A NEX user says hello from Holland

elroos

Regular
Location
Netherlands
I was born in The Hague , the Netherlands, in 1951. I am married, no children (but a dog & a cat). I read English at Leiden University, and taught English for about 20 years. Today I live in Monster (short for monastery in case you wondered), close to the Hague and our house is a five-minutes walk from the dunes and the beach.
Ah, photography . . .My first camera was an Agfa Clack , a cheap, German medium format box camera of the fifties which produced surprisingly good pictures for such a simple camera. I used it for holidays only. In the mid seventies my wife bought me an Olympus Trip which was a big improvement but soon photography was becoming more and more important to me, and in 1979 I bought my first SLR: a Pentax MX.

I was very happy with the Pentax but when Minolta introduced the 7000 and 9000 AF cameras I decided to jump ship and bought a 9000 in the mid eighties. I used the 9000 for 15 years, and I still have it, but in the nineties I became more and more disappointed in what the labs made of my photos and slides and I became interested in medium format which resulted in the purchase of a Mamiya 645 in 1995. I started developing my films and printing B&W MF negatives. I also started using Velvia in the Mamiya.

In 1996 we went to Iceland, my photographic soul country, for the first time, and I was extremely happy with my Mamiya gear (I used the 9000 as a backup system). It was heavy, yes, and I started the love-hate relationship with my tripod but I had found my photography: trying to capture the overwhelming, breathtaking landscape in a photographic composition that would enable me to re-experience and (hopefully) others to experience the sense of beauty and awe I had when taking that photo. With many photos I took during that trip I had what I can only describe as a religious experience (though I am not a religious person), and I found myself thinking: Thank you for letting me capture this.

In 1999 we went to Iceland again; and in 2000 we visited New Zealand We rented a camper and toured both islands for 5 weeks. A unique and wonderful experience, captured with the Mamiya and the Dynax 9 + (among others) the Minolta 400mm I had bought for the occasion. Heavy stuff, but when I see the MF Velvia slides projected on the 2 x 2 meters (7 square feet) screen or the penguin and albatross pics, it has all been worth it.

In 2002 I went to Iceland on a winter trip and though it was very impressive that trip is tainted for me because I had a sudden and serious loss of hearing. Though it recovered a bit when I was home again, my hearing was permanently damaged. Strangely enough, I had a similar experience when we visited Svalbard (Spitsbergen) in June 2008. Though the ENT specialist doesn't know why, the far North doesn't seem to agree with me. That makes me a bit sad because those regions are very close to my photographic heart.

The digital revolution had passed me by until I bought a Canon Powershot for my wife in 2006, our first digital camera. I was stunned. That camera has changed my life. Not because it was such a great camera but through it I discovered the enormous potential of digital photography. Digital photography for me is unlimited photography: I can (and do) take pictures all the time; I can (and do) manage the whole photographic process from capture to print and get every single pixel exactly as I want it; I can (and do) share my photos with the whole world thanks to sites like Flickr, Dyxum and Seious Compacts. The only limiting factor is time. A man has to work, sleep, see friends and family, ... Photography has always been in my blood, but in the analogue days was limited to holidays, trips and special occasions. Now it is part of my everyday life. There is no day without photography.
The Sony A100 was my first DSLR. I bought it in March 2007 and I discovered Flickr and Dyxum and became a member of these unsurpassed communities. I owe my growth in digital photography to these communities and am very grateful for that.
Last year I bought a NEX-5. I already had an interest in manual focus lenses and this camera is of course made for them. I'm quite a collector and have many more lenses than is good for me, but it's such fun using these, as I hope to show on SC!
 
Leo, thanks so much for your very interesting story and introduction. I really appreciate your taking the time to explain so much of your background and your love for photography. Here's my second welcome to Serious Compacts to you.:drinks:

I've just begun to look at your Flickrstream and urge you to consider putting a link in your signature line here - via your Profile's settings. I'm so glad you found your way here, and I'm looking forward to your involvement here across the board very much.:th_salute:
 
Welcome Elroos! Thank you for the information about yourself. Glad to know that you are enjoying digital photography so much. Some of us still love film as well. Although I personally rarely shoot it, because it's such a hassle to get it developed, then scanned, then cleaned up (the pesky dust and finger prints).

Looking forward to your contributions to the site!
 
Thank you all for taking the time to read through my ramblings; and thank you for your kind words and tips, even in my native language:)
@ BB: my Flickrstream in my profile: good tip
@ Armanius: I still like film but I don't find the time to shoot film; there's always so much going on in the digital world; a year ago I started scanning some of my pre-digital stuff. I like it because it 'unites' my pre-digital photography with the digital. But scanning is very time consuming and it's on a slow burner at the moment.
 
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