For pretty much my entire adult life I have wanted to own a proper camera. Growing up, my dad was a freelance photographer. He would do family portraits, graduation photos, weddings, and nature photos. The nature photos were (and still are) his favorite, but he doesn't get out to take photos as much as he used to.
Growing up we had a dark room in our house. It started in the garage when I was very young, but my parents eventually added an addition to the house and when they did that he carved out a special space for his darkroom. That darkroom is now his office where he sits at his computer managing his very intricate Microsoft Flight Simulator setup. He basically has a full plane cockpit in his office!
My dad is color blind, so our darkroom was black and white only. That doesn't mean we didn't take color photos, we just had to send those out to someplace to get process. Back before the days where you could just go to the drug store and get them processed, you had to send them out to a lab.
Credit where it is due, my post today is inspired by this post by @ericvancewalton and some of the memories it gave me being surrounded by photography. In fact, this would probably be a good post for his #memoirmonday initiative, if it actually fit one of the prompts!
Sorry, back to my story. Black and white film on the other hand we processed ourselves right at home. I can still remember the smells and sounds from the darkroom as he would work in there. It was almost like magic watching a plain white piece of paper come to life as it hit the chemicals and the image started to form on it.
Sadly, when we were younger photography is something my sister bonded with my dad more than I did. It wasn't until I got older that I really started exploring my love for the craft.
The photo above is the first camera my dad ever owned. It was purchased for him by his parents. It was a surprise to him because they really didn't have a lot of money. Something like this was a definite luxury more than a necessity.
From what I could tell online, it was a pretty standard and common camera for that period. You could get them at Sears, Roebuck & Co. as it was their house brand. Thinks "members mark" at Walmart or "Amazon Essentials". Similar to today, the cameras were made by different manufacturers to certain specifications and then branded as Tower.
It is only recently that this camera came back into my dad's possession via his parents. Very nice that they held onto it for so long. I'm guessing he had either outgrown it or forgotten to take it with him by the time he headed off to Vietnam.
As far back as I can remember my dad has always been a Nikon guy. The F3 in the photo above was his bread and butter. It had a motor drive on it and I'm not kidding you when I say that thing weighed close to ten pounds with a full zoom lens on it. I was always terrified of dropping it and breaking it anytime I had to handle it.
He also had a Mamiya RB67. If you aren't sure what that is, just go ahead and Google it. It's a medium format camera. In the most simplistic terms, just imagine medium format equals more megapixels than the standard 35mm you may have grown up with, although I am sure there is much more to it than that.
As we got older my dad sold his RB and bought us all (my mom, sister, and myself). My mom and sister both got nice camera bodies where you could change out the lenses, and I got a Nikon fixed focus point and shoot camera. I have photos from pretty much every state East of the Mississippi with that camera.
I went a long time without owning a camera at all, then when I moved out I bought a FujiFilm bridge camera like the one you see third from the left in the photo above. That camera was only 3 Megapixels with a max of 6 after some fancy onboard processing by Fuji, but it still takes some of the best photos I have ever seen.
The opening photo was taken with that Fuji camera. It doesn't hurt that my niece was such a great model at the time. I honestly don't think I have a single bad photo of her to be honest.
My dad also picked up an updated Mamiya 645 somewhere along the way, but he ended up selling it I can't remember when.
Now, all of those Nikons and Mamiya's are long gone. With the advent of digital photography the value in the dropped pretty significantly. It's crazy how much digital has disrupted the photography sector. I remember when I was a kid if a photo wasn't quite right my dad had to send it out to a lab and artists would actually retouch the photo by hand. Now, you simply click a button and AI takes care of it. I'll be posting a bit more about that tomorrow.
My dad does have a proper Nikon DSLR camera that he takes out from time to time. He's even been asked to take some wedding photos again. In fact, my cousin's kid is getting married and they are asking all the guests not to take photos during the wedding (besides the hired photographer). However, they told my dad he was the exception to that rule because they know he knows what he is doing.
Don't get me wrong, I think my Pixel 8 Pro takes some pretty dang good photos, but something has me itching to throw four AA batteries back in my Fuji sitting her on the floor and seeing what I can do with it. You better believe I will have that thing in full black and white mode.
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