Skype: littweb
I’ve been an amateur photographer all my life, getting my first camera as a young teenager (it was a nice Fujica half-frame 35mm rangefinder camera). Over time I graduated to a Pentax Spotmatic-II with a wide assortment of lenses. I found, though, as an adult with children, that what I needed most was portability and the ability to easily share pictures with family members all over the world. I was a reasonably early adopter of digital photography, with a Canon ELPH 1.1 megapixel camera that was small enough that I could carry it everywhere. The Pentax lay largely unused at that point.
I got rid of the Pentax not too much later, replacing it with a series of non-SLR cameras, including a number of underwater point-and-shoot cameras (these all died in the expected way over time, glug, glug) and a 20x super-zoom Casio EX-FH20, which had the wonderful feature that it could shoot into the past. Too long an explanation for this piece, but it’s really cool. David Pogue wrote about its big brother back in the day.
About three years ago I decided to get a DSLR (Nikon 5100) because of some work I was doing with a photography startup, since defunct. It takes great photos, but it’s big an heavy, and swapping lenses is certainly inconvenient.
I still have an Olympus TG-820 underwater camera, and the Casio is still around, but I find that the camera I use most, as do most people, is the one in my phone. By now these take really great pictures (I have a Samsung Galaxy sS7, which has a 12 megapixel camera). It’s always with me, is fully connected to whatever cloud storage I desire (I tend to use Google Photos, since the S7 is an Android), and unless I am shooting “special circumstances,” it’s my go-to camera. I’ve traveled recently and taken the Casio if I need a long lens, the Olympus if I’m going to be in or near water, and otherwise just the phone. The poor Nikon just stays home most of the time.
As a semi-serious photographer I feel terribly guilty about this, but technology has made (d)SLRs obsolete twice in my lifetime.
Now, if someone can give me a really good way to organize all these damned photos...