Warning: Unless you are crazy about cameras, reading my profile WILL bore you to death. You have been warned! :D

 

  

 

I'm a cat lover who loves taking pictures. Or a photographer who also loves cats. Just take your pick! :-)

 

As a hobbyist photographer, I would categorize myself as a "jack of all trades, master of none".

 

Some of my Flickr friends gravitate towards certain photography themes, e.g. birds, wildlife, cats, cars, commercial jets, landscapes, street, macro, high speed flash etc, and they are extremely talented at what they do.

 

I don't have any specific niche and I've delved into street photography, automobiles, trains, aircraft, portraits of cats and people, landscape, architecture, food, watches, aerial photos, restaurants, Formula One racing - whatever that I feel is worth capturing and sharing. You could say that I prefer variety and my photostream consists of a potpourri of different themed images.

 

There are some photography styles that I would have liked to explore but has always either procrastinated or never had the opportunity, e.g. astrophotography, action, time lapse, macro shots of insects and flowers, abstracts, fashion & modeling et al.

 

Don't just check out my latest photostream as occasionally I upload uninteresting stuff. Sometimes I do this to help illustrate my posts in discussion groups. The best, or better ones are generally in my various album collections!. Alternatively, you might be interested in a quick browse of my stuff, ranked by either the number of views or their "interestingness" (whatever that means). :-)

 

My choice in photographic equipment depends on my mood and more importantly, the situation. Sometimes I would use my Android smartphone in the absence of my PowerShot S95 or S120 and if I feel like it, I would use my larger dSLRs instead.

 

What I don't do is to force myself to take pictures with my dSLRs just because I have them. As much as I'm a "gear head", I don't go out photographing birds just because I've bought a brand new super telephoto lens. Or little insects just because I have added a new macro lens to my gear collection.

 

I firmly believe that there's a time and place for everything - and everything in its place. This is why my photostream consists of images taken with just about any camera (or lens) - the flavor of the day.

  

Wait a minute...why have I not "followed" you in return?

It's very simple, actually. I don't subscribe to the Facebook/Instagram mentality and I do not collect "contacts". Anyone is welcome to follow me, but if I find that you are already following a ridiculously large number of people, (e.g. 10k Flickr members), I don't think I need to reciprocate.

 

Why none of my images are watermarked

I don't intend to make money from photography and neither do I feel my images are as good as the more talented photographers on Flickr than I am. I also think it's embarrassing to show off pictures which are nothing really special but stamped with a large copyright watermark. But that's just me. :-)

  

Use of of my published images on Flickr

 

All of my publicly viewable images carry the Creative Commons-No Derivatives license, therefore you are free to use any of them - as long as these conditions are met:

 

1. It is for non-commercial purposes and is published in its original, unmodified form.

 

2. The photo that you are borrowing MUST have a link back to the original photo page or URL. or;

 

3, The image credits should point back to this URL: www.flickr.com/photos/stratman2/

  

And yes, I will know if you are using any of my images on your website, forum or blog. :-)

  

===== You can stop reading at this point, unless you're a camera nut like I am. ====

  

History of my photography experience:

 

You could say that I'm a reborn shutterbug! My first camera was a hand-me-down Kodak Instamatic 133X rangefinder film which my father owned.

 

The Instamatic used the old 126 film cartridge which wasn't that easily available compared to the 135 35mm film format. It had no built-in flash but used disposable GE-Sylvania Magicube flash bulbs.

 

Each cube had four sides and each side had a flash bulb that could be used only once. If I screwed up a flash shot, I'd be one short of a flash-lit photo!

 

The Magicubes were considered a luxury for me, therefore I saved them only for situations that really needed a flash. (Fill-in flash was unheard of back then and would be an expensive affair).

 

In the mid 1970s, color film and color processing were expensive and as I was schooling I could only afford monochrome film and prints. Three years down the road, my dad lost interest in his vintage Asahi Pentax Spotmatic SLR and I naturally borrowed his camera regularly.

 

I can't remember what happened to the old Kodak camera - it may have been broken beyond repair at some point in time.

 

The Pentax Spotmatic was a rather solid 35mm fully manual SLR and was mated to an equally heavy Super Takumar 50mm f/1.4 standard lens. It had a mechanical shutter and used a coin-type battery to power its match needle exposure meter in the bright pentaprism viewfinder.

 

It was a steep learning curve for me but I managed to get decent hand held shots inside a shopping mall with a low shutter speeds. My dad had a flash unit, I believe it was a National (aka Panasonic) brand. The SLR lacked a hotshoe and I can't believe I had to tote a flash bracket along to take flash pics!

 

Ironically it was my younger brother who propelled me into the wonderful world of photography. He asked for a Yashica FX-D Quartz for his birthday and got one. That was in 1981. Compared to my dad's vintage Pentax Spotmatic, the FX-D Quartz was like a quantum leap in technology for me! It was an aperture priority/manual camera and I loved the fancy LED exposure indicators in the viewfinder.

 

By 1982, I was buying camera magazines regularly and was looking for my very own SLR. The Canon AE-1 was out of production while my dream camera, the flagship Canon A-1 was too expensive for a high school student like me. My choices were limited and I narrowed down to a Canon AV-1 or a Nikon EM (both were aperture priority-only, entry level SLRs).

 

A friend of mine owned a Nikon EM and so did one of my relatives. It was a fad with teenagers back then to own a Nikon EM. Going up the scale was the more expensive Nikon FE, which was an in-thing with adult amateur photographers.

 

I felt the need to be a bit different from the crowd, so I went with the Canon AV-1 instead. It came with a FD mount, 50mm 1.8 kit lens.Thus began my love affair with the Canon brand. :-)

 

I remember buying a Vivitar 2800 bounce flash (it didn't swivel though) as the Canon Speedlite 199A was too costly.

 

Next in line was a Canon A2 winder accessory, which was released together with the new Canon AE-1 Program (how I wished I had waited longer for the AE-1 Program!), a Hoya 2x teleconverter and a Tokina 70-210mm zoom (I think).

 

I brought all the gear with me for the trip to the U.S. in 1984 with my family. I must have drawn curious stares from onlookers with the Canon AV1, the A2 winder, the zoom lens and the Vivitar flash bearing considerable weight on my neckstrap!

 

For some reason, I temporarily lost interest in cameras for the next three years. That is, until my younger brother replaced his worn Yashica FX-D Quartz with a Canon EOS 620. He even had a Speedlite 430EZ to go with it, the lucky kid!

 

I borrowed my brother's EOS 620 for a few years until I (again) lost all interest in photography in 1992.

 

What became of my Canon AV-1? Sometime in 1987 I sent the camera and all the accessories with it to the Canon service center. Canon repaired the camera but quoted me a high repair fee. I didn't have the money so I never collected it back.

 

Flash forward to 2004. I developed a serious interest in Seiko watch collecting and my friends often emailed me digital pics of their watches. When asked to reciprocate, I told them I didn't have a digital camera. :-(

 

I wasn't going back to the film format, so I made up my mind to buy one. Digital cameras were alien to me, and I didn't understand the concept of "megapixels", digital noise and sensors.

 

After spending some time reading reviews, I settled for a Japan-assembled, Canon PowerShot A80. It used the CF card and even a 512MB card was pretty costly then. I used the A80 to take photos of my watches and for general photography.

 

In late 2005, I bought a PowerShot S2 IS super-zoom as I liked the idea of a dSLR-like, compact ultra-zoom but couldn't afford a dSLR (they were hardly affordable by any means).

 

In mid 2006 I sold the S2 IS for the 6 Megapixel PowerShot S3 IS, which was black in color (it looked more like a proper camera rather than silver colored toy) and for its larger 2" swivel-out LCD screen.

 

Later I sold my old PowerShot A80 and got a 7.1 MP PowerShot A620 for its DiGIC II features, a 2" LCD screen. At the time the latest model was the black, 10 MP PowerShot A640 but I felt it was a bit heavy for my taste. I like my A620 a lot, but it really needed an optical image stabilization feature.

 

From 2006 to 2009, I didn't bother with new cameras - I was contented with my A620 and S3 IS.

 

In early June 2009, I decided that my A620 was a bit too large to be pocketable. I had a Sony Ericsson G705 cellphone which had a decent, fixed focus CMOS sensor camera. It took surprisingly good photos in good light, but performed extremely poorly in low lighting conditions.

 

In short, I wanted a digital camera to bridge the gap between my cellphone and my PowerShot A620.

 

Being a long time Canon fan, I went through the specs of all the IXUS/Digital ELPH models from the Canon stable. Unfortunately at the time none of them fulfilled my criteria - a backup optical viewfinder, a wide angle 5x zoom lens and a decent battery life (at least 390 shots per charge).

 

After further research and deliberation, I chose a Sony Cyber-shot DSC-W150. I hated to go with Sony's expensive Memory Stick Pro Duos as I have quite a few SD and micro SD cards lying around.

 

As I have been using Sony Ericsson camera phones from since 2004, I went with a Sony Cyber-shot instead. Incidentally, it's also my first non-Canon camera since 1982.

 

The Cyber-shot W150, in spite of its shortcomings (slow playback mode, clunky menus, soft images and high noise reduction at even ISO 100) was a generally better all-around sub-compact than the existing IXUS/Digital ELPH models back then.

 

Also in the same year, Canon started to lure me with their new PowerShot SX10is and SX1is ultra-zooms. I read the specs and reviews and was disappointed at their weight, bulk, price and digital noise levels. For the price of the HD video-capable SX1 IS, I could get Canon's entry level EOS 1000D.

 

I had the opportunity to try out both the PowerShot SX10 IS and SX1 IS. Both had "better" and higher resolution electronic viewfinders (EVFs) compared to my old S3 IS. While their EVF pixel count looked good on paper, when I tested them at a store, I realized that neither can beat a proper optical viewfinder in a dSLR.

 

I reasoned that if I bought another ultra-zoom, it would leave my S3 IS totally obsolete and redundant. I may as well re-explore the world of SLRs that I had left a long time ago.

 

The EOS 450D was my first digital SLR and I had a great time with it until I upgraded to the EOS 60D and 650D. As time went by, I also discovered that the dSLR photography can be a very expensive hobby, especially when Ienses and flash units are thrown into the equation.

  

And as the say, the rest is history...

  

Other hobbies:

 

- Guitars and bass playing, DIY home recording

- Tinkering with my Android devices

- Watch collecting

- Blog writing

- GPS tracking and mapping

- Shortwave radio listening

- Photo travels

- Cars

- Cats (the domestic kind, not wildlife cats)

- Flickr!

  

My current cameras (in chronological order)*:

 

1. Canon PowerShot S3 IS ultrazoom (2006)

2. Sony Cyber-shot DSC-W150 ultra-compact (2009)

3. Canon PowerShot G11 advanced compact (2009)

4. Canon PowerShot S95 ultra-compact (2010)

5. Canon EOS 60D dSLR (2010)

6. Canon PowerShot G12 advanced compact (2010)

7. Canon EOS 650D (2012)

8. Canon PowerShot G1X advanced compact (2013)

9. Canon PowerShot S120 sub-compact (2014)

10. Canon EOS 7D Mark II (2015)

11. Canon PowerShot G7X Mark II (2016)

  

Cameras I've owned in the past (in chronological order):

 

- Canon AV-1 35mm film SLR (1982)

- Canon PowerShot A80 (2004, sold)

- Canon PowerShot S2 IS (2005, sold)

- Canon PowerShot A620 (2006, donated)

- Canon EOS 450D dSLR (2009, donated)

  

Lenses that I have/had: (too many, I think!)

 

- Canon EF 28mm f/1.8 USM

- Canon EF 40mm f/2.8 STM pancake

- Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 Mk II

- Canon EF-S 60mm f/2.8 Macro USM

- Canon EF 85mm f/1.8 USM

- Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS (donated)

- Canon EF-S 55-250mm f/4-5.6 IS (donated)

- Tamron AF SP 17-50mm f/2.8 XR VC Di II LD Aspherical (IF) standard zoom

- Canon EF-S 15-85mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM standard zoom

- Canon EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 USM ultra-wide zoom

- Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6L IS USM telephoto zoom

- Canon EF-S 17-55mm f/2.8 IS USM standard zoom

- Canon EF-S 55-250mm f/4-5.6 IS STM telephoto zoom

  

(I am in NO WAY affiliated with the websites above - they are there for informative purposes only) :-)

  

What's in my drawer:

 

- Canon Speedlite 430 EX II flash

- Canon Speedlite 270 EX II flash

- Canon DC-HF1 optical slave flash

- Canon BG-E5 battery grip (donated)

- Canon RC60-E3 wired remote shutter release

- Canon RC-5 RC-6 and RC-1 infrared shutter release

- Lensmate PowerShot S3 IS lens adapter (52mm)

- Lensmate PowerShot G11 lens adapter (72mm)

- Maha PowerEx C9000 WizardOne NiMH AA charger

- Hoya Pro-1 Digital and Super HMC UV filters

- Hoya 52, 58mm, 72mm and 77mm circular polarizer filters

- Cokin graduated ND filter

- JYC wireless RF remote trigger

- National Geographic Tundra NTT2 light tripod, made by Manfrotto (sold)

- Manfrotto 290 Series tripod with RC2 mini ballhead

- Manfrotto 776YB monopod

- Joby GorillaPod SLR-Zoom with Joby ballhead

- MAHA PowerEX Wizard One NiMH battery charger

- BlackRapid RS-7 dSLR strap

  

Stuff that I might buy in the horizon:

 

- Canon PowerShot G7X Mark II compact

- Canon EF 35mm f/2 IS USM

- Canon Speedlite 600 EX-RT flash

- Hoya ND filters

 

(As you can see, I'm a die hard Canon fan) :o)

  

Friendship badges:

  

  

Flickr "Awards" that I've earned:

 

  

 

Jacob's Cats Group

 

If you've gotten this far, I'd like to thank you from the bottom of my heart for going through all that drivel that I wrote. Cheers! :o)

  

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