Do you remember the camera or lens? Or care?

R

Roger Hicks

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If you're old enough, look at some of your favourite pics from 20, 30 or 40 years ago. If you owned more than one camera at the time, do you remember exactly which camera or lens was used for all of them? Do you care? Either they're good pictures or they're not. Does this give you any clues about how important your cameras and lenses are today, as compared with content, composition, 'eye', technique?

Cheers,

R.
 
It helps place me back to the experience of taking the picture, the frame of mind, to remember what camera and lens was used.

So, yes. I do care to remember the setup. Especially when I have the camera 40 years later. Helps connect the memories.

Nikon F Photomic, Bullseye, Incident meter attachment used.
43~86/3.5 AI zoom,
Panatomic-X in Microdol.

picture.php


1978.
 
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Brian Sweeney said:
It helps place me back to the experience of taking the picture, the frame of mind, to remember what camera and lens was used.

So, yes. I do care to remember the setup. Especially when I have the camera 40 years later. Helps connect the memories.
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Dear Brian,

Yes, it's nice to remember. But I have pics where I genuinely can't remember, and I can't say I care.

Cheers,

R.
 
The camera is easy as i only had the one back then :) Most were shot at 50mm or 135mm but a couldn't tell which was which now.
Guess i don't really care what equipment they were taken with more interested in the subject matter, I do have some i took in Africa that i have no memory of taking at all ... must have been the heat.
With the benefit of hindsight I think the camera really means very little and the effort put into each shot is the important thing. Does make me wonder about why I seem to own so many unused cameras and why i keep getting GAS.
 
You know, I've thought a lot about this lately, especially after sorting through some archives from 30-40 years ago. In most cases I can remember what camera I had at the time, but haven't a clue about what lenses I was using.

At that time the camera and lens for me were very much tools rather than objects of obsession. As the cameras got fancier (Canon A-1, F1-N for me), I think they actually started getting in the way. They still do - much more so now, I find. Maybe that's why the relentless search for the perfect, intuitive digital camera, with a lens like a window wiped clean. Something that just gets out of the way...
 
I do remember, but I don't care and it doesn't much matter. It's be easy remember just because I kept the same minimal amount of gear for many years. The only gear that matters is nearsighted and has some astigmatism and is less steady of hand than it was thirty years ago.
 
Im pretty sure I know it of any of my pictures. At least the camera, most of the times also the lens. not the film though.

Cheers,

Michiel Fokkema
 
Deinitely remember and care very much - A Nikkormat Ftn with H-C Auto Nikkor 50mm 1:2. A graduation gift in 1971 and stolen in 1977. Insured and replaced with an F2A. I never really clicked with that camera or the dozens of lenses I went through. Eighteen years later, I bought an M6 kit with 35/2-50/2-90/2.8 and photographic life was good again. I've recently repurchased a Nikkormat. Feels great in my hands. Gear matters to me. It is part of the gestalt. I don't go out to take pictures - I go out to take pictures with the gear I've chosen for that day. Strange, maybe, but works for me. It's not the print, it's the process.
 
I tend to but mostly because I was, until relatively recently, mostly disappointed with my work. My displeasure with the photos I took with a Canon Rebel & kit lens when we were in Vietnam for our adoption lead me to look for something better.

9 years later, I'm starting to feel like I've got half a clue.

William
 
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Re. Do I remember? Or care?

Re. Do I remember? Or care?

Well actually, yes, and yes! Nikon, Canon, Bronica, Speed Graphic were all put to use, but it was an Olympus OM1 that went everywhere and seemed to produce the pictures that I've been most pleased with and consistently earned more than most of the others. Small and light and with an adequate lens, mechanical and easy to use (i.e. all manual!) it sat easily in the hand and fitted easily into a pocket.
It probably took better pictures because it took more pictures than any of the others and I could operate it with scarcely a thought.
Composition and technique can be more easily refined when the tool that you are using ceases to need thought to operate and becomes an extension of the hand and creative process.
Some writers prefer to use a pen to a typewriter or word processor. Some artists a pallete knife to a brush.
So can someone tell me where I can find a digital version of an OM1?
 
I care, but don't necessarily remember everything. This was taken 24 years ago when I was 14 years old. I spent two weeks hiking across the Sierra Nevada mountains from west to east. I don't remember what film was used, what camera was used, what the name of the lake is and whatnot. However, the image invokes a feeling of longing to be back in that wide open space with not a care in the world and no responsibilities other than setting up a tent and possibly washing the dishes. It brings up memories that may otherwise have been lost or tucked into the nethers of my head.

3127866401_3251005e96_b.jpg
 
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In some cases it can be pretty simple - just about all my daily PJ work was either done with a 80-200 f/2.8 on a FE or a 35 f/2 non-AI on a F2. Given that the 35mm did not work on the FE until I had it upgraded very late in that job (when I was given the lens and F2 to keep after they issued F3's even to the part-timers), and only had a 20mm as a wider lens at that time, it is so easy to see what I used that I really cannot tell whether I would know in the absence of these strong cues...
 
I remember without really trying. I only care when the quality of the photo is adversely affected by the poor quality of the lens.
When I started I had a Canon AE-1 with three primes that I used through college and into my first photography gigs. I decided I need AF so I "moved up" to a Nikon system with crappy zoom lenses. I didn't know that the zooms weren't as sharp as primes and since my work was mostly published in newspapers I didn't really notice the quality difference until I wanted to make some nice large prints for my portfolio.
I really smartened up after reading an interview with Steve McCurry explaining why he only used primes.
When I look at my work from those days now the older stuff from the Canon is technically better and it kind of breaks my heart to see some of the great images I took later lacking on the technical side.
 
20, 30, 40 years ago... if I took the time to choose and learn the equipment then that contributed to the fact that I have some "good" photos today. Likewise as I choose and lean the equipment of today I anticipate some good photos tomorrow. I don't care so much what the equipment was/is, it's the choosing and learning aspects (dedication) that gets the nod.

Casey
 
1972-75 I was in the Army in Munich, and bought a pair each of Yashica TL Electro ITS with 50/1.4 and 124 Mat Gs. I used the 124s for an in-home photo business in the American community there, and made nice money for the time with my captive audience. Shipped all my Vericolor film via the APO mail system to ViviColor labs in FL and never lost a roll. The 35s I used on countless 10 and 20K Volksmarches and gatherings with our Bundeswehr Reserve counterparts. I loved that 1.4 lens. I still have one (the camera died) and just got an M42 to C/Y adapter and put it on an FRII I found. My 124 with soon be off to Mark Hama for its first CLA. It's now worth twice what I paid for it.

I recently scanned and printed some of my B&W negs from that period, all Plux-X done in Microdol-X, 1:13 if I recall correctly. It is hard to look at images of American and German friends from that period and realize that they, like me, are retirement age, or worse--dead! All the comely blondes and brunettes who now have grand-and great-grandchildren-if they're lucky.

I used to print lots of 5x7 prints for friends, and boy do I wish I had had a hybrid system then. Adjust levels, burn, dodge, and spot then print as many as I needed by pushing the print key.
My negs have kept well and it's hard to believe those memories can be resurrected so clearly after all these years. Now I need to start making more memories with that 1.4 lens and the 124. I wonder who will care to print them in 2051 and how they will do it?
 
When I was younger I used to remember far more about all the details of a picture, but as I get older, I remember less. Partly, no doubt, it's old age, but also, I think, it's having taken tens of thousands more pictures and realizing that the picture is the thing. Of course, for 20 years or more I've had all kinds of review cameras and lenses, but even 30-35 years ago I had screw and bayonet Leicas, Nikon Fs, Nikkormats and a Pentax SV in 35mm alone. If you have only one camera, or only one or two lenses, it's a lot easier to remember!

Quite often I can remember the camera or lens or both with absolute clarity, but what prompted this thread was a few B+Ws from the 70s where I genuinely don't recall what camera I used, or even what system: I was just in one of the places I took pictures often, and in some cases it probably depended on what had film in it that day. From the 90s on (I was 40 in 1990), I cared less and less.

Cheers,

R.
 
I remember as that time we have not lots of possibilities and I was shooting with the sole SLR camera Zenit E and some Industar on it. (It was gifted to my dad for his jubilee. That times in the USSR this cam cost an amount equal to the month salary of a well paid person.) Nikons were used only by TASS correspondents and cost like a Soviet car...
Also I had a first release of scale Smena, left from my grandpa.
 
I guess in this day and age if you are using digital, EXIF data will tell you exactly what combo you used for the shot in 30 - 40 years time. If the data can be read then! :D

As for myself, over the years I have only had a handful of different bodies and even more limited lenses, so working out what I used is easy. Having said that, Roger is right in that as the years pass, it seems more and more irrelevant - at least for my own work. Other photographers work I do try to learn from, so knowing what lens they used, etc, can be useful.
 
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