Picking up photography again - a bit about the road to the present
Getting in touch with photography
As a kid I had the benefit that my parents owned a SLR camera and that they also let me use it during holidays. Also I had a simple analog compact camera of my own as a child. This was my original exposure to photography.
Later my parents bought a dslr and because taking photos was now free and only took diskspace, I could use it always when they didn't need the camera. When they bought a new camera, I could have the old one and so I had my first dslr, A Nikon D40x. I enjoyed taking pictures. But I never made a trip to take photos, I only took it with me if I already had something planned I thought it would be nice to also take pictures. However in recent years it began to show it age and I used it less and less.
Getting the feeling back
The interest was always there, somewere hidden back in my mind. However being a student at that time makes buying a new camera a big investment and one I couldn't really defend, certainly seeing how much I used my old camera. Also there were always things I wanted to upgrade that I used more.
But they the pandemic striked. Less social things more just sitting at home roaming the internet. To break away a bit from this, my parents and I would sometimes go to nature reserves or other interesting places to walk and take pictures. Also the need for online video meetings sparked my interest in video and audio gear. And I wasn't a student anymore so I had a little bit more money to spend.
But they the pandemic happened. Less social things more just sitting at home roaming the internet. To break away a bit from this, my parents and I would sometimes go to nature reserves or other interesting places to walk and take pictures. Also the need for online video meetings sparked my interest in video and audio gear. And I wasn't a student anymore so I had a little bit more money to spend. So after a lot of debating and looking, I decided to buy a new camera. Because all things combined I went for the Canon M50 and buying a camera was a better decision than I first expected.
The new gear I got sparked my interest again and I wanted to try what I could get out of the gear I got and see how much improvement it was compared to my old camera. I also bought some extra lenses to play around with, first a bought an cheap "c mount" lens 25mm f1.8, to play around with a wide aperture. It is only a very simple manual lens, but it was only around 20 euro's so a great place to start experimenting for low cost to see if I liked it. The next was a 50-250mm zoomlens, which I wanted from the start. Later I also bought the famous cheap Canon 50mm f1.8 and an old manual 135mm f2.8. This was a big benefit for having a (Canon) Mirrerless. With an adapter you could almost fit any lens on it, without losing infinity focus. I never thought I would use manual lenses again and enjoy it.
Some unexpected other results
The things mentioned above where not that surprising for me. However, one thing that did surprise me is I enjoyed looking for places to take pictures and resulted I found a lot of nice places I would never found if I didn't buy the camera. And there are a lot more places that are worth visiting than that I knew and a lot closer to my home than I thought there would be. I only never had the willingness to look for it. But because I wanted to find places to take photos, I found them.
Why I created this site
And that brings me to why I created this site. Buying the camera let to more exercise, biking to places and just walking around. And the more unknown parts of nature of a city that took some searching or pure luck to find gave me the most joy. So I hope that maybe I can incite some more people to do the same, because I really enjoy it. And in the end, I didn't need a better the camera, the old one would maybe give less quality images, or some pictures maybe would have failed, but I think the search for it and just enjoying the environment when I was out the take pictures would be the same. I think that even just using my phone would have worked. However getting the camera was an extra incentive to take the time to search for those places.