Photography
- Updated 2025-08-01 01:11 UTC
I’m seldom more than a few metres from a camera. Ever since I played with an early Pentax film single lens reflex (SLR) camera at around the age of 15, I fell in love with the concept of ‘seeing through the lens‘ – rather than through a separate viewfinder. I also rather enjoyed the sound the shutter makes on a quality camera! Come to think of it, I still do!
Some of the digital cameras I’ve been using…
- Olympus C1400XL (1998).
- Olympus C2500XL (2000).
- Olympus E-20 (2001).
- Fuji S1 Pro (2002).
- Fuji S2 Pro (2003).
- Fuji S3 Pro (2005).
- Fuji S9600 (2007) – okay, okay – I know this isn’t really a proper SLR but it is a fantastic camera. It has a 28-200mm (35mm equivalent) non-removable lens and the viewfinder is electronic. But you can connect studio lights, cable release and do most of the other stuff without risking getting dust all over the CCD when you change the lens.
- Pentax K10D (2008) – a thoroughly fantastic camera. Means I can use all my old manual Pentax lenses too! This was subsequently replaced with a K20D, cheap off eBay when smoke poured ot of my K10, for reasons as yet unknown.
- Fuji HS20 EXR – I know this isn’t really a proper SLR either. But at around £200 and with a 24-300mm (35mm equivalent) it is s damned fine camera.
- Panasonic Lumix DMC-GX7 mirrorless (2014). I’ve become a big fan of µ4/3. In addition to a handful of dedicated µ4/3 AF lenses, I have acquired a large selection of vintage MF glass that works perfectly with it.
- Panasonic Lumix DMC-GX80 mirrorless (2023 – second hand).
Point and shoot cameras
- Until recently I also had a tiny Panasonic Lumix LX1 with its variable aspect ratio and Leica lens, tucked in my shirt pocket.
- But these days I have my trusty Ulefone Armor 3w rooted smartphone which has a pretty good Sony camera module, built-in. And you can wash it under the tap when it gets grubby!
Professional assignments include…
- Corporate ‘mug-shots’.
- Events.
- Interesting weddings
- Advertising.
- Calendars.
- Pictures for websites.
Though to be perfectly honest, I’m mostly an enthusiastic amateur, who loves taking pictures. In 1998 I ditched my 35mm SLR’s and ‘went digital’. Prior to this I used to scan directly from 35mm slide or negative using a Kodak RFS 2035 Professional film scanner. The quality was excellent but scanning was a boring, time-consuming process. Since then I have used a variety of digital SLR’s and have become a total convert to digital media.
I understand the arguments concerning resolution of digital versus film but with digital you can take so many more pictures – and trash the ones you don’t like. No one need ever know you’ve taken a bad photo! Also, because you don’t have to worry about ‘wasting film’ you can photograph things that you normally wouldn’t consider if you were doing things the ‘old way’.
Notes…
- Please visit https://garfnet.org.uk/cms/category/photography/ to see some of my pictures in context or https://www.garfnet.org.uk/gallery to see a heap of pictures.
- It’s a few years old now, but I put together a blog page aimed at those trying to get away from expensive intrusive, closed-source, proprietary graphics software. Soe peole might find it helpful.
https://garfnet.org.uk/cms/2022/03/06/image-processing-using-foss/ - If you want a few places to visit off-site, then you might like to take a look at darktable – a very credible open source alternative to Adobe Lightroom.
https://darktable.org - Meanwhile GNU/Linux users especially those using the KDE desktop should consider Gwenview for bulk management. It is 100% open source, free of charge. You can build it from source, or download from
https://kde.org/applications/graphics/org.kde.gwenview - And, forget Photoshop but don’t forget GIMP – the GNU Image manipulation Program, This is an open source image editor similar to Adobe Photoshop. However there are some significant differences too…
- Open Source.
- You can give it away freely to your family, friends customers, models etc.
- Runs on all modern desktop/laptop operating systems including Windows, MacOS and GNU/Linux, Solaris
- Available for free download from https://www.gimp.org
- If you run Debian or one of its derivatives such as Neon or (K)Ubuntu, then you can install all the aforementioned open source graphics applications plus the excellent GIMP alternative Krita, and the Vector drawing package Inkscape, simply by typing or pasting the following single line command into a terminal window, and hitting return…
sudo apt install darktable gimp gwenview inkscape krita