How long have you been doing photography for? (dated 20/02/11)

How long have you been doing photography for? (dated 20/02/11)

  • < 1 year

    Votes: 13 2.1%

  • 1 year +

    Votes: 15 2.4%

  • 2 years +

    Votes: 13 2.1%

  • 3 years +

    Votes: 36 5.8%

  • 5 years +

    Votes: 69 11.1%

  • 10 years +

    Votes: 44 7.1%

  • 15 years +

    Votes: 31 5.0%

  • 20 years +

    Votes: 38 6.1%

  • 25 years +

    Votes: 25 4.0%

  • 30 years +

    Votes: 127 20.4%

  • 40 years +

    Votes: 205 33.0%

  • I don't do photography, I just like the shiny cameras.

    Votes: 6 1.0%
  • Total voters
    622
I picked up a camera the same time as my "Join Date" here. I hope I start practicing photography this summer .. maybe.
 
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20 odd years for me........ went to digital in 2005 and after 5 years I am back with films. Now digital is just for family snapshots and maybe infrared photography.........
 
Started 30 years ago with a Rollei B35, which lasted until 1995. 1996 I did ride the new/old APS wave. And I still like my Minolta Vectis S-1 equipment as my main SLR (with many lens and accessories), accompained since 2006 by the RD-3000 (digital SLR, Vectis compatible). I use this cam mostly for portraits, macro and achitecture. Different film and digital pockets I used too, but only a few remained of them.
2010 I did realize that there is a world apart from SLR and compact/pocket: Rangefinders!
Here I am now, starting with a Ricoh 500GX and finally a Hexar RF.
 
I started film photography last summer after discovering this website... I've since been developing my own film and hoping to shoot more once I get on holiday from uni...

S
 
30+ years.

Graduated college in 1978 and had two purchases planned after I started making money: a guitar and a camera. Bought both within a year. I sold the guitar last year, because I never used it anymore (a Takamine left-handed Martin copy). I still have the Olympus OM-1 with the 50/1.4. There's been a lot of film through that camera. About 1998, I started getting more lenses, more cameras, attachments, and accessories, and now I've got enough to start a business, I think, because it won't all fit in one closet.
 
My first pics I was six.
With both parents Pro Photographers I got no chance I guess...
edit: first camera Agfamatic 50 - 126 Roll
 
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I started "serious" photography in 2006 when I bought a Canon 400d kit, soon upgraded the lenses then 2 years
later I upgraded to 5D and now I 'm selling all my Canon DSLR rig to buy a Rangefinder setup :)
 
My first camera was a rather primitive roll film box that I received as a gift from my mother who used to work as a photographer for the national museum of folk arts in Munich.

I immediately started shooting a lot and spent a fair percentage of my pocket money on film and prints. The earliest photographs that I shot are in a photo album I still have, and the oldest pictures date from the summer of 1958.

I later inherited my mother's pre-war Praktiflex I (made in Dresden in 1942) with a standard and a tele lens, which I used until I left high school. I still have hundredfs of slides from these times and a binder packed full of negatives with memories of my school buddies.

As a university student, I worked during my holidays to finance a modern SLR with a set of lenses - a Konica Autoreflex T3 which at that time set standards as the first system camera with seriously functional aperture and shutter priority AE modes. Since then, I changed from Konica to Canon, and later to Nikon cameras.

I discovered RF cameras only very recently, and it changed my style of photography.
 
40+ years. I bought a pentax spotmatic and Mamiya C220 in Singapore and started developing B & W film and printing. Two years later I was printing in colour and hought a Leica 111g. I wish I still had it. I now have Nikon DSLR's, a Nikon F5 and a Bronica ETRSi.
 
I took my first pictures with a 126 Instamatic over 40 years ago. I don't recall what brand. It was a really cheap plastic camera, but I loved it. My Dad also let me snap a few pics from time to time with his Polaroid model 150. I fondly recall counting out the time and shaking the film before peeling off the paper and then wiping the print with the goo.

I bought my first SLR about 31 years ago, a Canon AE-1 Program. That's what I'd count as the start of my serious pursuit of my photographic hobby.

I gave that AE-1 Program to a family member about 5 years ago, and it is still working great.
 
2003. Seven years ago...

Interesting curve. The secondary peak at +5 years corresponds to when digital cameras came of age - when the price dropped, quality started to rival film and digital SLRs developed.

Many like me had ignored photography until the advent of digital. I've never used a film camera and never will - utterly uninterested in film.

I wonder what the curve would look like for a more general sample of the population, outside the narrow confines of RFF...
 
I started as a teenager. My father was an avid photographer (hobby). He used a Zeiss Contina and a Bolex movie camera. All he used was Agfa slide film when we lived in Germany.
 
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Brownie Box & Verichrome Pan

Brownie Box & Verichrome Pan

Summer of 1969 I bought my first "own" camera - Minolta SRT101 w/55 f1.7. First film developed was Plus-X in D76. Before that I'd used Mom's Camera, a Kodak Brownie black-box with Verichrome Pan, store-developed. I still have the camera + flash gun AND that roll of negs. Amazinly sharp (real GLASS lens). Done my own BW developing since Fall of '69, enlarging since Xmas of '72. Still have my original Ansco tank from '69.
 
I bought my first "serious" camera about 1954. A new Yashica tlr, don't remember the model, but I had to scrimp and save for a year to accumulate the $50-60 to purchase. Developed film & contact printed in the 2nd bathroom of my parents home. My first real darkroom experience (enlargers) was in the US Army, 1958-9.
 
Well I start in 1991 with an SLR a Praktica BC1 electronic. I bought the camera used for 25 pounds to use for a holiday in Malta. I must have bought it a few weeks before the holiday but never took it with me in the end as I wondered if messing around with a camera may spåoil my enjoyment. I regreted not taking it.

I got into B&W film very quickly and within a few months I bought some darkroom equipment and was developing films and printing my own photos.

Later I started working partime for a local studio shooting social functions and after a couple more years I went and worked as a cruiseship photographer.

During the cruiseship years I met my wife and came to live in Finland where I live today. For six years I worked for a nice family photographic business mainly making large prints on wide format injet printers including scanning and sometimes laying out advertising posters along with some photography jobs usually social functions, presentation evening and during the last year some wedding portraits.

I stopped working in the photography industry in 2007, I really needed the change and I am glad to get photography back as a hobby.
 
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