Kids these days

jano said:
Where on earth are you guys finding all these people aged 25-30 who like photography? I often times feel I'm the only one in that age group, because all I run into are old pharts, and they've all moved on to digital. Not many film shooters left *shrug*
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i must be lucky. a number of my friends still enjoy using film cameras. i'm a little past your cutoff at 32, but close enough i hope. it probably has to do with the circles i run in too. i'm a designer by trade, and my wife is a photographer, so i see it on a professional level (as well as on a hobby level). i also live right around the corner from midwest photo exchange which means film, supplies, and used cameras are easy to come by. that said, whenever i see any middle or high school students, they always seem to be using digital cameras...or worse, camera-phones :bang:
 
Speak Up, Young People.

Speak Up, Young People.

Okay, I'm not literally so young, but at 31 I think I can cut the mustard pretty well. Let's say I "bridge the gap", so to speak. At the very least, I've been acquiring cameras whose ages are getting progressively older. Pretty soon I'll be chiseling images into a stone tablet.

Thing is, I don't see many other manual/film/vintage cameras out there, slung over shoulders or at eye level. Believe me, I've looked - but when someone happens by with a Spotmatic or - gasp - an Olympus RC/SP, I'm quite gratified. I've yet to see an FSU RF, though.

Hopefully the legions of photo students looking for their first camera will stumble upon the treasure trove of "old iron" out there, waiting to be purchased or traded. It's nice to know that I'm part of a "younger" crowd here on RFF still willing to make photos the old-fashioned way. Notwithstanding my own Canon 10D, of course.

And Keegan, by the way - I loved your testimonial. Well-done.


Cheers,
--joe.
 
I'm 21! Heavens, and I thought I was the youngest on this forum.

At least I can take consolation in that I look like I'm 17. (1.65m tall, which isn't enough to look through the viewfinder when my camera's mounted on a Manfrotto 055)

I give darkroom lessons in the college photo society, and it's very satisfying to see that some young people are still interested in film. it has something to do with patience, and taking the time and effort to learn a process that is the antithesis of instant gratification. Quite difficult in an ADHD digital world.

Clarence
 
If only I had a dime for every time someone asked me if my Minox was a digital....
Went to an antique car sown a while back. A pal proved to me that he could assemble an entire model A Ford from repro parts.
Fine Woodworking once put a picture of Norm Abrams on the cover. The power vs. hand tool flame war in the letters to the editor lasted for six months.
My brother in law makes chain male shirts. Googleing chain male gave 2,700,000 hits.

It only takes a relatively small number of enthusiasts to sustain an archaic technology. There are a hell of a lot of 35mm cameras floating around.
 
Good to see some young people on the forum. I'm 24....My first camera was a Nikon N50 followed by a Pentax K1000. I sold the N50 quickly and shot the K1000 for a couple years while living over seas. I have some great old photos of middle school and High School all taken with the 50mm f/2.

Ive had numerous film cameras and never owned a digital. I would like to have a 20d so I can mount my Contax SlR lenses on it.

This forum is great and I have really learned alot. Photo.net is where I started reading though. People here are a lot nicer though 🙂
 
years ago while at work...my wife wanted to read up on the (then) new guy richie film "snatch". so she just typed in snatch.com. big mistake 😱
 
yeah...we all got a kick out of it. she was actually covering the front desk while the receptionist was at lunch. too funny. i was like "honey...what did you think you'd get?!" hehehe
 
Surprisingly, I spot another RF user about once a week either in Manhattan or BK. So far, they've all been between 25 and 35, and I'm thirty. Most carry Bessa's while I've also seen black MP's, M7's, and an A La Carte. I have yet to spot another Zeiss user though. I also see a lot of vintage SLR's.

It's the old(er) guys using the digi's. At least here.

-grant
 
grantray said:
Surprisingly, I spot another RF user about once a week either in Manhattan or BK. So far, they've all been between 25 and 35, and I'm thirty. Most carry Bessa's while I've also seen black MP's, M7's, and an A La Carte. I have yet to spot another Zeiss user though. I also see a lot of vintage SLR's.

It's the old(er) guys using the digi's. At least here.
Click to expand...
Yesterday, I went with galfriend to the Brooklyn Botanical Garden for what I hoped would be a calm, late-morning stroll. Wrong-o: seemed like every noisy school class in the nabe was there. Also present was a group of older gents (older than me, anyway...), all of whom probably belong to the same camera club, tripods in hand, big-zoomed dSLRs over the shoulder, bags and belt-pouches loaded for...something. Next to the greenhouse, someone with an Olympus 5050 looked at my Hexars and asked if these were the new Lumix dSLRs he'd heard about. I felt a touch like Tom Cruise in The Last Samauri (memo to self: time to upgrade your Analogy Generator). Worth a chuckle. But the weather was glorious, and the cherry blossoms beckoned...


- Barrett
 
amateriat said:
Yesterday, I went with galfriend to the Brooklyn Botanical Garden for what I hoped would be a calm, late-morning stroll. Wrong-o: seemed like every noisy school class in the nabe was there. Also present was a group of older gents (older than me, anyway...), all of whom probably belong to the same camera club, tripods in hand, big-zoomed dSLRs over the shoulder, bags and belt-pouches loaded for...something. Next to the greenhouse, someone with an Olympus 5050 looked at my Hexars and asked if these were the new Lumix dSLRs he'd heard about. I felt a touch like Tom Cruise in The Last Samauri (memo to self: time to upgrade your Analogy Generator). Worth a chuckle. But the weather was glorious, and the cherry blossoms beckoned...


- Barrett
Click to expand...

This past February during my last visit to Tucson I had a similar experience. There is a downtown area just south of the Convention Center that is undergoing gentrification with many early adobe houses being renovated. At the same time there are also pockets of urban decay such that it makes for interesting "juxtaposition" shots etc. My wife and I were shooting down there (until next trip I only have SLR stuff out there) - wandering from street to steet. As we were working our way back to our starting point we saw a group of seniors (at least to us) emerge from a couple of vans toting a variety of dSLRs and assorted gear. Yep, same set up - camera club on a "shoot". I held out my F3 (and my wife the F100) proudly as we looked down our noses at the digi-geezers! 😛


[Oh, good thing I'd left the D-100 in the car or they might have thought I was one of them! 😀 ]
 
ok, interesting thread ! Let state I'm 57, not so young. A couple of week ago I went visit an furniture/architecture/creative international fair in Milano with an hall dedicated to the "new talent" where it was alllowed to take photo. I think I was the only one among hundreds, or even more, people with a camera. with a FILM camera. Everyone else had a digit camera. I took opportunity to make some portraitrs of these creative people (maybe someone will be famous in future!) , what surprise me were two girls, I asked if I could take a couple of photo, they answered yes, I took out my Nikon FM2 (fully manual; sorry my RFF was for for a check control) and then they said " ohhh, you are a photographer !!!" this happened among other hundreds people taking digital pictures!!! Does it mean anything ?
ciao, rob
 
robert blu said:
I think I was the only one among hundreds, or even more, people with a camera. with a FILM camera. Everyone else had a digit camera. I took opportunity to make some portraitrs of these creative people (maybe someone will be famous in future!) , what surprise me were two girls, I asked if I could take a couple of photo, they answered yes, I took out my Nikon FM2 (fully manual; sorry my RFF was for for a check control) and then they said " ohhh, you are a photographer !!!" this happened among other hundreds people taking digital pictures!!! Does it mean anything ?
ciao, rob
Click to expand...

Hello Robert,

I think it means that digital cameras (yea, even digital SLRs) have become so common, so ubiquitous that carrying one is no longer a viable sign that the owner is a Photographer. I can imagine middle-class fathers owning dSLRs with kit lenses that they take out maybe once every month or so.

But carrying a film camera, and shooting with it. That's Photography.

Clarence

PS: I tried to make all this sound ironic, but I couldn't.
 
one time, someone was trying to argue to me that his digital camera was better because it "took better pictures, and it did it all automaticly". i responded: "if i wanted better pictures taken for me, id hire a photographer"..
 
I am a second year photography student here, 21 years of age, and ive done the digital thing, I got the Canon 20D and some excellent Canon glass but my first camera was a old AE1 which I still used today. I used film a lot and got caught in some of the hype I guess, my digital has been great and I have taken a lot of photos with it but I really do prefer the look and feel of film overall. In fact I only seem to pick up my digital now a day when I either have homework that needs to be done fast or some job thing, otherwise I take a film body and load it up with hp5 or xp2 and go shoot away. I hope my upcoming Leica purchase will fuel my film lust even more.
 
From what I can see, it appears that the majority of those returning to film are of younger age; in fact I see a lot of more mature photographers moving to digital. For that matter the move to film is also typified by the use of earlier cameras which allow the photographer to take a more active part in the creation of the photographs.

It is a buyers market now for such cameras; the original owners are dumping them for the "convenience" of digital, or their offsprings disposing of them. When you see an eBay item description on a Praktica L-series camera where the shutter release button is referred to as the "image capture button", then you know you can get a bargain!
 
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