Keith
The best camera is one that still works!
This is my 20th year. 🙂
22 years on RFF
- Thread starter xayraa33
- Start date
- Latest activity Latest activity:
- Replies 60
- Views 2K
Archiver
Veteran
😢❤️
It's funny, but I'm already thinking where am I going to be in 20, 30, maybe 40 years and wanting to make the most of every day. Being on the other side of 50 is a bit of a wake up call. Seeing family members pass away in my 30s started me thinking about my own mortality, and with every person that passes, the more apparent it becomes.
I shoot a lot of young athletes, and I often say that my highest hope for my work with them is that they can look back on it in 20, 30 years from now, show it to their families and say, 'I did that, I was there'.
It would be superb if we're still on RFF twenty years from now, arguing over the M22 and the M-VR6 which shoots holographic captures, and putting our latest street shots in W/NW threads. Maybe I'll even still be using my M9, who knows!
Bingley
Veteran
Congrats! Time flies, doesn’t it? My 20 year anniversary on this site is coming up in early October.
steveyork
Well-known
Approaching 18 years. Been all over the photography map in that time, but came back to rangefinders 7-8 years ago. Ha, ha, proof that life's a circle.
rbiemer
Unabashed Amateur
I can't recall how I got here; wasn't in any photo forum before I joined.
Likely --almost certainly!--I was searching for info about FSU cameras.
And what I found here when I looked around was why I stayed.
The ocean of good info here made the civility icing on the cake.
Because of RFf, my photography has become better.
Hmm. Might be interesting to see what our 20yr+ members' photos look like now compared to how they looked when we first got her.
The world and my life have changed this touchstone is pretty cool.
Likely --almost certainly!--I was searching for info about FSU cameras.
And what I found here when I looked around was why I stayed.
The ocean of good info here made the civility icing on the cake.
Because of RFf, my photography has become better.
Hmm. Might be interesting to see what our 20yr+ members' photos look like now compared to how they looked when we first got her.
The world and my life have changed this touchstone is pretty cool.
Bolo Kukus
Well-known
I've been around since 2006. The year I retired for the first time. I had been in interior design architecture for 15 years and I was almost completely burnt out. That year stretched out to 18 months. I then returned to my sweat shop and kept my nose on the grindstone for six more years.
Now late 70s and retired for the second (likely the last) time. As the old saying goes, I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up. I do wonder who was the first to say this. Maybe a certain POTUS with a taste for Big Macs...
Indeed, life's a mostly a circle. Or maybe more a seemingly endless round of circles.
But it's more fun if we look at it as a merry-go-round - round and round and round we go, often repeating the same things, with the cameras we have and love and use and use and reuse and reuse and enjoy and enjoy.
Contax Gs, a Lumix, a Leica LTR, Nikkormats, three beaut 1950s German folders, and four Rollei TLRs.
Now and then I look at my stash of Nikons and sigh. A D90, two D700s, two D800s, a Z6 and a Z5, 12 D lenses and two Z lenses, about to make the latter three when I find a good used 24-70 4.0 at a price I'm willing to pay for it.
Why? I haven't a ready answer to this. One thought comes to my mind. Why not?
Last edited:
pvdhaar
Peter
I joined the same year RFF started; that was in 2003.
The best part is that RFF was and has remained the most welcoming forum on the net for all things photography (in contrast to pnet, where the Leica subforum became absolutely toxic at that time)..
The sad part is that we lost many great people along the way, people like Al Kaplan and Roger Hicks.
The best part is that RFF was and has remained the most welcoming forum on the net for all things photography (in contrast to pnet, where the Leica subforum became absolutely toxic at that time)..
The sad part is that we lost many great people along the way, people like Al Kaplan and Roger Hicks.
Well, @SolaresLarrave, Francisco, was the main recruiter early on. He found RFF on Day 1 and posted about it on the PopPhoto forum, where many of us regularly viewed his viral post about the Canonet.
Michael Markey
Veteran
Eighteen years for me .... time passes quickly
Bolo Kukus
Well-known
And you are one of our distinguished elders. Good on you!!
David Murphy
Veteran
Congrats on a long run here as a trusted and knowledgeable member!
Ray Kilby
Established
20 years too. Crumbs.
MichaelM7
Established
19 years in July. Oh my god.
Richard G
Veteran
Life is full of small miracles, some we are in the middle of but don’t realize. We are warned about this with our children. I joined my photographic group through an interest in old doors and meeting a guy out the back of my office who was in socks and sandals. We talked about lenses, particularly Zeiss. He once shared a train carriage with Lord Clark to shoot some scenes of the 1970s BBC documentary The Romantic Rebellion I had watched with my father. He became a friend and mentor.
Getting my M2 serviced in Melbourne in 2007 by a Wetzlar born and trained technician was thanks to photo.net. But I never gelled with that forum. I would regularly hear of Rangefinder Forum, but stupidly never went to look, until 2009.
What we find here is people from all over the world with a common interest, and a similar sensibility. We’ve got to know each other. A few of us can be prickly and rub people up the wrong way. The odd skirmish needs settling, but the guys who increase the temperature are very much valued and given latitude, and have their firm defenders, and the dust almost always settles.
The sophistication of the discussion is really quite something. People here can write. And spell. I just saw a post by Freakscene quoting The Emigrants by WG Sebald.
The miracle of RFF is still going. It has already seen some of us out, Barnwulf in particular from my point of view. There was a fine mid-western gentleman, and a wonderful explorer of found geometry. We had a long correspondence via DMs.
We are still here thanks to Stephen Gandy’s genius. And thanks to everyone else here.
Getting my M2 serviced in Melbourne in 2007 by a Wetzlar born and trained technician was thanks to photo.net. But I never gelled with that forum. I would regularly hear of Rangefinder Forum, but stupidly never went to look, until 2009.
What we find here is people from all over the world with a common interest, and a similar sensibility. We’ve got to know each other. A few of us can be prickly and rub people up the wrong way. The odd skirmish needs settling, but the guys who increase the temperature are very much valued and given latitude, and have their firm defenders, and the dust almost always settles.
The sophistication of the discussion is really quite something. People here can write. And spell. I just saw a post by Freakscene quoting The Emigrants by WG Sebald.
The miracle of RFF is still going. It has already seen some of us out, Barnwulf in particular from my point of view. There was a fine mid-western gentleman, and a wonderful explorer of found geometry. We had a long correspondence via DMs.
We are still here thanks to Stephen Gandy’s genius. And thanks to everyone else here.
Freakscene
Obscure member
I met Sebald in 1997. Very interesting man. In a lot of ways he got my photography going again after a period of low activity.
Richard G
Veteran
You remind me of another of my mentors, who before he was 40 seemed to have had so many roles and met so many of the greats that he ought to have been 90.
Freakscene
Obscure member
Most of the people who I met I sought out. I met Sebald totally accidentally. I enrolled in a PhD because I didn’t know what to do; my ‘so many roles’ were mostly related to a youthful lack of focus. In my PhD my supervisor sent me to UEA to spend some time with his supervisor. I was in the copy shop at UEA with my CV hoping to get a job (I didn’t) when I struck up a conversation with a man who was clearly an academic but of what I had no idea. Once he picked up his order and I dropped off my CV, we talked for an hour or more. He talked to me about university life, local history and geography and walking, a lot about walking. In a way it was very Sebaldian. When I got back to my cubicle my supervisor’s supervisor mentioned in passing that he heard that Max had written ‘a book or two’. I then read Vertigo, The Emigrants and The Rings of Saturn. Astounded, I sent Max a very tentative message saying who I was and that I had by then read his books and that they were life changing for me (they were). He was very kind and we corresponded sporadically until he died. My supervisor, his supervisor, and Max are all dead now. I think about each of them almost daily. “And so they are ever returning to us, the dead” The Emigrants.
Last edited:
Richard G
Veteran
Wonderful story like many of yours. What a precious correspondence. A client of mine gave me The Emigrants. Sadly I have many returning. Raises interesting challenges for our understanding of time. Nabokov, who reached the core of everything he touched, had insights into what Sebald touched.
AndersG
Well-known
I joined early in December 2004, so 21+ years ago. At that time I was 27 years old, now I'm soon 49. I'm not sure where all those year passed by? And I'm still rather bad at photographing...
Cheers,
Anders
Cheers,
Anders
Muggins
Proprietor of Orphanage for Lost Cameras
The numbers are slightly different but otherwise that's pretty much my RFF experience. Brothers from another mother.
