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Photographic Equipmentof Naveen Agnihotri |
Here are the cameras that I've owned over the years:
In September 1998, after seeing the number of good photographic opportunities that I'd ruined by using cheapie single-use cameras, I decided to get a real camera. I carefully read the articles at photo.net, and decided that the best thing to get would be a simple point & shoot. Then followed another three days of reading of articles and Q&A forums on which P&S camera to buy, and I decided on the Leica Mini 3: it is a very simple non-zoom-lens P&S camera with a real Leica lens, that takes great pictures.
I loved it so much that I wrote an entire article on my experiences with it.
The images from the little Leica were satisfying enough that I got seriously interested in photography. In using the Mini 3, I was increasingly finding myself wishing that I had more control over various paramters, like aperture and exposure. Being fascinated with rangefinders, in March 1999, I decided to get a Minolta Hi-Matic 7S II rangefinder camera.
The 7S II has a sharp 40mm lens (6 elements), and the lens can be opened out to 1.7, which is good for most low-light situations. Mine was made in the late 70s. I bought it for about $60, and it came with the flash. There is a metered automatic mode (exposure-priority) , but I've always used it in completely manual mode, the way I intended to use it. And I never used the flash.
In September 1999, I got a Canonet GIII camera, and took both the 7S II and the Canonet on my trip to London, Spain, and India.
I'd been looking for still more control, to add different lenses, and it just so happended that on a trip to India in 2000, my father gave me his Minolta SRT 101 SLR camera, and that became my primary camera. I sold off both the HiMatic and the Canonet on eBay, gave the Leica Mini 3 to my mother, greatly simplifying my life. My current lens collection includes 28mm, 50mm, and 135mm lenses.
I liked this camera so much that I got a similar body (SRT 102), which was a cleaner with a smoother shutter. I also got a 200mm lens (like everything else, from eBay), which has fast become my favorite lens for portraits.
In April 2001, I took my photographic nerdiness to a new level when I gave in to my long-standing desire to own a 4x5 camera -- this is the simplest, lightest view camera I could find. I bought it used from the classifieds at photo.net. The next month, I got a general purpose, Rodenstock APO-Sironar N 135mm lens. And then some Polaroid film, and a holder, and a tripod, and life was good.
As it turned out, in my zeal to go large format, I didn't take into account how poor I was as a graduate student, and how expensive large format photgraphy (at $2-$5 an exposure) really is. As a result, my fancy view camera sat in largely in the closet, looking at me sadly. Soon after I became a postdoc and moved up to Boston with even lesser money, I sold my entire view camera setup on eBay. Now I stick to more conventional 35mm SLR photography. Some day, when I'm much richer, and have much more time, I may go after an 8x10 camera and have another go at large format.
In November 2007, after Kavi was born, I realized that I couldn't afford to (a) wait the few days it took to see the results from the film camera, and (b) lose shots because of under-exposure and other idiosyncracies of the film camera (I once lost a whole roll of film because it didn't load properly). So I bit the bullet and got a Nikon D40 (with the kit 18-55 and 55-200 lenses), and a NB-400 flash, which I use in bounce mode, and I've never been happier.
The photographs speak for themselves.