What were you shooting in 2001!

I was shooting for the Oregon State University yearbook in 2001 using a Canon Elan A2E. It was the last year that the yearbook used film as we got a fleet of Nikon D100 bodies the next year. I still miss the eye controlled auto focus of the Canon. It worked surprisingly well.
 
In 2001, I used mostly medium format film.

It wasn't until 2004 that I started in earnest using digital capture, a Canon 20D that I still have and it works just fine! Never been to the repair shop.

I had a devil of a time learning Photoshop. But once I climbed up the learning curve, part of the way, the steep learning curve, then it began to make sense to me. Next big change, for me, was going 100% RAW capture and going to Mac computers.
 
Wasn't shooting much then, but I still had my old Nikon F. Late that year I purchased my first digital - Canon PowerShot s110 Digital ELPH that came with a whopping 8mb cf card. Huge!
 
Leica Ms and Leica screwmount cameras and their Japanese copies were and still are my daily cameras, with the odd OM 1, Praktica, and Canon high end SLRS for longer lenses and macro use and the Kiev and Zorki RF camera for a devil-may -care experience once in a blue moon.
 
In 2001 digital had not yet matured and was not a good value proposition at least not for me, so for the time I stuck with film.

I was pretty "promiscuous" and experimented with just about every system there was - more or less out of curiosity rather than dissatisfaction with what I had. And what I had was kind of, well, from the sublime to the ridiculous. I had accumulated a lot of Pentax screw mount lenses as I liked the optical and mechanical quality of them plus they were relatively cheap so I also had a couple of Pentax screw mount bodies - my favourites being the pretty and elegant little pre Spotmatic bodies. I still own perhaps 20 Pentax M42 lenses or more (I have not counted) although I have since sold some of the best and more expensive ones to fund other acquisitions.

At the other end of the spectrum I used Leica - my regular camera was a Leica M4P with contemporary 35mm f2, 50mm f2 and 90mm f2.8 Leica glass but by then I had also bought an M3 with a Summarit 50mm and a 111a with Elmar 50mm. By that time I had also bought some Nikon gear and a few old Canon FL cameras which had a similar appeal to the Pentax screw mount ones - built like a brick outhouse and cheap. The one serious late model camera I owned back then and still own is a Nikon f801s but by 2001 my main love was for older cameras (these new-fangled AF ones being too easy).
 
Either Nikon FA or Pentax MX, MEsuper, Rollei 35 and for work a Kodak DC something digital camera. Still have the film gear, the Kodak digital is long gone.
 
In 2001, I remember shooting a group of people and one of the kids in the group said, "Look Mom, an antique camera." At first, I was insulted until I realized that my 30-year old Nikon F2 was old enough to qualify as an antique.

However, soon after that, I updated to a Nikon F4.


Nikon F2 + 18mm lens by Narsuitus, on Flickr
 
css9450 said:
Fair enough. That could be another thread: "What were you shooting with in 1956 (or 1959)?" Of course, you'd probably have to be at least 75 or so to participate...
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Sure. But (for example) I was mostly shooting M-series Leicas in 2008, the year of the financial meltdown, with the addition by last year (Brexit, Trumpism) of far more Nikon than I'd have thought likely until the Df came out. All I'm saying is that if you subtract the hysteria, 2001 may not be all that important in the long run. Especially not to non-Americans. After all, just after I left university, one of the pubs I used to drink in was blown up by the (mostly American-funded) IRA. At the time I was using screw-mount Leicas and had just bought my first 5x4 inch camera, a Dawes.

All I'm suggesting is that it is possible, especially if you are fairly young, to overestimate the importance of local events that happened in your lifetime. In 2001 I'd have been using mostly M-series Leicas but really, there are dates that are more important to me. And to most non-Americans. Frances and I were still much concerned with her recovery from breast cancer and with a prospective move to France.

For that matter, I'd suggest that anyone who can remember what equipment they were using at a particular time is more likely to remember it from a personal viewpoint rather than from the national news. More "It was 2001 so it must have been..." than "Gosh, in 2001 it was..."

For me, photographically, 2001 was much like the previous decade and the following 5 or more years. By all means tie it to 2001 -- a good idea -- but don't imagine that 2001 was necessarily very different from 1998 or 2004.

Cheers,

R;.
 
In 2001 I was shooting with most of the same cameras I use today: motorized Nikon F, F2, FA bodies (and occasionally Nikon N65 auto focus body), and S3 and SP rangefinder bodies. Since then I've added motorized F3P and FG bodies as well as an Cosina Voigtlander R2S rangefinder.
Digital? Not then and not now.
Robert
 
All my darkroom equipment was in storage in 2001, having moved across the country two years earlier.
I had a Nikon F3 with a bunch of lenses and a Leica M5 with a 50mm Summacron. I shot only color negative film and had it processed and one of the local one-hour photo places (there were several to choose from). I would scan the prints on a flat bed scanner to post photos on the internet.
It would be 5 or 6 years before I bought a digital camera.

Mike B.
 
I wasn't shooting much in 01 but I had my Canon AE-1 P. I didn't really get back into shooting til about 06 when I bought my Canonet QL17GIII.
 
Early that year I got a new Voigtlander Bessa L with 15 and 25mm lenses. I took that and a favorite Minolta CLE on a several-week vacation in southern Spain near Málaga with side trips to Seville, Tangiers and a few other places. Not a lot of photography the rest of the year...

As for the impact of the events of September, it's certainly of more import to US, but the reminders of it serve to keep us less complacent.
 
Nikons, FA and FM plus 5 Nikkor lenses. Still have all of them but haven't used the bodies since converting to Rangefinder photography in 2003.
 
2001. Ages ago. I had a cheap Minolta with the kit zoom (I have no idea of the model), but wasn't really that into it. I have two photos that I kept from that camera, one of my now elderly dog when she was a pup, and another of me and my (now) wife on a road trip standing in front of the cheap motel we stayed at the previous night. Neither photo was taken in 2001 though.
Too busy riding skateboards, drinking beer, and going out all night to have any time (or money) for photography.
 
What were you shooting in 2001!

Canon EOS 5 and Olympus mju II. Still have both and in excellent condition. However the grip on the Canon became sticky as the covering has started to deteriorate.
J :)


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I still haven't moved into digital, so I was using in 2001 essentially what I'm using now, shooting color slides:

MF: TLRs (Minolta Autocord CdS-III, Mamiya C330f, Rolleiflex T, Yashica-Mat EM).

35mm: (Minolta X-570 + winder, Minolta SR-T 101, SR-T 102, SR-T 201, Canonet GIII QL 17).

- Murray
 
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