(Twist) I Painted Millions Of Words II

(Part 2 of 2)

This is a diary of my journey in photography. Part 1 can be found here.

It was the start of the 21st century. Film was still prevalent however, a different medium was beginning to dominate the industry.

Less than a decade after Y2K, vast improvements have been made in digital technology. Gone are the floppy disks and and many of the older types of storage media. It has become relatively affordable and practical to store data digitally than it is to process images via film. It's in these years that the common consumers are able to get their hands on a new type of camera: The ones without any film but still shoot images nonetheless. This is when we started having the digital camera.

My first digital camera was something that was behind its time. Most digital cameras were expensive when they first came out. While most cameras had LCDs, budget restraints led me to choose something simpler. It had no fancy LCD, just a simple display showing how many shots I had left before I fill up the whole 8mb of the included memory card, had less than 1 megapixel, and it had a simple focus dial in the lens to choose between near and far focusing distances.

Logitech ClickSmart 510. My first digital camera.

It was a bit of a short-lived affair though. This decade wasn't only the emergence of the point and shoot digital camera that consumers are used to seeing. It was also the emergence of the Camera-phone. It was more practical at the time for me to have a camera bundled with my phone. Though these days it's common to see these things, especially with the prevalence of smartphones, back in the day this was nothing short of amazing. Transferring of images was rudimentary though. With the absence of social media back then, when we take pictures we had to take care of it. We manually had to transfer images to the computer because not all phones had high capacity storage back then. And most of these phones were just feature phones- a far cry from smartphones we have today.

My first camera phone. The Sony Ericsson K700.

So for a few years I was into phone photography. Though these are mostly just social pictures and images of interesting stuff I see here and there. One thing was painfully obvious though- the image quality was very low. There was a lot of noise and a noticeable lack of sharpness from the images compared to a proper camera. For a time I managed to change my phone at least a couple of times, and with it, the improvement of the camera. However I was too cheap to spend big on phones. I wasn't willing to pay a huge sum for something that I can easily lose.

However there remained a yearning for better quality images. And it's when I had my first DSLR. And that's when my photography soared to levels I've never imagined before.

The whole time before I got my hands on a DSLR. My photography has mostly been nothing more than pointing and shooting. It didn't matter as long as the subject is in frame, nor if it was a good angle nor if it's any good. I was oblivious to the markings on the lenses, I had no idea what the terms meant (aperture, focal length, sensitivity, rule of thirds) and of course, I had no idea how the camera worked. All it mattered was I press the shutter release button and a picture gets taken. I would also attribute that to camera manufacturers dumbing down cameras though. The models that had manual controls were fairly expensive at the time.

The Nikon D40. My first ever DSLR, and the camera I used the most.

When I got my first DSLR, the Nikon D40, This was when I got really technical. This was when I really learned the ropes. It's where I learned the mechanics, the fundamentals and even a lot of other things that not only applied to DSLRs, but to any camera I got my hands on for that matter. These days, I can pretty much decipher how to use almost any camera way easier than to solve a Rubik's cube... In fact, I still can't solve a Rubik's cube. But I know the controls of a Nikon D600 after fiddling with it unrestricted for around an hour.

I lost count how many pictures I took with my D40. A conservative estimate would probably be around 25000 images, more or less, I think. Around 90% of what I know in photography now was learned using this camera. This was the camera that really got me going places. It was the advent of the DSLR going mainstream. The images of the D40 were simply among the best there is. The clarity of the images was beyond what I've seen in any consumer camera before.

It was during my time with this when I've explored photography as a whole. I've gone and shot weddings (just as a guest. not as a pro) with this camera, I've gone travelling to different places and shot lots of images, and even portraiture. This even led me to meeting new friends. I've gone as far as shooting musicians performing. This was the most interesting challenge I had, by the way. The nature of shooting in low light with strobes of different colors flashing all over the place was a surreal experience.

However, for all the wonders of the DSLR, there were some challenges. Other than the steep price, there was the issue of the size and weight of it. It was detrimental to the shooting experience. It's not a bother when you're actually shooting with it, but when you're going from point A to point B with all that gear in tow, it takes a toll on your shoulders. It was restrictive for me to build a system, since having more gear would just mostly slow me down. I managed to have a good zoom lens though.

Also, I had problems shooting with high ISO. The D40 may have been a great camera, but shooting above ISO1600 sensitivities was a different story. There were newer and more suited cameras for my whim-driven shooting habits.

That was when I started venturing into a different system. The size and weight problem was prevalent among DSLRs. There was a new system that addressed this issue by removing the reflex mirror. This led to a smaller package with mostly similar image quality. There were other compromises like slower focusing speed and accuracy when it comes to moving subjects. But these features aren't necessarily used more than 90% of the time. I gave my D40 to my kid brother (He asked for it, complete with puppy-dog eyes. He doesn't used it as much these days, but his girlfriend does.) and jump shipped to the Micro four thirds (MFT) camp.

My first entry into the mirrorless system. The Olympus E-PL2

The first Mirrorless I had was the Olympus E-PL2. However, this didn't last very long in my hands. A friend expressed interest in buying it. I sold him the camera at a dirt cheap price and I used what I got from that to buy the camera that I'm using now.

My current Photography implement. Image quality
of the expensive OM-D EM-5 at a bargain price.

I switched to a more recent model. The articulated LCD is a joy to use, and I manage to shoot at night without a tripod thanks to decent image quality up to ISO3200. I can even go further up to ISO25600 for small prints that don't include portraits.. I've also accumulated a collection of lenses since I switched to MFT ranging from the included kit lens, a tele-zoom lens, an extreme tele lens (500mm!), a budget prime lens and  a fisheye. This didn't include several other lenses I had. I managed to cram all these including the charger into a medium sized bag only slightly larger than my old bag that contained only a DSLR with a lens attached and a charger.

At this point, my journey is far from over. Everything's going better than I ever hoped it'd get when I started this journey. The small size of the camera made it more encouraging to carry it anytime I go out and having more gear in a lighter package makes for more opportunities to get creative. The fisheye and budget prime lens have been my favorites followed by the tele zoom lens that gets to shoot far. There will be more shots that I will make in my lifetime. And I will definitely share all of them for the world to see.


All images are property of their respective owners. No copyright infringement was intended.