It was inevitable that I would inherit an interest in photography. There was always a camera close at hand in the Smith household for ‘Happy Snaps’ recording family activities. My interest commenced in my high school days in the 1950s. Starting at the bottom, I made a pin-hole camera out of a small wooden box with a hinged top and a piece of cardboard with a pin-hole stuck on the front. Then, in the bathroom with a red light, I stuck a piece of film on the inside back of the box securing it with some sticky tape. The ‘camera’ was then placed on the railing of our residence at the ANZ Bank in Warwick Queensland and pointed up Palmerin Street for a long time exposure. I was pleasantly surprised with the outcome (right).
My first ‘real’ camera was a 35 mm Super Paxette manufactured by the Braun Company of Germany – a beautiful little camera with a fixed sharp f 2.8 lens. I then graduated to an Asahi Pentax Spotmatic camera with a sharp fast 55 mm f1.8 super takumar lens.
A succession of Pentax camera followed with the MZ-50 the last of my film cameras. The switch to digital was in 2005 with the purchase of a Pentax *istDS 6.1 megapixel unit. My next digital SLR camera was the Pentax K10D (10.2 megapixels) followed by my current (2015) Pentax K3 (24 megapixels). I also use a small Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX5 (10 megapixel) point and shoot camera.
Most of the images in the different galleries were taken using my digital cameras.
