Am I alone? (a pity post)

Our D60 is still going strong and we use it every day (for 3 years) and even shoot sports for Brightroom.com all Summer with it. How does that expression go - "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

Hi Shutteringfocus,

Don't feel bad. I owned nothing!!

Ahhh the AE-1, my first "real" camera. I'm semi-half jealous as I've been toying with the idea of picking one up again. And what a great tool to learn with, a decent meter in it and everything else is manual control.

Not quite Ansel Adam's rudimentary, lugging a 20+lb 8x10 view camera up and down mountains take a bit of dedication, but close compared to what we have today.

Looks like a great photo. Imagine getting that shot on your AE1, you probably wouldn't have "chanced" 1600ISO film, so you'd be pushing 3200 (and be living in grain city), you would have been extremely lucky to focus on time to catch the shot. Then you would have to wind the next frame in (unless you have a motor drive) which would take a second or two, etc.

There's always a guy out there with something bigger and better - where does it end?

I was out with my G3 the other day and took a picture of a guy on a windsurfer. (I posted it here in fact). I got into converastion with a guy who had a 10D and an array of lenses. He'd bought the kit on the spur of the moment. Anyway he e-mailed me as he'd checked my site and asked could I print and send him a copy of the windsurfer picture as it was his mate on board!! With all his shooting he hadn't got a shot he was happy with. I was lucky, he wasn't. Nothing to do with equipment.

Whadda ya mean "manual everything"? My F-1 and FTb have manual everything. Your AE-1 has shutter priority exposure setting, and auto-flash with the right flash. Getting match needle manual outta the AE-1 is a real pain.

I was a college paper photog. We had 4 editions a week so was a good opportunity to get a lot of pics in the paper. I did not have the fanciest gear. I was about in the middle, in terms of newest technology. I did have a good Nikon 6006 AF body and Nikon glass (slower lenses though). It was not the top of the line F4s or even N90 that just came out. But I knew the camera.

Also one thing different I did than the others. Is when the situation called for it, I would beg, borrow, or rent what I needed to get good shots. For football games I would rent a big lens (useually a mf tamron 300 2.8 8). Now the pay versus the lens rental would be a wash. But I knew I could get pics others could not with out it, and always was paid for a pic to cover the cost. Basketball games, I would borrow a friends fathers lenses. 80-200 2.8, and a 35-70 2.8. I could not afford lenses that fast but again I improvised.

I also carried a second body. Minolta x370 and 2 plain jane minolta lenses. Definately nothing fancy. But I still had shots printed from it. The second body allowed me to have a smaller lens while a big one was on the Nikon.

There were useually 12 photogs on the paper staff. I would have about 1/5 of the pics in the paper. It was not because I was some super photographer. It's becuase I learned to work with what I had. This was at a fairly big school (35,000 students) and I was surrounded by real Pros in the photo pits. I did not let that faze me one bit. Did I dream and beg for the fancy new stuff. Yup all the time. But my $250 Minolta still sold pics. My 4th from the top of the line Nikon sold pics.

Don't fret not having the best on the block. Just know your camera. By knowing your camera, you can take much better pics than the guy down the bench with the newest fancy thing on full automatic!!

This is really long winded, and I am not a pro shooter, I went a different direction after college. Lately have thinking about giving it a try though. But looking back, I did learn a good lesson. You don't have to own the best to be the best! At least in my little world of a college newspaper.