How it all began

As a kid, I was very passionate about photography. My first camera was a Kodak Instamatic 100, which I inherited from my mother.  I used this simple point-and-shoot toy a lot, but when my teen peergroup declared photography as something serious, a more decent device had to be found. This was my step into the SLR world. From then on I carried a heavy bag with a camera body,  several prime lenses, and a telephoto zoom wherever I went.  I was mainly interested in the nature, travel and landscape genres and – trying to be as professional a nature photographer as possible – I exclusively shot Kodachrome 64 transparencies. Thinking about it in retrospect makes me smile and you know why: I (naturally) never became a gifted nature photographer. Instead I got trapped in comparing my imagery with that of the real pros and being a subscriber to GEO magazine throughout the 80s and 90s did not help in this respect. As a consequence, I lost interest and ever so often I left my camera gear at home, because I couldn’t be bothered to carry all that weight only with the prospect of producing more mediocre results. It simply felt worthless. With the advent of digital cameras I got hooked again. Instant gratification by immediately seeing what I shot and the possibility to be restricted only by memory space and battery power and not by 36 slides per film was fascinating. I opted for a Fuji S602 bridge camera, which I thought would kill two birds with one stone: A light weighted body with an all-in-one focal length solution and the possibility to stop filling up my home with slideholders and -boxes. After about 5 years of companionship the electronics of the Fuji died beyond repair. And this was were it all ended … for the time being.