Rapid Shooter
Sunday, March 29, 2009 Labels: Travel 20 comments
First of all, I don't want the readers to think this post is about some murder mystery or sniper shootings. After few weeks of inactivity, I am back to my blogging ways. If you are wondering why there were no posts from me for the past few weeks, I was too busy with one of my favorite pass time activities. Photography equipment research! Why spend weeks together for ordering a single camera? Shouldn't it take just a few minutes to click on the order button and wait for the camera shipment? Well, in my case, I was ready to spend more than a grand on a new SLR camera which has a lot of sleek features. I spent a lot of time reading online reviews about the new camera. I don't think there is a single review out there that has slipped my scrutiny. In this post, I will walk you through a flashback of events that has turned me into an 'obsessive photographer' that I am today!
I have always wondered why there are no good photographs of me taken during my childhood days. Well, I can only blame one person for that. My dad! Whenever I ask my mom the reason for not preserving a good childhood photograph of me. She blames my dad for not picking up the photo from the photo studio where she had taken a portrait of me. The reason for not picking up? My mom had not taken my dad along for taking my baby portrait! Ego wars had come in way of my baby portrait :( However, my dad has a different story. He says, I had not posed properly for the photo, with wrong footed squat etc. Left to myself, I would have picked up the photo no matter what, even if I had posed upside down! Now I have to rely on looking at my photos in old albums from weddings and other family occasions. I was left at the mercy of the wedding photographers to snap me once in a while. I used to get delighted whenever there was a flash in the vicinity. It made me think I was being photographed. But to my disappointment, the sad truth was, flash covered the whole region and did not mean I was necessarily in the frame!
I still remember the Yashika point and shoot film camera in my house, which we used extensively for our various trips and vacations. I used to get thrilled by just looking through the viewfinder of that camera. That particular camera was used by a lot of my relatives and friends and there were good reviews about it at that time from the users. After coming to the US, I got my very own film camera. A Samsung Maxima with 35-105 zoom lens. Back during those days, when there was something called a film made out of celluloid, I took tons of pictures with my friends at niagara falls, pittsburg, NYC etc. In fact, my index fingers were tired and swollen as a result of clicking the shutter button after every sightseeing trip. My friends were tired standing and posing for pictures at every landmark. And of course doubly tired, having to take a picture of me at the same spot! Some of my friends became pale and white, due to excessive flash exposure! Some of my friends used to run away from the photo spot when I pulled the camera out for pictures. I used film rolls on my camera like the never ending roll of bullets on a machine gun. My friends were running for life making me look like a shooting gangster.
I gifted my first Samsung camera to my sister during my first trip to India and purchased another Nikon film camera with panoramic capability. I took a lot of panorama shots with the Nikon film camera. The best one is the view of Manhattan skyline from the top of world trade center. I still have negatives and prints of all those pictures stored in 3-4 big boxes in my storage closet. Suha was shocked to see the truck load of photographs and negative rolls in my possession. She had to spend weeks to organize them in different boxes. Thank god there were no lobbyists from camera film industry. We do not rely on film rolls these days and got into digital photography. Of course, hard drive sales has picked up because of the new storage requirements to store my gigabyte worth of photographs. I recently purchased a 1 TB storage server for storing and backing up my picture archives. If camera film rolls were a problem, I am not sure what I am going to do with 40 Mini DV tapes from my handy cam lying in the storage. I should at least convert them to DVD's for preservation before Mini DV tapes become obsolete. When my dad asked for camera. I teased him, rather tortured him;), for not picking up my baby portrait from the photo studio. But somehow he managed to get a film camera during his first trip and a digital camera during the most recent one. Hats off to him. A skillful negotiator/persuader!
With the advent of digital photography, I take a lot of pictures and keep only the ones I really need. Now every Tom, Dick and Harry, including me, can take a good picture once in a while. My most recent camera was a digital SLR. A nikon D40x camera. I took a lot a nice pictures with it using it extensively during my trips to Costa Rica, Quebec City, and the Hawaiian islands. With my renewed focus on producing 1 or 2 good quality pictures rather than 100 ordinary ones. I have upgraded to a much nicer Nikon D90 camera. I spent a lot of time researching about this camera before settling on this one. I hope I can take some good pictures and preserve them in the memory to look back in the future. I will stop with this and get back to shooting more pictures to hone my photography skills, hoping one day I will become a sharp shooter instead of a rapid one!
Content below is optional reading for the photographic crowd
Chronological sequence of my cameras
1998 - Samsung Maxima Film Camera
1999 - Nikon Nuvi's 110i APS Film Camera
2002 - Olympus Camedia Brio D-150 1.3MP Digital Camera
2004- Canon S50
2007 - Nikon D40x
2009 - Nikon D90
2009 - Canon A710is point and shoot for Shreya!
Lens collection - 3 interchangeable lens: prime, telephoto zoom and, a standard wide angle zoom lens.
Below are some pictures taken with my D40x SLR taken in Newyork City. 
Below are pictures of my new D90 Camera
Pictures taken with my new D90 camera
Below are pictures of my new D90 Camera
Pictures taken with my new D90 camera
Posts
hi
good one!i think "obsessive vein" runs through our family.dont worry !even i dont have my childhood photo..but now ,due to digital camera..lots of fotos with different poses..bcos in our house nobody likes to give normal pose for photographs;).. i prefer to take hard prints of select fotos even today..seeing hard prints gives an unique happiness which cant be compared with soft copies...keep blogging!
Raja I think your photo collection explosion is like global warming....Millions of years without any sign or activity...and then sudden exponential growth over past 100 years!!
I like your cartoon skills...I think you should start your own comic book!!
Kichi
Padma, I knew you would be the first one to comment on this post and you did!
Looking at your pictures in Orkut albums, I see your family members love to pose differently for the pictures..which actually makes better pictures than the conventional 'Say Cheese' ones...from your comment I sense that you are getting ready to step up to a Digital SLR next!
Raja, I appreciate ur interest towards photography.I m also in the same wave length.After buying digital camera I was taking snaps of every thing.Right from street pigs to all non sense.I love editing and u know that I have made lot of video mixing using Ulead video studio.I was thinking of even taking a 5 min comic movie( with bgm) using ravi, pappa, prasanna and all.Story board was also ready.
Continue ur photography.I m here to see all ur works.
Kichi, Very true..your global warming analogy is good. I am sure you will be another victim of my flash exposure during your next visit here :)
Kumar, thanks for the comments. Yes I knew you also had great passion for photography. Padma, now you know where the veins run through!
I am looking forward to seeing your 5 min comic video. Your star cast has already made it mouth watering!
raja i felt i was reading a photography column in "HINDU". your thirst for photography is appreciable, what about suha she encourages or otherwise.
regarding the yashica camera i am one of the relative who took it to two or three friends marriages as on official photographer , but whatever camera you purchase you cannot forget the first old yashica .
are you still keeping your old cameras is it for sale.
Krish! thanks for your comments..
I guess I have finally succeeded in grabbing your attention to my blog by posting a topic of your interest. I am not sure if my dad still has the Yashika at home. If I were him, I would keep it. Yes, Suha has become tolerant these days with my photography time. However, I still manage to get on her nerves during our vacations/trips. Her wish is, one day we will go on a trip without a camera and just enjoy the beauty with our very own eyes and not through the lens. I sometimes have to agree with her view on that. Wondering if I ever will be able fulfill that though!
raja i am also intrested in photography. during ous studies in salem our room mate santhanathan and friend had a camera and set up devoloping lab in my room . i used to watch it curiously. once myself and mani borrowed that camera to sankagiri and had photos. wtth madras padma (nowin banglore)gopal. kumar.paddu all with halfdrawers jaya,padma, lalitha inluding servant.mani as usual made a camera in cardboard with a lense and with that we shot the our oppsite house lovely white oldsmobile car.we took in and devoloped in raja studio near police station .we were thrilled to see the photo.even studio man appreciated us.that self made camera by me and mani is first camera in our fanily.of course now i tke lot of photos using digital .any thing in ouur colonu i am their official photogrpher.u know i have photographed one snake trying to swaalo afrog in front of our house on a rainy day.it was good .naan paamby a padam eduttvan.
Appa(Ramki)..yes i am able to recollect your story now...in fact you narrated this story in the process of convincing me to purchase you a digital camera and it worked!..even Suha remembers your first camera story :)
Your lengthy comment also makes me feel that you are laying foundation for the next upgrade ;)
By the way, is the first photo of Jaya, padma, padhu in shorts still with Mani peripa? Kumar can put it in his Orkut website if available.
you have way too much time on your hands.
Nice post Raja... even my husband is very much interested in photography...wegot 5 models of camera IN that one is polaroid.One of your childhood photos ur father, Ravi, and you ... that was a polaroid photo and the photo is in my house in salem... I will search for that and send u.
Prasanna..sure send over my childhood photo when you find it..you will be rewarded :)
Hi Raja, I appreciate the research part because I do not possess that quality. Padma has it in her.
The way your story was moving I thought it would end with you tying your friends to a post at the photo site & shoot them (with your camera of course):-))
Keep blogging...
Rajendra..my camera excitement got over in the research phase itself..now with the camera on hand I am not as excited as I was 2 weeks before. In a way, doing too much research spoils the party I guess.
I could not resist laughing at your comment about tying my friends to a pole!..They probably felt it that way
good blog ,but were they really trying to run away from u
Adithya..no did not run away..cartoon is just my imagination..
Raja is lucky somebody has invented digital camera. Otherwise half of his salary will go for film rolls & it s processing.
Raja, Great blog. Captures all sentiments around shooting very well. I like all your cartoons, especially how you have depicted yourself - like Morpheus says in Matrix - "the mental projection of your digital self".
My main motivation for photography was Flickr. The community encouraged my work, and was able to learn a lot from others... You should think about joining something like it, if not already.
Hi Sudharshan,
Thanks for the comments. I just browse through flickr pictures occasionally. There are a lot of good ones out there ...