staring right into the camera, and it was in perfect focus.  My friend’s fathers’ pictures were not even presentable (although that could have been the photographers fault).  Thus, the moral of my story...you don’t need a real expensive camera to get a great photo.

My life continued without a camera until I was 17 (1977), when I purchased a Canon AT-1 film camera and an 80 – 210mm lens.  That camera went through a lot of film over the years and a lot of abuse. Carried in ATV's, in saddle bags on horesback, back packs and around my neck, I still have it today and it still works perfectly.  I was so impressed with what that camera endured over the years, I couldn’t be bothered looking at any another brand.  Canon cameras and Canon lenses will always be on my shoulder and in my backpack.