Film photography
Most of my photography is done when I am walking or mountaineering, and I avoided buying an SLR camera for a long time because of the weight. When I finally decided to get one I chose a Pentax Program A with a Tokina 28-70mm lens. This was chosen largely on weight; I think the decision was between this and the Olympus OM40, and I don’t remember now how I made the choice. This kit was soon supplemented with a Tokina 70-210 zoom and sometime later I replaced the body with a Super A and bought a second-hand Tokina 24mm. After some years I came to the conclusion that the 28-70 was not giving consistent exposures (there must have been something wrong with the aperture coupling) and replaced it with a Sigma 28-70. This was significantly heavier but gave good results. This basic kit was used for nearly 20 years.
I started to find difficulty with focussing, and bought a Pentax MZ6 with Sigma 24-70 and Pentax 80-320 autofocus lenses, but I was never comfortable with this kit and went back to the older manual focus system. The focussing problem was solved by fitting an eyepiece correction lens; the problem had been that with increasing age my eyes were losing accommodation, and not focussing on the image in the viewfinder. Modern cameras of course have an adjustment for this.
For most of this time I used Kodachrome 64, but when Kodak stopped processing in the UK I switched to Fuji Sensia and then to Astia, which gave more natural colours than Sensia. But with more and more people switching to digital the cost of film and processing increased and I eventually decided that it was time to go digital.
Digital kit
As ever weight was an issue. A few years ago most digital SLRs were quite big and heavy and the trend seemed to be going in the wrong direction. Then the new breed of mirrorless interchangeable lens systems came along, first the Samsung NX10, shortly followed by the Panasonic G1, and I plumped for the G1, with a 14-45mm zoom (multiply by 2 to get the 35mm equivalent). The problem with a new system like this is that there is a small choice of lenses. The only telephoto zoom available was a 45-200, which is quite big and heavy (I tried the 14-140 “superzoom” but the image quality at the longer focal lengths was poor). But since the G1 first came out many more lenses have become available and I now have a Panasonic 45-150, which is smaller an lighter than the 45-200, a Panasonic 12-32, and an Olympus 45mm/1.8.
The G1 has now been replaced with the newer G7. This was mainly to get lower noise performance at high ISO settings but it does have some useful handling improvements as well. I’ve also got a second-hand Panasonic 14-140 lens. The is not the original one but a later version which is not only smaller and lighter but much better performance. It’s not quite as good as the separate 14-45 and 45-150 zooms, but still good enough for A3 prints.
Image processing
I started off with Photoshop Elements 2, which was bundled with my printer or scanner (I forget which) and also found a very good image editor called Picture Window Pro (PWP). More recently I bought a copy of Photoshop CS3 (being an older version it only cost about £120 but it does everything I need) and I now use Adobe Lightroom 3.6 as well. This is very good for organising images and basic manipulation, like getting the colour balance and tonal balance right, and cropping. It’s good for preparing collections of images, for this website for example, then exporting them all as JPEGs of a standard size, dimensions etc. To prepare an image for printing I use Photoshop.
To do any image editing requires a decent calibrated display. It doesn’t have to be a professional one but it should have an IPS screen. I’ve currently got an HP ZR22w and a Spyder calibration device. Calibration and profiling are absolutely essential. The main shortcoming of this display is that the backlighting is not even. With 2 copies of the same image side-by side, it is noticeable that the left side of the display is darker than the centre and right.
I scan slides with a Minolta Scan Dual 3 which has been profiled with Profile Prism. Having a scanner profile helps a lot with reproducing the colours correctly but they almost always need some further adjustment. And slide scans always need cleaning up to remove the dust marks! I still use PWP for this in preference to Photoshop.
Printing
For many years my printer was an Epson 1290 but it finally died and I’ve replaced it with an Epson Photo Stylus 1500W. Profiling is even more essential for a printer than for the display. Most 3rd party paper suppliers (e.g. Permajet, Paper Spectrum) will make profiles for their own papers without charge. At the moment I’m using Pinnacle papers from Paper Spectrum. Some members of the photographic society use commercial services like ProAm for printing. (ProAm has recently become part of Sim Lab.) It’s probably cheaper than home printing, provided you are sufficiently confident that the first print will be right! I prefer to do test prints first before going for the final print. There’s more about printing in my blog.