My 1st SLR Camera

Every Raya (Eid festival), my family would gather for a group photography at the lounge and dad takes out his most expensive camera for the group photography . That is the Nikon F-401 SLR (Single Lens Reflex - the one with BIG lens) camera. And it is only used once a year - only on Hari Raya. He likes photography stuff, but I don't recall my dad using the SLR most of the time. Maybe almost every dad's have an SLR to be passed on to their children. Big boys toys I think. I started bringing it out when I was in Form 5, using the camera for class photography and something as a present to a visiting school (from Kawane Senior High School, Shizuoka, Japan).

However, I didn't really know how to fully use the camera. I was a camera nut, just a point-and shoot type of person. The thing about film photography is that you don't know the result from the settings you have made. So I just went shooting spree. The difference between the compact camera and the SLR, was nothing further than having a BIG flashpack, a BIG lens, some weird dials, and a rotatable focusing ring. Cool !



I went to Japan a year later (in 2002) for holidays. And prior to that I bought a 70-300mm lens, which I find it cheap compared to some lens I saw sold at more than RM 2000. I didn't know what what are the differences, but I noticed photojournalists use them. So I myself wandered around Japan and took photos which are deemed un-amateurish with the camera I had.

Now in the digital age, film photography is the thing of the past.But it is still alive within film enthusiast and professionals. It is something that cannot go because half of the fun in photography is processing the image in the dark room.