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The idea of taking a picture of the screen came to me. I mentioned it to Max, my brother-in-law who does photography professionally. He gave me ideas on shutter speed and things like that. My father had an old Canon EF camera which my brother had given him. He did not use it because it was totally manual. Set the aperture, set the shutter speed (up to 1/1000 of a second) then turn the focusing ring. After each shot, pull the lever to advance the film. It did have a built in light meter to guide your exposure settings. It was perfect for what I wanted to do. The screen shots came out well. That started my famous custom made Christmas Cards, which I still design and send out each year.
Screen shots were a nice start, but I fell in love with the camera and wanted to do more. I bought a couple of lenses for it and started taking shots of soccer games (my other passion). During a game at McIntosh HS I was standing next to a photographer from a local newspaper. I got really jealous. Every time the action got close, I would take one shot then drop the camera to wind the film. He just kept shooting! I wanted to be able to do that.
I'm not sure what year it was, but I was in Melbourne, FL for a tournament on Thanksgiving weekend. One morning I stepped out on the balcony and saw that someone had written "Lightning Soccer" (our club) in the sand. I went back in for my EF to get a picture. When I tried to set the aperture, I noticed that the light meter was not responding. I ended up making a good guess for the exposure, but now I had to either repair or replace the camera. I remembered the newspaper photographer.
I bought a Canon Rebel X. A whopping 1 frame per second, but I was happy. I had Auto everything! Since action pictures are what I do mostly, the Rebel was not good enough for too long. The succession has been to the A2E (bought in '97) then to the EOS 3 ('99). I finally had a real camera! Auto everything with 6 frames per second to boot!
In 2002 I started to get the digital bug. I bought a D60. Camera-wise it was not as good as the EOS 3, but it was digital. 2004 saw the introduction of the 1D Mark II. I got on the list and ordered one two months before they came out. It continues to be my pride and joy. I dropped it at a game once. It cost a pretty penny to repair and I also had to replace the 100-400 L lens. I had a press pass to a US Men's National team game and needed a camera in a hurry. I rented a 20D. I liked it. I ended up buying one to use while the 1D was being repaired. The 2007 introduction of the 1D Mark III by Canon got to me. I was able to order one on the frist dat that Ritz/Wolf Camera was taking orders. I got mine in their first wave.
The 1D's and are my current cameras. I still have the EOS 3 and use it maybe once a year, usually for the heck of it. Most of the other cameras have been sold to friends dirt cheap. My current lenses are 300 f2.8 L IS USM (my weapon of choice), 100-400 f4.5-5.6 L IS USM, 70-200 f2.8 L IS USM, 24-70 f2.8 L USM, 28-135 f3.5-5.6 IS USM and 50 f1.4 USM. All Canons. Processing is done with Adobe Bridge, Adobe Photoshop CS2 and Apple Aperture.