Photography Today

From a box brownie to a Nikon D3 in 50 years

I have been a professional photographer for over 30 years and the changes that have taken place over that time are just incredible.

My first pro camera around was a Rolleiflex 2.8 which I still have to this day - in working condition as well. I used these cameras - Rolleiflex, Bronica and Mamiyaflex over the years for Weddings, Portraits and Press Photography.

In the early 70's I bought a Pentax S1A and a Nikon 35mm camera but only used them for certain jobs mainly because of the quality I could get from the 6cm cameras.

So most of the time until the 90's I still used the medium format cameras for weddings and portraits but gradually moved over to Nikon cameras for press work.

Towards the end of the 90's things changed so quickly with the introduction of digital cameras, so much so that gone are the hours and hours in the darkroom processing films and printing photographs in black & white for the press.

Now, I use Nikon digital cameras for virtually all the photography that I undertake. So now, instead of standing in the darkroom for hours I now sit in front of a computer for hours doing everything digitally.

Obviously, it makes things easier with retouching photographs etc., moving heads and figures and converting colour pics into black & white or sepia at the click of a mouse but it doesn't save me hours & hours of time in work. That is progress for you.