1992 – Pentax ME SE
This was my first 35mm film camera, which right now is collecting dust in the basement. Haven’t touched this camera since I bought my first digital camera. But it was a great camera. I had three lenses, a 50mm f1.2, a 28mm and a zoom lens.
1997 – Sony Mavica FD7
This was my first digital camera. It had a resolution of 640×480 pixels (ugh!), which should translate into about 0.3Mpixel. Today, the pictures look horrible. It used a floppy to store the images, and could actually fit 20 pictures on a floppy. And with a 10x optical zoom, this was not really a bad camera for it’s time.
In lack of any useful software for copying the images into the hard disk, this is when I started writing my DIA application for copying and renaming the pictures, into the only format which made sense (to me at least); giving each image a file name consisting of the date and time the image was taken. I still use the same naming scheme when I now import into Adobe Lightroom directly.
2001 – Sony Cybershot F505V
The Sony Mavica was very faithful, and never failed on me. I started buying Sony TV and stereo as well, and my next camera was Sony Cybershot F505V, a 3Mpixel camera, which used the Sony Memory Stick. The really great feature with this camera, is the possibility to tilt the camera house from the lense, making it really simple to take ground-shots or over-head shots. Also with 3Mpixel, the image quiality was really improved from the Mavica.
2004 – Sony Cybershot F828
The Sony Cybershot F828 increased to 8Mpixel, and accepting both Sony Memory Stick and Compact flash. Like the F505V, this can also tilt the house, and has a 28-200mm F2.0-2.8 lens, as well as a four color CCD.
2008 – Sony Alpha 350
In 2008, I took the step into the digital SLR world with the Sony Alpha 350. This has live-view, and a tiltable screen, which is useful for the ground and over-head shots. I have an external flash HVL-F56 flash, and 4 lenses, 28-70mm zoom, 55-200mm zoom, 11-18mm wide angle and 100mm macro. I also have the vertical grip and the GPS unit, which records the location where the pictures are taken. I later replaced the two kit lenses with a 18-250 lens.
2010 – Sony Alpha 580
I 2010 I invested in the Sony Alpha 580, as well as new lenses, so this is now my equipment:
- Sony Alpha 580
- Lens: 50mm F1.4
- Lens: 24-70mm F2.8 (Carl Zeiss)
- Lens: 100mm Macro F2.8
- Lens: 18-250 F3.5-6.3
- Lens: 11-18mm F4.5-5.6
2013 – Sony Alpha A99
The next camera was a Sony A 99, which has 24mpixel, and is my first full-format camera.
My lens collection is the same, but I’ve added the 2x teleconverter.
John Erik Setsaas Photography 