I have been photographing for more than 50 years. When I started I was perhaps 20 or 21 years old and what motivated me was a university assistant professor who invited me to see him working in the darkroom.
I cannot remember all of the details, but I think he was using a Kodak Retina or another German camera which were popular at the time, and I am talking about the mid 50’s. Exacta had a primitive SLR but that was not the camera he was using.

Every film at the time, at least where I was living, was monochrome.
Cameras did not have any electronics; they were all manual. Lenses were only single focal length, no zooms and obviously no AF. Yes, only handheld exposure meters and the Gossen and Weston Master with Selenium cells were the exposure meters we were using. The Pentax 1 degree spot meter was not available at the time, it was introduced around 1964 and had a Cadmium Sulfide cell.

Japanese cameras were not very popular then. I began using a Petri rangefinder, a type of camera we would be calling mirrorless today. It had a fixed lens and with it I had a second hand Weston Master that actually I did not know very well how to use it. No Internet at the time to learn how to use it. A horrible meter to use in low light. Readings, except in bright light were not very accurate.

I bought a Nikon 35mm f2 AIS in the early 80’s that has seen little use. I decided to give it a spin using my dSLR, a Nikon D610 in the manual mode. I was remembering the old times except for using the in camera meter. Let’s not talk about flash, they were manual, most had an electric bulb and using them was a nightmare. I shot the gallinule using fill-in flash a rather impossible shot at the time.

I went late in the evening to a local park to shoot once again like I did in the 50’s and it was a lesson in discipline and a great experience. Once again selecting apertures manually and once again using manual focus. I zoomed in and out with my legs. All that brought back many memories.
These are some of the images I made. I am sure that some of the old timers here will feel some of the nostalgia I felt. I hope you like these images.