Re-Discovering Photography

My recent journey re-discovering photography.

This time, it was a vacation that got me thinking about photography again. My wife and I repeated our honeymoon to the Virgin Islands for our 20th anniversary, but with our kids. It was a good excuse to buy a new camera. For our original honeymoon, I had purchased a Nikon D70 to replace my Nikon N80 film camera. Then about five years ago I made the switch to a mirrorless camera. I really wanted to stick with the Nikon ecosystem, but at the time, Nikon was behind in the mirrorless space, so I ended up with a Sony a6000. That camera with its kit lens and later a Sony 18-200mm F/3.5-6.3, was a trial into the mirrorless world. I liked it, but it was early days for mirrorless and although the image quality was great, the usability wasn’t quite perfected yet. It had horrible battery life, not ideal ergonomics, and the responsiveness of the viewfinder was a little lacking.

After a fair amount of research, I decided to upgrade to the Sony a6700, and it has not disappointed. Pretty much all of things I didn’t like about the a6000 have been addressed. The battery life is great, it has nicer ergonomics with an added grip, the viewfinder is much more responsive, and it has in body image stabilization. Not that you can tell in most cases, but the image quality is also better with slightly higher dynamic range, and improved autofocus.

I also invested in a pair of lenses: a Sony 16-55mm f/2.8 G and a Sony 70-350mm f/4.5-6.3 G OSS. This pair has incredible image quality and covers the full range of focal lengths I typically want for travel photography. I really feel that for an APS-C sensor, this is a perfect setup.

That trip combined with a new camera and lenses really kicked off my renewed interest in photography. I also joined an online community, Glass, and started printing and framing some of my better photos.

The Glass community has been really great. I get inspiration from looking at other people’s photography and getting feedback on which of my photos resonate with others.

Printing has been a bit of its own hobby. Its led to learning about framing and matting and even building my own wooden gallery frames. I really enjoy the whole process: capturing the photo; editing; selecting a paper; printing (Canon Pro-1000); selecting and sizing a mat; designing a frame (wood, depth/width, finish); building and finishing the frame; and finally assembling the whole thing. There is a great sense of pride in seeing the whole thing come together.

Nikon FE Most recently, a sense of nostalgia has caught up with me and I decided to go back to my film roots. I purchased a Nikon FE off of EBay along with a Nikon 50mm f/1.4 AI lens and a Nikon 105mm f/2.8 Micro-Nikkor AI-S lens. My initial plan was just to develop my own film and then scan the negatives with an old Nikon Coolscan V ED that I still have from 2004, but as I started to get more into it, I ended up setting up a whole darkroom.

That’s where I am today. I’ve developed my first roll of T-MAX 400, but haven’t done any printing yet. I’m not planning on giving up digital, but am having a lot of fun re-learning darkroom skills I haven’t used for 25 years.