My first camera was a fixed lens Minolta 35mm film camera. I started to take photography seriously in 1971 when I acquired a black body Nikon F series SLR with a 50mm f/1.8 lens. My seriousness notched up a bit after adding an 85mm f/1.8 portrait lens to the collection. The acquisition of a 200-600mm f/9.5 telephoto zoom put me at the edge of reality. Slipping a doubler between the camera body and the monster zoom put me over the edge – – I was using that combination to take close-ups of cactus flowers in the desert outside of Tucson, Arizona. Perhaps the intense sunlight fried a few brain cells. Which might account for the fact that I didn’t take life too seriously back then and all the equipment (along with the brain cells and a nifty darkroom setup) went missing – – as did I.

Fast forward a decade or two and I’m back, still using Nikon equipment but replete with a bit more advanced technology. I have a seven-year-old Nikon D80 DSLR that replaced the Canon AE-1 35mm SLR unit purchased in 1985 (it’s in a dusty camera bag up on the shelf) and recently upgraded to a Nikon Z7-II (via stopovers in a D7100, D750, and D850). I still use several Nikon bodies, but I really, really wish I still had that old monster lens since it would fit right in to my current collections of lenses.

No matter the equipment you use, however, a good eye, a sense of composition, and the luck of being in the right place at the right time (with your camera in hand) are still the most important ingredients in taking a good photograph. 

Websites: https://matiukphotography.art

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