Cameras

Fri Apr 12 10:25:56 EDT 2019

I balanced my photography with modeling during high school.  Neither was cheap and a bagboy’s part-time pay didn’t go far.  When I entered college in 1977, modeling was put on the back burner and I “focused” (pun intended) on photography.  I kept bagging groceries for Ingles until taking a job in the college’s Physics lab setting up experiments for underclass sessions and repairing equipment and was making a whopping $5/hr.  With gas at 54 cents/gallon then and a roll of processed K64-36 costing around $10, I finally had some extra dough to go shooting.

I came to western North Carolina with just 4 Southern slides in my collection that I’d shot on vacation the previous summer.  When I graduated in 1981, that had risen to over 5000, including Clinchfield and SCL.  When I stopped taking slides in 2004, the collection had risen to over 25,000, some of which were traded for (remember when slide and negative trading was just like trading stamps?).

I actually bought my 35mm camera in 1975, not ’76 (mis-typed this in previous email).  It was a Honeywell SP1000 with a manual screw 55mm lens and a slide switch near where the lens screwed into the body that turned on the “averaging” light meter.  That was the weakest link … the switch top came unscrewed from the switch body (inside the camera) 3x during its life and each time I had to visit a camera repair shop to put it back.  Maybe none of them had the equivalent of LocTite back then!

In 1982, my first job after graduation at Babcock & Wilcox (east of Lynchburg) allowed a “trade up” to a Canon F-1 and I added an A-1 soon after for black and white.  Added a Canon 70-210 zoom later and had an el cheapo 35mm wide angle from K-Mart that didn’t get much use.  In 2004, I converted to a Canon 20D digital.  I now use a Canon 5D with 24-105 lens and have a Canon 100-400 which has AMAZING clarity.

Modeling content:  The Canon 5D with “normal” zoom is what I use for all kit instructions pix.  It can’t get macro-close but I offset this with a time exposure, at least f14 aperture and no flash.  You can see some of these (converted to low rez) on my web site (S and O AAR flat cars, in particular).

Jim King

 <http://www.smokymountainmodelworks.com/> www.smokymountainmodelworks.com

From: NW Modeling List <nw-modeling-list at nwhs.org> 
Sent: Thursday, April 11, 2019 9:10 PM
To: NW Modeling List <nw-modeling-list at nwhs.org>
Subject: Re: EXTERNAL: E-units - Southern practice

This all reminds me of saving my allowance and odd-job $$ to buy a used Minolta SLR, on layaway no less, at age 14 for the princely sum then of $169.00. Nearly half a century later, the camera’s still on a knick-knack shelf wondering where Kodachrome 64 went! LOL. Wish I’d shot more then, glad I captured what I did, budget-permitting.

Andre Jackson

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