My Mother always liked to take snapshots of family events. Picnics at the seaside or in the mountains near where we lived. She used a Kodak Brownie box camera, and I still have it. It is bright red in colour and the film it used was 120, taking eight photos to the roll. I can't quite remember how old I was when I developed my first film and printed the photographs. It was probably in the late 1940s as it was following a visit to Co. Clare. It may very well have been the first holiday we had to Co. Clare since the cessation of hostilities in Europe or the ending of the 'Emergency' as we liked to call it. Some of the photos I took were of Aran Islanders who were on the quayside in Doolin. They were dressed in what was probably traditional clothes and wearing animal hide shoes. I have a faint recollection of my Mother taking me into a Chemist shop in Limerick and getting some Hypo to fix the negatives and photographs. Can't remember what developer I got other than it was in powder form and probably a few years old. In addition I was lucky to get a packet of ‘printing out paper’. Who now remembers what printing out paper, or POP, was. The procedure to make contact prints was to put the negative and the paper in a glass printing frame and exposing it to the sunlight until it had turned a dark reddish brown. This could take several minutes. Then, in subdued light, it was put in a bath of hypo to ‘fix’ or stabilise it. You then had a nice sepia toned print. I can't remember how long more it took me before I had discovered where to get 'proper' photographic paper that would produce black and white photographs; handling of this was more difficult too as a proper darkroom was required with a safety light.

It is now difficult to imagine the amount of 'research' that I had to do to find out how to use this chemical process to produce photographic images. First I was probably eleven or twelve years old. Then neither of my parents, while totally supportive of my efforts and amazed at my success, knew anything about photography other than the 'taking' of photographs. In those days there was no Internet to do research on and the local library, while adequate for most peoples needs did not cover such subjects as I was interested in. Nevertheless I got the information somewhere and I really can't remember from where at this remove of about fifty five years.

Tools of the trade.

To those interested in the tools of photography I will discuss the various cameras that I now have and have had in the past. I suppose the first camera that I used was my Mother's box Brownie, this used paper backed roll film and the size was 120. One thing that confused me is why was 620 used when the film stock was exactly the same but the 'roll' holding the film was thinner. I then got a 'box' camera from somewhere, can't remember where and it used size 128 film. I can well understand if you have never heard of this film size because I could never source film for it! That was many years ago, probably in the very early 1950s. While I was in secondary school I had a camera of my own for which I could get film. This was a very basic camera using smaller film, size was 125 I think. I took many interesting photos with this, mostly of my school pals. I had been developing some of my own films by this time and wished for a good quality camera. Eventually I bought a Zeiss Ikon 'Nettar' folding camera when I started work. This used 120 film and the format was 2¼" x 2¼", now called 'medium format' and is the format used by Roleiflex, Bronica and many other expensive cameras. My camera was not in this league but was a very good amateur camera and had a reasonably good lens. I eventually exchanged this for a Werra III rangefinder camera. This had a Tessar f2.8 lens. One of the features that attracted me to this camera was that having a rangefinder it allowed me to use large apertures and still get my focusing spot on. However, it did not have any system of exposure calculation and to get over this I eventually bought a Weston Master IV light meter. This was probably the top of the range meter at the time and was an excellent piece of equipment. I still have it and it works today as well as it did all those years ago. The other feature that I liked was that there was a wide angle lens and a short telephoto lens available for it. Unfortunately by the time I could afford these additional lenses none were locally available. I even tried some second camera shops on a visit to London but failed to get one. Some time later I got the opportunity to buy a second hand camera of the same type with the suite of three lenses in a leather holdall. It cost me more than I wished to pay but I had waited so long for the opportunity that I bought it. These two cameras and the lenses and case are now 'museum' pieces and are probably valuable on the 'collectors' market. I must consider disposing of them as I will not use them again. I am now using an Olympus OM10 which I bought new in 1979 and more recently bought a second hand Olympus OM2n. One has a Zuiko f1.8 50mm lens and the other has a Zeiss f2.8 28mm lens. I bought a zoom lens for these some years ago but it was stolen from me while holidaying in Greece. Having two similar bodies is useful as it allows me to use two different film stocks at the one time and share lenses. I was recently half thinking of buying myself a new camera and had a Canon EOS in mind. Oonagh has one and it is great, automatic focusing and most everything else automatic. However, as my usage of cameras is not very frequent, with the exception of my digital one I don't think that I will pursue it. On top of everything else I have quite a lot of peripheral equipment for both of the Olympus's. For example I have an attachment that allows me to connect it to a telescope. Then I have a 'reversing ring' which allows the standard lens become a super macro lens. I have filters of various types and an excellent TTL flash unit dedicated to Olympus. So it would be a hard decision to change and I would have to 'trade in' my Olympus kit as I could not justify 'holding on' to any more cameras!!!

Just the other day I bought a second hand 'Sun' lens for my Olympus cameras. This is a 70 mm - 200 mm focal length lens, popularly called a 'zoom' lens although that is misleading as the zoom effect is non existent in still cameras unless you deliberately zoom during a long exposure to get a special effect. I prefer to consider such a lens to be of variable focal length. Buying that, I suppose, 'locks' me into the Olympus OM family for another while. I haven't used the lens yet but it seems to be unmarked and the optics are spotless. The one drawback is that the filter screw size is 55 mm and that means that any filters that I have will not fit on it. A feature, that I liked, with Olympus lenses is that they all had a filter screw size of 49 mm irrespective of focal length. My next purchase will be a UV filter and a set of filter 'spanners', a must have tool for all filter users.

The processing of the 'latent' image is something that very few 'photographers' do in this day and age. As mentioned briefly earlier I have been processing my own films and prints for over fifty years. Not all the time, of course, and I haven't done any processing in the past couple of years. I never did colour processing, either slide film or negative film as the economics would not justify the effort. Chemicals for this have a short shelf life and the process is intricate, requiring accurate temperature control and timing. Monochrome processing is very forgiving and well worth doing, especially now as monochrome processing is more expensive than colour processing. I think that I have covered the full range of monochrome processing from straight forward film developing and contact printing from larger negatives to enlarging from 35mm negatives. I have also produced monochrome slides or positive transparencies very successfully. These can look as hauntingly good when projected as can a well produced monochrome print or enlargement. Just check out Giles Norman's web site. He is a photographer who only produced monochrome prints and they are of an excellent quality. Check out the link to his web site, just give it a click. I have also copied photographs by making a negative print from the original and then printing from that print to get a positive print. As the process involves contact printing very little is lost in quality and well worth doing, but now, I suppose, computer scanners are readily available that do the job nearly as well. There are many interesting effects possible when you do your own processing. For example the Sabatier effect is amazing. Check the spelling there, it is a long time since I saw that name in print. You can also do posterising or polarising which too give amazing results. I could go on, there is an amazing world out there to be explored. If you have produced any extraordinary photo I would like to see it. I don't mean the cat from next door walking along your clothes line, I mean some interesting process.

Digital Photography

Being an avid adopter of new technology I wished for a digital still camera. The advantages were obvious. Instant access to photos taken. Little expense in taking and using the photos unless one required prints. I knew that the quality of the photos would not be equal to the 'old' chemical type of process. Being as lucky as I am my wishes materialised and my daughters and their Mom gave me a present some Christmases ago of a Panasonic NV-DCF2 digital still camera. At the time it was hailed as the 'worlds' smallest and lightest' digital camera. It probably was as it is really vest pocket size but performs quite well. The quality of the photos is excellent for emailing and for web site purposes. Prints of up to 6"x4" are also excellent but beyond that the quality does not equal my other cameras. Having said that it is great and I am delighted to have it. It means now that I can photograph something and within minutes look at it on the screen, do a slide show through the television, insert the photo in my web site or email it to someone. I can also quite easily insert a photo or photos into a document, print it and send it in the post. An extremely impressive little camera.

Well, time moves on and what I said in the preceding paragraph is now history. This Christmas 2004, Laura and Dave gave me a present of a really superb digital camera. For those interested in make and model it is a Nikon 'Coolpix' 5200. This magnificent present was to mark their appreciation for a 'job' that I did for them, with a lot of help from others. I was glad to be able to do the job and to have completed it so well and on time, the present of the camera was wonderful but that was not 'part of the deal'!.

For the couple of days that I have had the camera I have been exploring all of its functions and there is still a lot of learning to be done. I have seen photos taken with a similar camera and the resolution and definition is awesome. When I am more familiar with it I must go on a photographic 'safari' in the Cork area and do a portfolio of photos. This camera is probably smaller than my original one and definitely lighter and indescribably better. Such are the advances of technology. I am struggling to keep up!

Cine or Movie Photography

The movie side of photography always fascinated me. As a small fellow I collected 'scrap' pieces of 35mm movie film from the waste bin outside door of the projectionists room at the local cinema. Santa had given me a hand operated 35mm projector that would also show slides. This was a toy but I had great fun with it. The light source was pathetic so Dad converted it from small torch bulb powered by battery to a low wattage mains bulb and then I was realistically able to 'project' images onto a wall. Shortage of material to show was the problem. At that time cine cameras were unobtainable here and would have been extremely expensive if they were. Many years later decided to purchase one so that my wedding to Thérèse could be filmed. This camera was a second hand non branded one but it had three lenses in a turret arrangement so that I could change from wide through standard to long focus. No automatic exposure facility but I had my trusted Weston Master IV. The camera was not too expensive but the film was prohibitively so for my limited funds. I took about four or five rolls of film on it, each one lasting about three minutes! Someone asked me to loan it to them and I did so but got it back broken. I could not get it repaired and It lies somewhere ever since! Some years ago when my first grandchild, Thomas, came among us I bought a Video camera to record his life with me. This is an excellent piece of equipment. It is a Canon UC-X55Hi and since I got it George has arrived and more recently Zoë so I have plenty of little people to 'video'. I am building up a valuable archive of material and must get into video editing on my computer to cut out the rubbish and string the whole thing together in a slick presentation. That's a job for another day. Festina lente.

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