Clarke Robinson
I have been interested in photography from an early age, owning various point and click 35mm cameras through childhood, and even an old Polaroid instant camera. I still remember how expensive the little photo cartridges and flash units were for the Polaroid. But it sure was exciting to see a photograph develop ‘magically’ right before your very eyes.
I never really got into the whole traditional darkroom scene, so, like many others, avoided full manual SLRs. Then the arrival of digital technology in the late 1990s really re-ignited my passion for taking pictures. To be able to instantly see what you were taking, easily delete what you didn’t want etc, it was great.
I got to try out my first digital camera as part of a trip to the USA back in the summer of 2000. It was a big clunky Sony that saved it’s photos onto floppy disc. This to me was exciting as floppy discs were cheap and the camera had a huge 10x optical zoom too. I could see there was definitely a future in digital back then. It brought the fun of photography back to me.
Shortly after that trip I bought my first digital, a 1 megapixel Olympus D460Z. I went through several small digital cameras before eventually buying my first digital SLR, and never looked back since. I still use small digital cameras today, which I have found to be really useful for extreme close up macro type work, especially with the addition of some add-on close up lenses (more specifically the Raynox DCR-250).
