I really like my camera. It’s a Minolta DiMage Z6 with as many of the extras that I could get before Sony made a deal that KonicaMinolta couldn’t refuse, and bought all the camera technology from Minolta so Konica could focus (pardon the pun) on copy machines. And yes, I am still torqued over this, so that’s why I refer to my camera as a Minolta. I am not at all happy with Konica.
I have enjoyed taking pictures as far back as I have had a camera. That would be 1972ish, when Dad got me a Kodak Brownie Starflex for all of 50 cents or a buck at the Clayton Valley High Flea Market. And ever true to my packratness, I still have the thing. (Just try to buy film for it, however. In fact, just try to find film period, any more.) I also had a Polaroid Colorpack II and a couple of 110’s in high school and college, and finally got a Kodak S1100 XL 35mm I used for years. It finally died a painful death in Montreal QB in 2003, having gotten squished into a position it wasn’t designed to fit into. (The missus had one like it with a few issues; I was able to combine the two into one totally functional unit...which, like the Starflex and Colorpack II, I still have.)
I’ve really enjoyed taking pictures with the Z6 since I bought it the day before leaving on a five week trip back in 2005; a tour in which we went (amongst other places) to the Grand Canyon for a day and I just knew the little Vivitar I had was not going to work like I wanted. (Okay, in all fairness to the little Vivitar, there isn’t a camera out there that truly does the Grand Canyon justice.) But I wanted something that would at least give me a fair shot at good pictures, and I let my friend talk me into spending about a hundred bucks more than I really wanted to pay for a camera. (I’m glad he did, by the way.)
Since I got it, it’s been all over the US, and to Windsor, ON. It has been schlepped through roughly 26 states; not bad for three years. I can’t tell you how many batteries it’s eaten, or how many thousands of pictures it’s taken. (Both of those numbers are a lot, let me tell you.)
One of the things I like about having gone digital is the ease in filing the pictures I keep. With no film, and since they are digital, storage is far easier to maintain. Of course, the number of pictures I take has gone up quite a bit. Since I don’t have to pay for processing prints, and since I can erase the stuff that just isn’t worth keeping, I can shoot to my heart’s content.
Someday, I may post a few somewhere. I love sharing my pics, but at the same time, don’t want them harvested by an internet photo-bot and used without my knowing it.
Enough for now.
(Posted 12/13/08)
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