More than thirty years ago, I was growing up in middle class India. Photography, then, was a somewhat expensive hobby for a kid not yet out of school.
The first camera I had access to was my mother's Agfa Click III. It took 120 format film rolls, and made square 6 x 6 (cm) negatives. Black and white film was all I (and my parents) used in those days. We didn't shoot a lot: the price of film and processing was a bit too steep. And our prints would mostly be 6 x 6 as well: enlargement was costly business.
It was a simple, robust mechanical device with nothing electrical in it at all. No batteries, for one!
It had a fixed focus lens. It had a lever to the left of the lens to choose between three preset aperture options: a small aperture for 'sunny', a larger aperture for 'cloudy', and an even larger aperture with a yellow filter. There was no iris: the lever operated a kind of rotating diaphragm which had these three circular holes of different diameters.
The shutter release was a lever too, mounted to the right of the lens. There was a single shutter speed on offer: that was all that a purely mechanical system, and a rather simple one at that, could do.
There was a knob to turn the take-up reel to advance the film. After taking a snap, you turned it anti-clockwise, while keeping an eye on a round red-glass window on the camera back, which showed the frame number (printed on the film backing) as it came sliding by. There was no interlocking: if you forgot to turn the knob, the shutter would still click, exposing over your previous snap. And if you hadn't advanced the film enough, the shutter will click equally promptly—giving you overlapping frames. The only protection was that the knob wouldn't turn the other way.
Interestingly, there was no rewind crank—there was no need for one. When the film got over, it was all wound around the take up reel, which you took out for processing. The pay-out reel was now empty—you took it out, and put it into the place vacated by the old take-up reel.
There was an optical viewfinder, through which you looked to compose the shot. There was no flash, but there was a hot shoe for one. And that was it!
Years passed. Some time in my undergraduate days, I bought an Agfa Snapper 35, a basic 35 mm camera.
This, too, was a purely mechanical device: no batteries yet! Not even an in-built flash (though there was a hot shoe.) The shutter release was now a button, and the film was in a 135 format cartridge instead of on a bare roll. By now, color film was commonly available, so I shot in color.
The film advance mechanism was a thumb-wheel. You turned it till it stopped with a 'click' at the next frame—and what's more, it was interlocked so that if you didn't do it after a shot, the shutter won't click for the next one. The 135 cartridge now necessitated a film rewind crank, for use when the roll ran out.
This was still a fixed focus camera with a single fixed shutter speed. Like the Click III, it had three aperture settings: 'sunny', 'cloudy' and 'flash'. The 'flash' setting had an aperture that was apparently the same size as 'sunny', but this setting would additionally trigger the flash hot-shoe.
This camera also had a lens cap, which you had to remember to take off. You just looked through the viewfinder, clicked ... and hoped.
More time passed. I now had a job, one that took me to the United States for months at a time. This was the early nineteen nineties, and for a young middle-class Indian guy, this was consumerist heaven.
In these trips, I took quite a lot of photos with disposable 35mm cameras, usually Kodak. I'd get the pictures developed and printed at the neighborhood supermarket, and it all worked out swell!
I also bought a couple of regular cameras. The last of those was a Focal PC620D. The obvious difference between this and the Snapper 35 was that this camera needed batteries.
A pair of AA cells was needed to drive a motorized film transport system. The film would automatically advance to the next frame after every shot, and automatically rewind when the film ran out.
The same AA cells also powered a built in flash. It could be set to 'off'. It could be set to 'fill-in', in which case it would fire every time. It could also be set to 'auto', where the camera decided when to fire the flash. The auto-flash logic used the inputs from two sensors in the camera:
Otherwise, it was an ordinary fixed focus, fixed aperture and fixed shutter speed 35mm film camera with an optical viewfinder. One advantage over the Snapper was that, instead of a separate lens cap, there was a sliding lens cover that wouldn't allow the shutter to click when closed.
Eventually, in 1998, I got myself a Samsung Maxima Zoom AF Fuzzy Logic (this may of may not be the same as their AF Slim Zoom model: photos on the Internet appear identical except for the shade of the plastic, but I can't tell for sure). As it turned out, this ended up being the most advanced 35mm film camera I owned.
This has all the features the Focal PC620D had—the quartz date-back, the motorized film transport and the auto flash. But it had more.
This was the first camera I owned that needed a shutter 'half-press'. Because it had auto-focus. The focusing mechanism was active infra-red, which would work for 20 ft or so. I guess this range was good enough, because beyond that, the depth of focus would stretch to infinity anyway. There was a button to deliberately focus at infinity.
Speaking of focus, in this camera the focal length could be varied between 35 and 70mm at the press of 'W/T' buttons (another first for me). In other words, it offered 2x zoom (optical of course.) Specifically, this was power zoom.
This camera also used its light sensor for more than just the auto-flash decision: it had auto-exposure. It probably had a fixed-sized circular aperture (given the focal length, the f-number was fixed.) It would therefore choose the appropriate exposure by varying the shutter speed under electronic (microprocessor) control.
Actually, the microprocessor is what made this camera different from my previous ones. The obvious visible difference was the user interface: instead of per-function switches, this camera had a basic menu system displayed on a black & white LCD screen. There were two buttons to navigate it: a 'flash' button to cycle between the flash options, and a 'mode' button to cycle through everything else.
The microprocessor allowed it to offer many software controlled features. I haven't actually used most of them, and I have lost the manual, so the list below is partly from memory and partly from the manual of another similar camera from Samsung:
The film and its processing was much more affordable now, of course, but the cost of each frame wasn't zero. An illustrative number would be, say 10 rupees per snap, considering the film, its development, and the first print (which I always got, not being very good at judging a negative.)
So I didn't really experiment. I used it a lot for snapshots, though, to capture a lot of memories. It stayed with me from 1998 to early 2007. It is still with me, but it doesn't work any more.
Circa 2001, somewhat by mistake, I acquired my first digital camera—a Fujifilm Finepix 2600 Zoom. It recorded 2 megapixels, had a 3x optical zoom, would shoot video (without sound), and was quite a capable camera for its time. It even had an optical viewfinder—something which compacts of today usually omit. But as it turns out I didn't use it much.
It's shape was somewhat awkward. It was too thick for me to hold comfortably. It was powered by 2 NiMH AA rechargeable cells, and one set of charged cells didn't last anywhere as long as the battery of my Samsung film camera. It used a 32 MB SmartMedia card for storage, and 60 photos or less would fill it up.
All this would have been acceptable (after all, I was used to 36 exposure film rolls) but for the real killer: the labs around where I lived used to charge simply too much for prints from digital cameras! Many times more than prints from film, actually. Maybe they were trying to make up for the cost of film and development that they were losing out on? But whatever the reason, this resulted in the camera not seeing much use. Which is a pity, because it isn't a bad camera. I still have it, and it works well enough.
In 2007, the Samsung broke—and for a couple of years I fell back on a Kodak KB-12 that happened to be lying around the house. This was a very basic 35mm film camera. Compared to my my old Snapper 35, this one had only a single aperture, and a built in flash that would fire every time (unless I'd removed the batteries from the camera, of course! The batteries weren't needed for anything else.) The lens was protected by a sliding lens cover that locked out the shutter when closed (as in the Focal PC620D).
Later, in 2008, I got a Nokia E71. It is a smartphone with a reasonable digital camera: 3.2 megapixels, and auto focus. While I've used the phone extensively, I've not really used it as a camera that much. If fact, it's only recently I figured out that it's camera was, in fact, auto focus, and that the 'T' key did what a 'half-press' does in other cameras. I sincerely hope that I'll use it more effectively henceforth. Being 'the camera that's always with me', it has taken quite a few unusual photographs for me: such as a top-view of a Shinkansen, or ice-fields of Greenland from an airplane window.
Finally, in 2009, I went digital. I got myself a Canon Powershot A2000IS. It shoots 10 megapixels, has 6x optical zoom, and is a lovely compact camera overall. It takes 2 AA alkaline cells, which I get everywhere, and a pair lasts reasonably long. It shoots only in 'auto' and 'program', however (which was good enough for me to begin with.) Unfortunately, like most compacts, it does not have an optical viewfinder. You are supposed to compose using the LCD, but this can be difficult when out in the sun.
With digital, I began experimenting. And this year (2011), looking for a bit more control and a somewhat larger sensor, I acquired a Nikon Coolpix P7100. It shoots 10 megapixels too, and has a similar 7.1x optical zoom. But I now have Aperture Priority, Shutter Priority and Manual modes available, and a built in neutral-density filter should I need one. Also a bigger sensor—about twice the area of that on the A2000IS. And I got back the optical viewfinder!
For now, I intend to keep using both the P7100 and A2000IS. I've resisted the urge to upgrade to a DSLR because I didn't really want interchangeable lenses.
This year, I've also bought a Canon Powershot SX230HS for my wife (who needed its 14x zoom to take pictures of birds) and a Nikon Coolpix L23 for my daughter (entry level price, and pink). And a Genius G-Shot 501 (basic & even cheaper, fixed focus) for my son. That's quite a lot of cameras!
The first camera I had access to was my mother's Agfa Click III. It took 120 format film rolls, and made square 6 x 6 (cm) negatives. Black and white film was all I (and my parents) used in those days. We didn't shoot a lot: the price of film and processing was a bit too steep. And our prints would mostly be 6 x 6 as well: enlargement was costly business.
It was a simple, robust mechanical device with nothing electrical in it at all. No batteries, for one!
It had a fixed focus lens. It had a lever to the left of the lens to choose between three preset aperture options: a small aperture for 'sunny', a larger aperture for 'cloudy', and an even larger aperture with a yellow filter. There was no iris: the lever operated a kind of rotating diaphragm which had these three circular holes of different diameters.
The shutter release was a lever too, mounted to the right of the lens. There was a single shutter speed on offer: that was all that a purely mechanical system, and a rather simple one at that, could do.
There was a knob to turn the take-up reel to advance the film. After taking a snap, you turned it anti-clockwise, while keeping an eye on a round red-glass window on the camera back, which showed the frame number (printed on the film backing) as it came sliding by. There was no interlocking: if you forgot to turn the knob, the shutter would still click, exposing over your previous snap. And if you hadn't advanced the film enough, the shutter will click equally promptly—giving you overlapping frames. The only protection was that the knob wouldn't turn the other way.
Interestingly, there was no rewind crank—there was no need for one. When the film got over, it was all wound around the take up reel, which you took out for processing. The pay-out reel was now empty—you took it out, and put it into the place vacated by the old take-up reel.
There was an optical viewfinder, through which you looked to compose the shot. There was no flash, but there was a hot shoe for one. And that was it!
Years passed. Some time in my undergraduate days, I bought an Agfa Snapper 35, a basic 35 mm camera.
This, too, was a purely mechanical device: no batteries yet! Not even an in-built flash (though there was a hot shoe.) The shutter release was now a button, and the film was in a 135 format cartridge instead of on a bare roll. By now, color film was commonly available, so I shot in color.
The film advance mechanism was a thumb-wheel. You turned it till it stopped with a 'click' at the next frame—and what's more, it was interlocked so that if you didn't do it after a shot, the shutter won't click for the next one. The 135 cartridge now necessitated a film rewind crank, for use when the roll ran out.
This was still a fixed focus camera with a single fixed shutter speed. Like the Click III, it had three aperture settings: 'sunny', 'cloudy' and 'flash'. The 'flash' setting had an aperture that was apparently the same size as 'sunny', but this setting would additionally trigger the flash hot-shoe.
This camera also had a lens cap, which you had to remember to take off. You just looked through the viewfinder, clicked ... and hoped.
More time passed. I now had a job, one that took me to the United States for months at a time. This was the early nineteen nineties, and for a young middle-class Indian guy, this was consumerist heaven.
In these trips, I took quite a lot of photos with disposable 35mm cameras, usually Kodak. I'd get the pictures developed and printed at the neighborhood supermarket, and it all worked out swell!
I also bought a couple of regular cameras. The last of those was a Focal PC620D. The obvious difference between this and the Snapper 35 was that this camera needed batteries.
A pair of AA cells was needed to drive a motorized film transport system. The film would automatically advance to the next frame after every shot, and automatically rewind when the film ran out.
The same AA cells also powered a built in flash. It could be set to 'off'. It could be set to 'fill-in', in which case it would fire every time. It could also be set to 'auto', where the camera decided when to fire the flash. The auto-flash logic used the inputs from two sensors in the camera:
- One sensor would read the DX-coded ISO rating of the loaded film cartridge
- The other sensor would measure the ambient illumination: a basic light metering mechanism
Otherwise, it was an ordinary fixed focus, fixed aperture and fixed shutter speed 35mm film camera with an optical viewfinder. One advantage over the Snapper was that, instead of a separate lens cap, there was a sliding lens cover that wouldn't allow the shutter to click when closed.
Eventually, in 1998, I got myself a Samsung Maxima Zoom AF Fuzzy Logic (this may of may not be the same as their AF Slim Zoom model: photos on the Internet appear identical except for the shade of the plastic, but I can't tell for sure). As it turned out, this ended up being the most advanced 35mm film camera I owned.
This has all the features the Focal PC620D had—the quartz date-back, the motorized film transport and the auto flash. But it had more.
This was the first camera I owned that needed a shutter 'half-press'. Because it had auto-focus. The focusing mechanism was active infra-red, which would work for 20 ft or so. I guess this range was good enough, because beyond that, the depth of focus would stretch to infinity anyway. There was a button to deliberately focus at infinity.
Speaking of focus, in this camera the focal length could be varied between 35 and 70mm at the press of 'W/T' buttons (another first for me). In other words, it offered 2x zoom (optical of course.) Specifically, this was power zoom.
This camera also used its light sensor for more than just the auto-flash decision: it had auto-exposure. It probably had a fixed-sized circular aperture (given the focal length, the f-number was fixed.) It would therefore choose the appropriate exposure by varying the shutter speed under electronic (microprocessor) control.
Actually, the microprocessor is what made this camera different from my previous ones. The obvious visible difference was the user interface: instead of per-function switches, this camera had a basic menu system displayed on a black & white LCD screen. There were two buttons to navigate it: a 'flash' button to cycle between the flash options, and a 'mode' button to cycle through everything else.
The microprocessor allowed it to offer many software controlled features. I haven't actually used most of them, and I have lost the manual, so the list below is partly from memory and partly from the manual of another similar camera from Samsung:
- A 'bulb' mode, where the shutter would stay open for as long as the shutter button was depressed.
- An optional pre-set exposure compensation of +1.5EV
- An automatic zoom function where the camera itself took a guess at composing the picture--that was the 'fuzzy logic' bit I suppose.
- Timer features: to take a shot after so many seconds, or to repeatedly take shots every so many minutes, and so on.
- Multiple exposures over the same frame by not advancing the frame after a shot (I could get this for free with the Click III, but not after that!)
The film and its processing was much more affordable now, of course, but the cost of each frame wasn't zero. An illustrative number would be, say 10 rupees per snap, considering the film, its development, and the first print (which I always got, not being very good at judging a negative.)
So I didn't really experiment. I used it a lot for snapshots, though, to capture a lot of memories. It stayed with me from 1998 to early 2007. It is still with me, but it doesn't work any more.
Circa 2001, somewhat by mistake, I acquired my first digital camera—a Fujifilm Finepix 2600 Zoom. It recorded 2 megapixels, had a 3x optical zoom, would shoot video (without sound), and was quite a capable camera for its time. It even had an optical viewfinder—something which compacts of today usually omit. But as it turns out I didn't use it much.
It's shape was somewhat awkward. It was too thick for me to hold comfortably. It was powered by 2 NiMH AA rechargeable cells, and one set of charged cells didn't last anywhere as long as the battery of my Samsung film camera. It used a 32 MB SmartMedia card for storage, and 60 photos or less would fill it up.
All this would have been acceptable (after all, I was used to 36 exposure film rolls) but for the real killer: the labs around where I lived used to charge simply too much for prints from digital cameras! Many times more than prints from film, actually. Maybe they were trying to make up for the cost of film and development that they were losing out on? But whatever the reason, this resulted in the camera not seeing much use. Which is a pity, because it isn't a bad camera. I still have it, and it works well enough.
In 2007, the Samsung broke—and for a couple of years I fell back on a Kodak KB-12 that happened to be lying around the house. This was a very basic 35mm film camera. Compared to my my old Snapper 35, this one had only a single aperture, and a built in flash that would fire every time (unless I'd removed the batteries from the camera, of course! The batteries weren't needed for anything else.) The lens was protected by a sliding lens cover that locked out the shutter when closed (as in the Focal PC620D).
Later, in 2008, I got a Nokia E71. It is a smartphone with a reasonable digital camera: 3.2 megapixels, and auto focus. While I've used the phone extensively, I've not really used it as a camera that much. If fact, it's only recently I figured out that it's camera was, in fact, auto focus, and that the 'T' key did what a 'half-press' does in other cameras. I sincerely hope that I'll use it more effectively henceforth. Being 'the camera that's always with me', it has taken quite a few unusual photographs for me: such as a top-view of a Shinkansen, or ice-fields of Greenland from an airplane window.
Finally, in 2009, I went digital. I got myself a Canon Powershot A2000IS. It shoots 10 megapixels, has 6x optical zoom, and is a lovely compact camera overall. It takes 2 AA alkaline cells, which I get everywhere, and a pair lasts reasonably long. It shoots only in 'auto' and 'program', however (which was good enough for me to begin with.) Unfortunately, like most compacts, it does not have an optical viewfinder. You are supposed to compose using the LCD, but this can be difficult when out in the sun.
With digital, I began experimenting. And this year (2011), looking for a bit more control and a somewhat larger sensor, I acquired a Nikon Coolpix P7100. It shoots 10 megapixels too, and has a similar 7.1x optical zoom. But I now have Aperture Priority, Shutter Priority and Manual modes available, and a built in neutral-density filter should I need one. Also a bigger sensor—about twice the area of that on the A2000IS. And I got back the optical viewfinder!
For now, I intend to keep using both the P7100 and A2000IS. I've resisted the urge to upgrade to a DSLR because I didn't really want interchangeable lenses.
This year, I've also bought a Canon Powershot SX230HS for my wife (who needed its 14x zoom to take pictures of birds) and a Nikon Coolpix L23 for my daughter (entry level price, and pink). And a Genius G-Shot 501 (basic & even cheaper, fixed focus) for my son. That's quite a lot of cameras!
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