Restoring the joy of taking pictures: Recently I have been ditching my automatic and zoom lenses and buying cheap prime film era manual lenses from E-bay. In my opinion automation has...

Don Schaeffer Loc: Winnipeg, Manitoba Canada

Recently I have been ditching my automatic and zoom lenses and buying cheap prime film era manual lenses from E-bay. In my opinion automation has jacked up the cost of buying lenses and taken away much of the feel of taking pictures. I found a new joy in going out with my Vivitar fitted on my D40 to give me stop down imaging. I also just bought a manual 2x teleconverter for my Nikkor 135 f3.5. I am fortunate to have a Nikon D40 camera on which almost every Nikon mount lens fits.

tk Loc: Iowa

First off, I am very amateur.

I have been using a Nikon D300 digital for several years and just recently found my old camera bag with all of my manual lens from the ...... well awhile ago. I'm not much of a manual person anymore and really had to go back to the drawing board (okay, I admit. I wasn't that great at manual before. Had kids, didn't get back into it until the digital.) Loving the look of the shots with the old lens. It is taking me a little while to force myself to go all manual, but with these lenses on my camera there is no choice.

Mark Koons Loc: Wheatland, WY

The greatest pleasure in my photographic experience was between '65 and '75. I shot with a Yashica Lynx 14, my first 35, a rangefinder, and later with a Yashicamat 6 X 6 twin lens reflex. Each would now be considered fully manual antiques. At the time they seemed quite modern, built-in light meters, automatic diaphragms, shutters that cocked automatically on film advance.

I seldom could afford color film then. A 36 shot roll of Kodachrome 25 cost a couple hours pay with pre-paid-mailer processing and required a week's wait for the results. The pleasure of that sort of photography, though, was that it was deliberate, about seeing, thinking, and relating to a new experience of the world.

I think now that if your aim was to bestow the greatest enjoyment you would, at least on some days, send a student out alone or with a good companion and a pin-hole camera with a single sheet of film.

Mark Koons

jenny Loc: in hiding:)

Restoring the joy would involve using my Yashica FX3...
but then restoring the joy is impossible with Kodachrome
gone.

twowindsbear

jenny wrote:

Restoring the joy would involve using my Yashica FX3...
but then restoring the joy is impossible with Kodachrome
gone.

Perhaps a year to 1 1/2 yrs ago, Koday advertised a camera that allowed the user to 'program' the camera to take pix as if it was using Kodachrome film, and Ektachrome, and Tri-X, and maybe 3 other types. Not sure which model it was, 'MAX' something, I think, and not to expensive.

RIP Kodachrome!

jenny Loc: in hiding:)

Yes.2winds,we move on to maybe Minolta 8000i,then one day
it gets put away for some new technology that's trying to
look for something like what we were doing with Kodachrome?
Think you're maybe referring to Kodak's last model the
200Max maybe...but digital is digital by any other name.To
some extent the joy was renewed because of the convenience
but just another thing, "they don't make like they used to",
i literally wore the cover off on that old Yashica,and had
to retire it when it developed a light leak,ha.

Don Schaeffer Loc: Winnipeg, Manitoba Canada

You can capture the joy with your digicam if you set it to a manual setting and don't let the camera make all the decisions. Allow yourself to leant by trial and error. If you can get lenses, buy them used.

Mark Koons Loc: Wheatland, WY

More than equipment or materials, the joy was in seeing and considering how best to record the way things seemed then. I suppose I'm mourning lost youth. Wonder, intellect, and imagination still exist, they just don't burn so brightly or so often in me anymore.

To compare waiting on a hill for an hour and a half for the light to be just so with making 8 exposures in one second makes me laugh... not that there's anything wrong with 8 shots a second, there isn't, and, really, what else can you do but laugh.

SpiffyPhoto Loc: Southern Wisconsin

Don Schaeffer wrote:

Recently I have been ditching my automatic and zoom lenses and buying cheap prime film era manual lenses from E-bay. In my opinion automation has jacked up the cost of buying lenses and taken away much of the feel of taking pictures. I found a new joy in going out with my Vivitar fitted on my D40 to give me stop down imaging. I also just bought a manual 2x teleconverter for my Nikkor 135 f3.5. I am fortunate to have a Nikon D40 camera on which almost every Nikon mount lens fits.

In the early 70's I started out with an old Argus camera. I would load up with black and white film and take a pencil and notebook with me most everywhere and note down my exposures and settings. I really had a great time learning camera, & film.
:)

rpavich Loc: West Virginia

I've went to all prime lenses and "sneaker-zoom" and I just purchased a "split prism focusing screen" for my Canon T2i...it enables you to focus using the old 70s' era split focusing method instead of the new-fangled auto-focus-red-dot.

I would even like to find non-AF lenses for cheap.

docrob Loc: Durango, Colorado

Mark Koons wrote:

More than equipment or materials, the joy was in s... (show quote)

It is difficult to respond to this topic even though it is a most crucial one it seems, for me when I photograph.....to experience joy.

It's not the equipment or the location or the time of day, the hour of light nor does the subject chosen matter much. The joy is in the seeing and in the feeling just how incredible it is that one finds self with a camera in hand in that moment - in the first place. And so yeah what can one do really other than laugh, or cry, or maybe as photography has taught me to do: whenever I receive a gift - dance. Dance with joy.

Each time we pick up a camera and look through it we are seeing for the first time.....that's the space joy needs to arise.

Good shooting!

jenny Loc: in hiding:)

Ah yes, joy,and joy was easier then, all i had to know was exposure,f-stops/shutter speeds and focus. There was one
exposure control...ctr. wt., we could figure out the rest
with a little adjustment. Hyperfocal just snapped in almost
like magic. I feel sorry for the folks who never learned
those basics.Someone told me not long ago,"I never did very
well with film, that's why i like digital,i do better with
that." It simply told me this person was a point'n'shoot
type who couldn't do anything unless it was "automatic".