An early Christmas gift, a history lesson in cameras

Since i was 6 years old i wanted to be a photographer. When i was 8 my mom lent me her then ( http://www.camerapedia.org/wiki/Kodak_Instamatic_104) Kodak Instamatic 104 when i went to Columbia Bible Camp. I was so thrilled to have a camera for a week to take a roll of black and white photo's of my week and new friends.

I had to wait until i was 12 to get my "own" camera which i was more than thrilled to get. I have albums galore - Scott was not too thrilled with my photo album collection of over 40 albums when we got married, but this became my passion and my journal of events of my life -which are dear to me.
This Kodak is similar to the one i got in 1975. I so remember this arm to raise the flash to get rid of the "red eye" ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instamatic )

In 1980, my dad got a new Leica R4, he lent me his Konica A1 to do photography to enter photography into my portfolio in Artschool - this was in fall of 1981. Later on he gave me this camera that he bought in the late 60's-or early 70's. It had 3 lenses and i cherished this camera and loved it. It was heavy piece of metal and i still have it today. The zoom lens is toast, but it has traveled the world with me.

For a short time in 12th grade or as we called it in Canada grade 12 - when i worked at a drug store i thought it would be cool to have a Polaroid and had one for a brief time as well.

I so remember the instant gratification of getting the picture right away but the bulky cartridges and the terrible photo's it took? well it was more for fun than photography.

When i was in high school i still wanted to be a photographer - so i took classes in graphics and learned developing and color printing. I have this life size photo of myself rolled up in a closet of me when i was 15 that we blew up onto the wall and hand developed in trays, it was a really cool project. I remember my dad when considering moving to Ontario before they landed up moving to England instead - trying to bribe me with a photo lab in the basement of our new home were i really wanted to do black and white and he wanted to do color. It definitely was a draw card for me and i was ready to move. The classroom for graphics actually turned out to be more of a print shop and this is where my career actually started by accident. The next 3 years i spent in the class learning. The last year i actually was the teachers assistant and ran the shop/classroom with him. I then went to VoTech and took Printing, then onto College for Graphic Design... it was an interesting start.... but still even so photography was a passion and i kept putting it aside.

I kept using my Konica and i am sure i have taken over 2,500 photo's with that camera alone.


In the 1990's convince of photography took president and after my mom got her Pentax i learned to love that camera and the following year got one for a Christmas present - I believe it was 1995 or 1996. The one pictured here is a Nikon but looked very similar to my camera. I took well over a 1,000 photo's with this camera and sometimes took my Konica and this camera together. I remember when i first moved to Seattle - i would take day trips just going and taking photo's of anything. Technology life of camera's was getting shorter and i wore this camera out in a couple of years and then got another one which did not work as well - but definitely got my monies worth out of them.

When i got married i still had this camera and the second one finally died just as we were adopting Reagan. It killed me not to have a good camera, but Scott thought it would be better to get a video camera with a camera. So we had this for our first adoption trip. It took lousy grainy photo's but we have the trip captured. Scott realized once home how important having a good camera was - we could never really afford a camera i wanted but we got a Canon S50 which was one of the earlier nice digital camera's This even had video in 3 min segments and i used this all the time now with having kids to capture and post on our then website and eventually this blog.

I had the black one and used it all the time.... most wknds took over 100 photo's and still do now.

When we went to adopt Taylor in 2007 this one had a faulty shutter (that model was bad for this) so instead of buying a whole new camera and battery, accessories.... we bought another used one on eBay and had it as a back-up in case this one crashed on the trip and both Scott and I could use each. It lasted about 6m and then it's shutter cover also started going. This was a metal camera and also a bit heavy. It was time to look for another one after last December when the camera just died days before Christmas and i could not imagine Christmas with the kids and no camera? So back to eBay and we found the newer yet older version 110xs - refurbished with wide angle as well - we got this just in time for Christmas and have been using it almost daily.

So here we are this Christmas and enjoying this camera and all its features.... but deep inside i have always giving up of owning the camera of my dreams. A year ago my dad gave me his Leica R4 which was in mint condition, i tried it a few times but realized it was costing me about $20 a roll and re-learning a manual camera on our budget was too much at this time so put it away until i was free to really spend time and money - relearning the art of a beautiful manual camera. But i felt i was missing out on my passion. The kids have definitely changed my view on photography and the art is pretty much gone. Today almost anyone can be a good photographer and i was starting to loose that zest i had for the passion i have had for 40 years now.

When i won the Office Depot contest - i was in the store a week ago and looked at the camera's knowing they would not have my Nikon -and i still did not have $2,000+ to spend on a good camera, but the Canon Rebel had just had a new version come out that was close to the Nikon D90 - still short in many ways but close enough that my mind started to wondering if this was a possibility for me? I went home and talked it over with Scott, I did some research and comparisons and was impressed with what it had to offer. I would still only be able to afford one lens but i thought with that and still my 110xs i could do a fair amt of decent photography and maybe join a club and get back into the game of my old passion. So last wk i purchased my "free" camera and excitedly anticipated its arrival of 12-14-09. Well yesterday i was surprised to see my package awaiting me at the front door and after dinner opened up my wonderful gift.

I quickly charged the battery and today could not wait to get busy taking photo's.... to my disappointment there was no card - ugh! oh wait, i had 3 other canon's.... my luck the 110xs uses the same card and i had a 8gb card ready to go.... So today i happily shot and experimented. This also has a very good HD video and is 15.1 MP so night and day from my 8. Oh what a difference and can't wait to download the software and read my manual tomorrow so i can download my tests and see what i have created..... oh it is like unleashing my passion again - rebirth!

Watch out i maybe posting a heck of a lot more photo's now! :-)

Lavonne 12-12-09