We all love cameras.. what do you use yours for most

[c2ironfist]

Hey guys

I can tell almost everyone here loves photography... I was just wondering what you guys like using your camera for most?

Are you guys proffesional photographers?

Or are you the average joe who just enjoys taking pictures of anything?

How long have you been snaping away for?

How much do you know about photography, gone to any classes etc?

What Cameras do you own?

Post your photography experience here and what you use your camera for most.

For me I first bought my camera to take everyday pictures of things, cuz I love doing that and make short video clips of me doing martial arts along with others.

That was the main purpose. I love taking pictures of scenary, people, girls on campus hehe.. the list goes on.

I make tons of small video clips of nothing but its just so much fun.

So guys come on post in and lets see what we all use our Digicams for :D

[Geoff Chandler]

Hi,
been taking photos since I was about 4 !! But didn't get into the nitty gritty 'till I was a late teenager. Then I used various SLR's - last 2 were OM10 & OM2 Oly's which were quite old but faithfull - still got the OM2 looking to sell it. Got the Digital C-740UZ as a start into the digital world - Jan04 would love a dSLR but fear that would be the end of my marriage! Had too many photos around so I am now scanning all my old ones in and heaving the orig's when I have them backed up on CD (slides, & negs mostly). I love the ease of use with the digital and hope to get a wider angle cam soon. I did evening classes about 20 years ago (non digital!) and the rest I have picked up as I go. I am asked from time to time to take the un-official pics at weddings - they're the best... all those sniped pics of what really happened (non posed). Generally I just take photos for pleasure and to record holidays and events.
Well - that'll do for me - I'll watch to see what others put in.
Geoff

[ReF]

hi,
i currently use the Canon A80 and the D-Rebel. I just got the rebel not to long ago, but that'll my primary cam and the A80 would be used when i can't lug the D-slr around. I primarily shoot landscapes/scenery(love the abilitly to use wide angle lenses on SLRs), sometimes with my girlfriend. 10% of the time i'll shoot pictures of my pets doing odd things. i really started getting into photography when i took photo class in highschool. we learned all the basics from f-stops, light meters, bouncing light, composition(lots on that), developing film and prints, making and using pinhole cams, etc., it was all great. we also had assignments and not to brag, but i turned in 90% of the best stuff - that's when i realized how much i liked photography(you know, that great feeling you get when you find something you're good at). I had a nack for seeing things out of context; my teacher was always asking me, "what's that?" or "where did you take this?". I guess us photo enthusiasts kinda need to be able to see something special where others don't. well after high school i took a really long 5 year break from photography, cuz i was one of those "poor neighborhood" kinda kids and the cost of film, developing, and prints kept me away. I was also kinda busy with a long-term relationship, playing tennis for college, and working with wood(which are all really expensive habits, not leaving much $$$ for photography anyways). digital has opened up a whole new world for me since it's all pretty much free after the initial costs, though my first experience with a sony 2mp digital was really discouraging. i'm still kinda poor though, since my "all inclusive d-slr budget" was a max of $1500, where others pay that much for just the body. one really cool thing (at least for me) is that my old canon 50mm f1.8 works just fine on the rebel(was afraid it would crash my new rebel) and it's pretty well built with a metal mount and proper manual focus ring, unlike the new version of it. well, my battery is finally done charging so i can download some photos now. i look forward to hearing what others have to say.

[Rex914]

I'm an amateur restaurant reviewer, so I take photos of food everytime I go to the restaurant (see my sig for details). Initially, I didn't really pay much attention to my technique and just shot quick pictures of the food. As a result, some of my photos came out blurry, overexposed, underexposed, etc. It also didn't help that I was working with a camera from 2000, the 2 Megapixel Kodak DC3400.

I'm still using that camera, but I will be upgrading to something a lot more powerful with more manual controls. I don't want to make a jump to D-SLR right away, but I'm eying the high end fixed lens category. I'm currently torn between getting a G6, Pro1 (or something else in that 8MP category), or waiting for an upgrade to the Pro1. I just want something I can grow with, and something that will last a while.

Anyways, my long term goals are to improve my technique, learn how to use the manual features to my advantage (absent from my current camera), and to take a lot more photos in general. It's still really fun to take pictures of food though. :)

What do the rest of you do with cameras?

[EAP]

I use my camera for fun. Right now I'm using the digital camera we have at work, a Canon A95. I've been known to "borrow" it for a weekend if I'm sure no one else will need it/miss it. Usually I take vacation shots or if I go somewhere fun for a weekend. And I love taking short movie clips...I had a friend in town from Oregon and I took a movie clip of him and it's so much more expressive than just a still photo. I do a lot of outdoor activities, so that's what I love to photograph; people having fun in the outdoors, against an awesome wilderness background. I also love taking wacky and goofy shots of my co-workers; a favorite is catching someone just as they're stuffing something in their mouth. We all have a laugh, and then usually the photos get deleted. I set all my coolest outdoor/vacation shots as my computer screen-saver, and when people are in my office for meetings they get very distracted by the awesome scenery scrolling through on my computer. They can't believe I've been to all those places. :D

[Roxanne]

Hi,
I am a amateur ;) I LOVE taking pictures and bought my first Digital camera about 3 yrs ago ...an Olympus C700 . I just recently bought a Nikon 8800 and am trying to broaden my knowledge to hopefully get into the more advanced settings . My main "subjects" are my family and pets :cool: and would love to one day get into Pet Photography ( there is a need for that !! lol )
I take LOTS of pictures and always have the camera out . Vacations are fun too ;) I am learning alot from this forum :)

[Jason25]

I just recently got the idea into my head of doing some scenic photography while traveling since I just got back from Juneau, Alaska a couple weeks ago. My first digital camera was in 99 or so, an HP Photosmart 1MP. I lost my last digicam in Atlantic City (2MP Finepix P&S). I'm now eyeing the FZ20 since I'm a zoom fiend now! But like I said, I mainly just want to get a nice camera to take landscapes and pics of my son who is now 4 months old :D My parents never took many pictures, so I guess it's a thing for me now to want plenty of pics of my family.

[TDT]

My Level: Beginner
My Experience: About 6 months or so.
Camera: Nikon 8700

I'm pretty much just a beginner at cameras. The reason why I bought a camera, was for two reasons:
1. For textures. I find taking close up shots of an item can give realistic textures for my 3d rendered images - which I've been doing for quite a number of years.
2. General photography. I enjoy landscapes, trees, flowers, animals, and the like. I like to take snapshots of various items, and then create pictures out of them for use on my web site, or on my desktop.

I'm just a newbie though, at the camera - but am learning quite a bit. I take around 10-20 pictures of stuff a week in the winter, hopefully much more once spring hits.

[speaklightly]

I began taking photos at age 9. At age 12, I had managed to sell my first photo. Photography has always been a hobby and a vocation. I did lots of wedding and industrial (annual reports and the like for some pretty major corporations) photography during my university years. Even when cameras were fairly large, I always had a camera with me. At the sametime, I began to specialize in pictorial photography rather sucessfully.

I was a pilot in the Navy where I did even more and different kinds of photography. When I left the Navy, I was hired by a major U.S. Airline. Travel photography combined rather naturally with my pictorial work, and I did that for many years. I also did a long stint in the airline's training department where I was part of a team that created a whole new approach to instructing and training that was very effective and successful. I flew for 35 years and retired as a Boeing 747 Captain.

In retirement, my husband (also an experienced trainer) and I began, at first, doing computer training courses for various university programs. We wrote our first book on PC's. When digital cameras came along , we created workshops for digital cameras as well as computers. Seven years ago we created the first digital camera workshop series to be presented on cruise ships. Being innovators, we had to create not only the training syllabus, but the textbooks as well.

In a normal year we usually conduct workshops for about 8,000 to 10,000 people. We have written three books on digital cameras simply due to the fact that digital cameras are a rapidly evolving technology. Our workshop series are focused on beginning and intermediate level digital camera users.

So cameras and photography have always been an important component of my life.

Sarah Joyce

[Rhys]

I've been into photography for some 30 years.

I started when I was 7 with a Kodak Instamatic that took 126 film which was available in 12, 20 or 24 exposure cassettes.

Then I graduated to a Rollei 35 LED.

That was followed by:
Zenith 11,
Praktika,
Cosina CT1 and Pentax Super A,
Nikon FM.

Then I went digital and went through
Olympus C820L, C200Zoom,
Nikon 995, 3100,
Canon S1 IS.

I have sold photos and been a part-time freelancer. I never really felt that the money was particularly rewarding. It sounds great to sell a photo to the national press for £400 but in reality that didn't really compensate for all the pictures that never made it.

Now, I just take pictures for my own pleasure and for my memories.

I did go with a friend to some photography classes. He stuck the course and stayed for the entire two years. I found that the lecturer was so obnoxious and full of himself that the classes were absolutely unbearable. Had it not been for the lecturer's constant sniping and the punch up he tried to start then I'd have stuck the course. I guess I should have reported him to the principal at the time but I didn't.

Generally, these days I tend to do mostly landscape photography. My areas of interest are industrial dereliction and decay. I find that the local castles are now so touristy that there's no way to take a picture without some tacky touristy thing being in the frame.

I love making video clips but the problem is they're always so large that they're unemailable. Email seems to have a limit of between 5 and 10 mb on almost all servers.

[Digideb]

I wish I'd seen this thread before I started mine yesterday. I sort of started introducing myself there.
I'm also a beginner in many ways. I do remember playing with a hand-me-down "Brownie" camera as a child. Then, I would get small cameras as gifts now & then. (Instamatics, then "Point & Shoots",etc.) Although I remember having relatives that were "serious amateurs", I never had more than a passing interest in photography. The confusing settings & #s always seemed too intimidating.
Then, a few yrs. ago, I was given an Olympus D-380, my 1st digital cam. My small, weak little computer delayed my use of the digicam until this summer, when I FINALLY could justify buying a new computer. It took a month or so to get used to the new camera/technology, but now I'm hooked! I've suddenly developed a "child-like" fascination with photography. For the first time in my life, I find that I want to take my camera everywhere.
I live on the northern Calif. coast, so there's no shortage of great images to capture. Aside from land/seascapes, there's many tiny treasures to take pics of. I've been photographing many wild mushrooms & flowers. I'm also a gardener, so I have many beautiful subjects to get shots of. Although, the D-380 allowed me to get macro pix I could never get before, I was beginning to see a lack of quality & limited abilities of the "beginner's model".
So, for the 1st time in my life, I selected & bought myself a camera. I chose an Olympus C-60 Zoom. It just arrived yesterday & I've only taken a few test shots, but so far, I love it!
I live in a very remote area so I'm hoping to learn & communicate with fellow digicam buffs here in this forum. I'm looking forward to getting to know some of you. Happy "cameraing!" :D

[pmnapier]

I'm fairly new to these forums so this is quite an interesting thread - learning about many of the folks I see postings from. I've always been strictly a casual shooter. My first cameras were hand-me-downs from the Brownie era or before (one had a rather large flash bulb unit with a clear plastic covering as protection from exploding bulbs). My "very own" first camera was the original, first year Instamatic. I started to fool around with developing and since I was just a kid and had no money for an enlarger, all my prints were the size of the negative - really small in the case of the Instamatic! So I went back to the older cameras that had larger format film (126 maybe?)

Gave it all up through high school, college, and then some. My first experience with 35mm was when I borrowed a basic Pentax "something" SLR (it had the little needle and notch metering in the viewfinder - good way to learn) to take to the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid and got hooked again. Bought my own after that (Pentax ME Super I think) and started taking "more serious" photos through the '80s with the Pentax and then Nikon's first auto focus SLRs. Mainly landscapes or just interesting things that caught my eye for color and composition, generally shooting Kodachrome. My last (current) film SLR is the Nikon 6006 which served me well for many years. The arrival of a family in the early '90s made me into more of a snap shooter and last year, prior to a vacation out to California, I bought a Konica Minolta Z2, first to get into digital photography and second, to avoid having to carry the SLR, separate telephoto, and lots of film.

Now I'm thinking of getting back into it and the Z2s limitations are more apparent (lack of speed primarily, for low light or any fast action or sports - those kids again). But that's for another forum someday.

[plumb]

Hi everyone,I have just taken up photography in the past 6 months,I didnt want to start with a point & shoot camera so bought a cannon S1is, love the camera but all those different settings are a bit daunting,when I first got the camera I would lie in bed reading the manual and taking shots of the bedroom trying different settings,,I have the most photographed clock in Scotland now. My real interest is in scenery and architecture, working with the railway of course it also has to be trains,where I live there is a steam railway run by enthusiasts
The forums are great I have learned so much in the short time ive been on you guys and ladies make it all seem so easy, ah one day who knows I might be like that,

[sherlock]

Hi,

I've been taking photographs since I was about 7, mostly at family gatherings and sporting events. I had to use my mother's olympus point and shoot film camera, but even with this simple camera I developed a love of photography. Last summer, I went on a family vacation and I discovered my love of landscape photography. Now I think I want to become a professional photographer. I'm only 16, and I'm taking photography courses in high school, and I'll go to college for photography. I have a cousin who is also a landscape photographer, and I just LOVE going out, hiking, and taking photographs with him. I now own a Nikon D70 (which I saved up like forever for!!), but I took the photographs posted below with a Fuji Finepix 3800. BTW, this site is great because I just love learning about photography.

[c2ironfist]

Hi everyone,I have just taken up photography in the past 6 months,I didnt want to start with a point & shoot camera so bought a cannon S1is, love the camera but all those different settings are a bit daunting,when I first got the camera I would lie in bed reading the manual and taking shots of the bedroom trying different settings,,I have the most photographed clock in Scotland now. My real interest is in scenery and architecture, working with the railway of course it also has to be trains,where I live there is a steam railway run by enthusiasts
The forums are great I have learned so much in the short time ive been on you guys and ladies make it all seem so easy, ah one day who knows I might be like that,


lol that story sounds so familiar... I did that to with my first Digicam.. actuay I still do I'm always testing out my Digicam in my room with all sorts of stuff in here...

Guess all of us photographers are a lot a like. :D

[ReF]

Hi,

I've been taking photographs since I was about 7, mostly at family gatherings and sporting events. I had to use my mother's olympus point and shoot film camera, but even with this simple camera I developed a love of photography. Last summer, I went on a family vacation and I discovered my love of landscape photography. Now I think I want to become a professional photographer. I'm only 16, and I'm taking photography courses in high school, and I'll go to college for photography. I have a cousin who is also a landscape photographer, and I just LOVE going out, hiking, and taking photographs with him. I now own a Nikon D70 (which I saved up like forever for!!), but I took the photographs posted below with a Fuji Finepix 3800. BTW, this site is great because I just love learning about photography.

sherlock, i really don't mean to bring you down but my photo teacher told us all that it may prove difficult making a living solely on photography. he said that he had a few friends that worked for magazines, or sold photos to magazines, or worked for national geographic and they were still pretty much what you could call "starving artists." of course, that was 6-7 years ago before digital was any good. i'm sure the cost to profit ratio is much better now with digital SLRs and the possibility of Digital Backs becoming affording within the next couple of years or so. according to Moore's law or whatever the cost of a $20,000 Digital Back should cost $5000 in about 3 years. correct me if i got that part wrong ;)

[sherlock]

Hi,

Yeah, I understand that It will be hard to make a living on photography alone. I have been researching jobs that I could do to keep money coming in so that I can support myself (my family doesn't have a lot of money and they probobly wouldn't be able to support me and my siblings). Thanks for the suggestions, and BTW, what did you think of the photographs I posted? Sorry, it's just I like getting feedback and constructive criticism!


Andrew S.

[sherlock]

Hi,

Sorry, I didnt realize how small those pic come out when you look at them!! I posted the same ones plus 1 more in a bigger size. Sorry!!!


Andrew S.

[c2ironfist]

Hi,

Sorry, I didnt realize how small those pic come out when you look at them!! I posted the same ones plus 1 more in a bigger size. Sorry!!!


Andrew S.
Really cool pics... thanks for sharing

[ReF]

Hi,

Yeah, I understand that It will be hard to make a living on photography alone. I have been researching jobs that I could do to keep money coming in so that I can support myself (my family doesn't have a lot of money and they probobly wouldn't be able to support me and my siblings). Thanks for the suggestions, and BTW, what did you think of the photographs I posted? Sorry, it's just I like getting feedback and constructive criticism!


Andrew S.

i'm usually the kind of person that does not comment on pictures, at least not to the photographer bacause i think it sounds snooty and condescending when someone says, "well this picture should be taken this way(because i have such good taste) and blah, blah, blah." since you asked though, i'll just say that i personally prefer a wider view, but your pictures are good. the lighthouse shot looks a little crooked though. just remember not to take any one person's opinion too seriously and to take pictures to that YOU enjoy. there will always be people that are the exact opposite of you and have the exact opposite opinions no matter what. even if you win an award for a picture someone will say it sucks. of course, when things start to look like american idol auditions and no one likes what you do, then there might be a problem. still, that doesn't mean that person can't enjoy what he or she does.

[Jredtugboat]

Hi C2,

I'm so glad you started this thread. It really brought me back to my roots as a photographer.

My dad always carried around SLRs, and rarely used them. Thinking back on this, I wonder if they were the equivalent of "male jewelry". Because he's also a fan of mechanisms and machines, he might also have derived a pleasure out of carrying those big things around. Later, he made me carry all his photographic gear, which made me feel very responsible and proud.

I was in the third grade when I got my first camera: a Kodak X-15F. I loved that camera, took horrible photos with it, and have since lost it. It took 126 cartridge film, which had the virtue of being idiot proof (no small consideration for a product soon to be tested by my destructive hands). I used black and white and color film.

A cool thing about my version was that it didn't use the Magicubes, as the X-15 did. Instead it used the...well, come to think of it, I don't remember what they were called. But imagine a big Hershey Bar-sized flash cartridge that rode straight up from the top of the camera! I recall that mine were made by Sylvania (and maybe Philips). I delighted in taking the flash cartridges apart--you had the lovely lamp/filament (which was gauzed over after firing--ah! The smell! The heat!) and some boffo reflectors as well. I planned to use them to construct some sort of model kit. This never happened, but I recall that I intended to use the reflectors as a "solar array" since my neighbor Pierce and his brother, Gareth, were both into that sort of thing.

The boom on my blossoming photographic career was dropped on me after a visit to my grandparents'. I had accumulated a bunch of film and handed them all to my mother, who made it clear after she paid the bill that it wasn't going to happen again! Not being particularly enterprising at the time, I made do with what I had--mostly inane pictures of stuffed animals, relatives, and my favourite subject: my grandfather's silver Jaguar E-Type. (This is a long time ago. Back then, Jaguar was a company that made cars, no biscuit tins. Also, it was a 1969 model. With the straight six engine. Not that V-12 nonsense.)

I had the equivalent of what we call ADHD back then (if it was diagnosed at all, it was called 'hyperactivity', or 'a boy being a boy') and my mind flittered to other things, like drawing battleships the size of the moon and aircraft. By late middle school I was thinking again about photographs--my father still had his kit--as I lived in a house filled with books of architecture, travel, and the like.

By this time my father's old Pentax had been replaced. I needed a camera, and as consolation for not allowing me to take flying lessons, my dad loaned it to me. I don't even recall what model it was. It was a Honeywell Pentax, as I believe Honeywell was a big (only? primary?) distributor of the line in the States when my dad bought it. I loved the screw on lens. I loved taking the lens off and peering into the guts. It was a heavy camera--definitely you wouldn't want to get clocked with--with a pretty fast f 1.8 50mm lens. I took a few pictures, then stopped when the matchstick meter went kaput and I didn't have enough money to get it fixed.

At some point in college, armed with my first ever credit card, I plunked down $180 for a Vivitar v2000. By this time the K1000 was out of production and I didn't know any better about prowling the used market. Nonetheless, the Vivitar took some pretty good photos--even after it fell out onto the hardwood floor from almost five feet!

In Arizona in '99 I bought an Olympus iS-10. It also took some pretty sharp pictures, and was my companion throughout my trip to Spain (Granada) two years later.

Now I have a Canon Power Shot G2. I'm never going back to film--I don't have the money for the processing costs, and I've been shooting regularly. Between my Mac and my PC, I have about 12,000 or so images that I have yet to catalog properly.

The worst of this is, is it's like a disease that's spreading. I read this site almost every day now prowling for new news. I dream of my in-house studio , and of learning to take really good portraits of people and animals. I want a dSLR.

I'm doomed!

[ReF]

Hi C2,

I'm so glad you started this thread. It really brought me back to my roots as a photographer.

My dad always carried around SLRs, and rarely used them. Thinking back on this, I wonder if they were the equivalent of "male jewelry". Because he's also a fan of mechanisms and machines, he might also have derived a pleasure out of carrying those big things around. Later, he made me carry all his photographic gear, which made me feel very responsible and proud.

Now I have a Canon Power Shot G2. I'm never going back to film--I don't have the money for the processing costs, and I've been shooting regularly. Between my Mac and my PC, I have about 12,000 or so images that I have yet to catalog properly.

The worst of this is, is it's like a disease that's spreading. I read this site almost every day now prowling for new news. I dream of my in-house studio , and of learning to take really good portraits of people and animals. I want a dSLR.

I'm doomed!

great story, really. i'm actually only 1220 shots away from your photo count and i've only been shooting digital for about 5 months! organizing photos can be really daunting - i just spent a day and a half sorting out and backing up 5 gigs of photos (a mix of 4mp,6mp, and 6mp RAW) because i got behind from being lazy. i store all my photos in a dedicated folder, then sort them out into sub-folders by general catagories such as: scenery, night shots, etc.
i also have sub-folders for specific places like: vegas, arboritum, cruise, etc.
this also makes it easier for burning backup CDs (i really need to get a DVD burner!!). although sorting out your last 12000 photos may be a lost cause, you could really do yourself a favor by starting out an organized folder for your future d-slr pics.
"male jewelry" - i think you could be onto something!

btw, how much was the G2 when it first came out?

[c2ironfist]

The stories and experiences are really great to read. Love hearing about you guys experiences. :D

Thanks Julian, great story ;)

[Jredtugboat]

great story, really. i'm actually only 1220 shots away from your photo count and i've only been shooting digital for about 5 months! organizing photos can be really daunting - i just spent a day and a half sorting out and backing up 5 gigs of photos (a mix of 4mp,6mp, and 6mp RAW) because i got behind from being lazy. i store all my photos in a dedicated folder, then sort them out into sub-folders by general catagories such as: scenery, night shots, etc.
i also have sub-folders for specific places like: vegas, arboritum, cruise, etc.
this also makes it easier for burning backup CDs (i really need to get a DVD burner!!). although sorting out your last 12000 photos may be a lost cause, you could really do yourself a favor by starting out an organized folder for your future d-slr pics.
"male jewelry" - i think you could be onto something!

btw, how much was the G2 when it first came out?

Hi Ref,

Glad you liked the story--I had fun writing it.

To answer your question, the G2 I bought was about $600 as a kit from Buydig.com. It came with a bag, an extra (generic) CF card, and was the US warranty special edition black, not silver.

I bought it about two years ago. Maybe longer. My head for dates is rather poor.

Even to this day, I recommend this camera. It's cheap on the auction sites and really is a nice little tank. The lens is fast (for this P&S class); it goes down to f 2, which is good for me since almost all of my shots are available light.

You want a DVD burner? I suggest something from Newegg or Tigerdirect. I bought an NEC dual-layer DVD burner (internal) and an external enclosure/housing for $90, including shipping. I use the DVD burner every day and the enclosure is great if I want to turn it into an external drive.

As for shooting, your output is pretty impressive! I'm still working on what software I want to use (besides the bundled stuff) for organizing all my stuff. I'm experimenting with Cumulus this week...

Happy shooting!

[NewNikon]

I use my camera to drain my bank account. It does an absolutely wonderful job. I used to have several other hobbies but now this one has taken control of my free time and shoved aside the others. I hate cameras... they are evil they control me into pushing the "buy it now" button everytime I see something cool and black.

I'm certain this PMA show is going to be the final straw that broke the camels back. The show hasn't even started yet and I'm anticipating breaking the bank for something that I don't even know exists ! Then natually by next christmas I'll be bored with it and just HAVE to have whatever new carrot they stick in front of me.

Yes, it's a great tool for throwing your life away... The price is high... but the benefits... oooh the benefits. yes.