Funny how some choices we made in the past are revisiting us, if only we would take the time and opportunity for that. This applies to all sorts of good or bad ones, and it stands true for cameras we bought at one time, thinking they’re the single thing missing for us to become really good photographers. Many of you did became that, many of us didn’t. Good or bad, the said choices are still with us today, and some of those cameras too.
Back in the early 90s, I was shooting both Minox and 35mm film; yes, those were the days. I was yet some years off to see my first digital camera, in the form of a Sony Mavica FD17 (yes, the floppy disk thingy). I decided this new digital contraptions were not on my liking, because I was in the film realm and had no wish nor inclination to move out. It was the place I knew, comfortably having a good time.
One day, I got this Olympus IS1000, which I thought it would be a good addition to my small, but growing camera gathering. It was what we now call a “”bridging the gap” camera, meaning a camera that connected the compacts to the SLR world, although Olympus called it a fancier name, that of “Zoom lens reflex – ZLR”, which I guess is a more appropriate name for this type of machine. For a time, it was my go-to camera for casual shooting, wherever I went. Not very light, probably on the par with my Nikon F4 with the MB21 grip. But a manageable weight, at least then, when I was younger.
I shot mostly bw with it, colour film also, although not much. While colour film was not (yet) on the dear side, processing it at my local Jessops lab wasn’t. After a short-ish while (read months), I got bored with it, mainly because it didn’t took better pictures (go figure!). So I went back to my usual OM1 and the like.
Years went by, and all I did was to dust off and (every now and then) put batteries in and operate it for a couple of minutes. However, last week I decided to give it another go, which is what I do lately with all my old cameras; loaded it with a roll of fresh Kentmere 100. A couple of photographs here.
My daughter’s “office”. She is also into film photography, already enamoured with black and white film 🙂
A portrait of her