GPS7's photostream

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I'm an amateur photographer. I shoot on everything that catches my eye, everything that deserves to be saved from time, everything that deserves a second look.
I live in Piraeus, Greece. I love Olympiakos, Canon, Photography, Cinema, Rock music, Computers and Internet.

In the past I've used and have owned several wonderful cameras (see below).
My current equipment is:
Canon EOS 400D
Canon EOS 5 (analog)
Canon EF-S 18-55mm (400D's kit lens)
Canon EF 28-105mm USM (F/3.5-4.5)
Canon EF 75-300mm II USM (F/4-5.6)
Minolta Maxxum 9000 + 50mm/1.7
National universal flash
Panasonic Lumix digital compact camera
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For those who love photo equipment talk (and certainly of some age) here is a short (or rather long?) but comprehensive C.V. of my Photographic Life.
WARNING: For those who don't like the technical stuff much, please don't read it - you'll find it very boring!

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I started my photographic adventure many years ago, with the historic and fabulous Canon AE1

It was not mine, i just borrowed it from time to time from a friend (Thank you Freddie!) to go out and shoot - and learn! Some of my best photos till today are made with this camera, even if I was just learning! Why? The fresh look? The amateur (BEGINNER!) appoach? I don't know...
This lasted for a year. I raised money to buy my OWN SLR (they were quite expensive at the time), and finally did it! I got myself the fantastic Canon A1 which was the best non-pro SLR on the planet at the time!

At last, I had my very OWN SLR!. Lens was the FD 50mm/1.4 (the newer whole-black version - the one shown above is the older one with aluminium ring). Soon I got a (cheap) Tokina 70-300mm too. I was so happy and got very creative. As I was improving myself, I needed something better, more serious. So I managed to buy a (slightly used)...

New-F1 (F1N with AE finder) with a FD 24mm/2.8 (what a lens!).
That 24mm almost never came off the body! (And, for those who know the trick, with the 24mm, I almost never needed to focus - just point-n-shoot - perfect for reportage photos). With the A1 with tele zoom and the F1N with 24mm, both hanging from my shoulder and neck respectively, I was on top of the world. Short after I sold the A1 and got another F1N, and had two F1s for a while! What a party!

It was late 80's when Minolta came out with the "world's first AF" (and fastest they said, as the AF was within the body and not in the lens as Canon was experimenting at the time, with the T80 model after the experiment of the stand-alone-AF lenses and before establishing the EF lens system - Nikon was in big sleep at the moment, they hadn't heard a word about AutoFocus!).
Minolta started with the mid-model 7000 and soon after they produced the Maxxum 9000 professional body.



The temptation was too big to resist. I sold one of the F1s and bought an all-brand-new Maxxum 9000! It was a different approach, a total new sensation (although with AF, we the long tele shooters have forgotten how to focus correctly!). With 9000 came the standard 50mm/1.7 and later a Sigma 70-300 APO came to complete the set. (For quite a while I was running around with one Canon and one Minolta on me and people was looking at me, thinking "He's crazy!"). it was fun. I had the Canon quality and convenience and the Minolta's AF.
Later, Minolta improved the AF (faster and more precise) with the Dynax 7xi.



I found myself selling the rest of my Canon's gear and buying the Dynax 7xi as a second (but much faster and improved AF) body! (with kit 28-80 zoom lens). I was ok for (only a few) years (and having none from Canon, too!).

In meanwhile Canon had not only made the revolutionary EOS EF lens system but had pushed the AF far beyond (more advanced, intelligent, more precise, quiet and really fast). I happed to be in a "comparison-game" with a friend of mine, by shooting seagulls in Mykonos. My friend was shooting with an EOS 10 and I was shooting with Dynax 7xi. Both with long tele zooms, both at the tele end of 300mm! He got five close, fine focused seagulls - I got one, not correctly focused! Right at the moment i just felt it inside. I realised "Minolta's have to go"! I had been a "betrayer" to Canon for some years and I just had to pay the price and come back to... "mother" Canon! Half a year later I sold Dynax and the lenses (I've only kept the 9000+50mm - I still have it today in a drawer) and got myself the brand new ...

EOS 5
........ that had just been released, with all those revolutionary functions and features. I got body plus the 75-300mm for starting (I had no normal or wide for quite a while!). But, at last, I was "back home" (to Canon) and felt fine again! And finally, that was REAL AF! Soon after I had to go wide, so I bought the very good 28-105mm. I still have my EOS 5 today (15 years already, and it's still so fresh and unique). Probably it's the SLR of my life. I would like so much to have it in a "digital edition"!

~~~ Turning an analog SLR into a D-SLR:
A certain company made some "digital films" (not with the today's meaning "CCD = the digital film of today" - it was just a film as we know it, a roll that spread along the back of the camera from one egde to the other and included a light-sensitive area - probably CCD-based - at the place where the shutter opens - you just dropped it in the analog SLR camera as you did with 35mm film, close the back, that's it - the "digital film" worked like analog, only not with emulsion but with ccd-like surface, thus generating digital pictures and storing them in itself! Then when it is full, you just empty it to your pc). Cheap and resultive, with your good old analog equipment, no need to buy new digital camera! That was some years before, in mid 90's, it was very innovative and revolutionary for the time, but this digital film never got widely known and never made it to the market (at least not massively)! Of course, the big manufacturers wouldn't like such an idea, cause they wouldn't sell their upcoming digital products. They want to sell new (digital) cameras, won't they? That would be great if this "digital film" had succeded in the market, but it wasn't heard at all! What a pity! Even Minolta itself made a digital back for Minolta 9000 too! Specially made to turn the 9000 into a digital camera by putting a ccd in the place where the film should be - the holding, pressing plate in the center of the plain back - you just had to replace the plain back of your camera with the digital back and that's it! It stored digital images within the back and you maintain your good old analog SLR - that was not widely known and successful either! These suggestions didn't offer today's quality and resolutions, of course, but who knows what they'd become if they stayed in the market and had been improved? Eh? ~~~



Back to the EOS 5 (analog) again. This is THE perfect advanced amateur body. How nice it would be to have the exact EOS 5 turned into digital. The EOS 5D is a perfect camera, but i'd preffer the analog EOS 5 body turned into digital - Canonists and especially EOS5 owners will understand. Till today EOS 5 is my beloved SLR (even more than the F1s!).

Now we are in the new millenium and Digital Technology has made its invasion everywhere. It makes everyone go digital. So it made me buy a digital body too! (How could I escape? Who am I to resist?).



On October 2006 I got the 400D, the exact week it came out in Europe. It's a very good camera, but it's far from "a serious tool" (as EOS 5 was). It's somehow a toy, very "amateurish", for small hands and fingers, it lacks the grip and the feeling of the EOS 5.
But OK, I must not be harsh, 400D is the ideal base-model, cheap and perfect for someone to start with, with perfect value/money ratio. And it makes good photos. OK!

What I dream for the future? (come on, everyone has the right to dream)> I'd like to have a MarkIII (1D or 1Ds, I don't mind) with some white L series (you know which I mean...). Maybe one widezoom (some 24-80), one telezoom (some 100-400 or 75-300) a standard 500mm or 600mm and a fine 1.2/50mm).
Come on, don't laugh! I said "dreaming", didn't I?But I can live with what I have right now, too.

WHAT I NEED FOR MY BIRTHDAY? Well, here is something to dream of:







... or even...




... and of course some of these....



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