How Did My Journey Into Photography Start

I started taking pictures with an Agfa Iso Rapid 1-C which I got for Christmas sometime in the early 1970s. It was a small point-and-shoot camera, that could use flashcubes (who remembers those?) and had a rather special film loading system.

The holder with the new film was placed in one side of the film chamber. The camera automatically guided the protruding film leader in another holder that was placed in the other side of the film chamber. When taking pictures, the film was gradually totally moved from the original holder to the take-up holder.

The cool part of it was that when you accidentally opened the camera the already exposed pictures where protected because they already were moved in the light-tight take-up holder. When a roll of film was fully exposed, you simply took the take-up holder out the camera for development and the original film holder, which was now empty, was moved to the other side of the film chamber to be used as take-up holder for the next roll.

Another interesting feature of this camera was that it took square pictures. If I remember correctly, each negative must have been about 1-inch square. Most of the time I actually used Agfa slide film. 

This small gem lasted me until well into my high school years and I literally produced hundreds of slides with it. Of course, this led to far too many slide-show evenings at home, which came to be dreaded by my mom, dad, and little sister. Unfortunately, when my dad passed away in 2010, my mom went through a rigorous house cleaning as part of her grieving process and she threw away most of the slides.

As a graduation present for high school my parents made quite an investment (we are talking 1979) and bought me a Ricoh XR-1 with 35mm and 50mm prime lenses. This was a huge step up for me. The SLR experience opened a whole new world. Seeing through the viewfinder what actually will appear in the picture and working with these lenses learned me quite a lot about composition and depth of field.

I also started selecting different subjects for my photography. Where my main focus with the Iso Rapid was on family pictures I now started looking more at my environment. The town where I lived, buildings, nature, closeups of my airplane and other models. Actually trying to make something that was more that 'just' quick family pics (or 'kiekjes' as they say in Dutch).

Fast forward to college. I sold the Ricoh to my best friend and acquired a used Canon AE-1. A great camera which I took on many vacations with my girlfriend, now my wife. It came with two lenses: a 50mm prime and a 70-210 zoom. While the Ricoh was a nice camera that actually took great pictures, the Canon setup was in a totally different league: more sturdy built, and with excellent mechanics. I traded it in for a Nikon N80 and I actually to this day regret not having it anymore.

So...well...that Nikon. It made nice images, it came with a kit zoom lens, it had autofocus (wow!). But for some reason, it did not really resonate with me. What it did, however, was moving me into the Nikon system and world. And although I eventually parted with it, it showed me how an advanced camera can help to create great images. It also made me stay with Nikon when I purchased my next camera: the Nikon D70 which brought my photography into the digital age and me...., well let's just say I wasn't really a young man anymore.