My Camera and Me

2006-02-18

Bartłomiej Magierowski

My journey with photography probably began with a Fed camera, which my parents used to take photos of us during holidays by the Baltic Sea. It was a proper camera, by the way. Even back then, I remember wondering how it worked and what it all was, and I knew that the self-timer always made an interesting sound before taking a shot.

Around the age of 10, my father gave me my first camera of my own—a Vilia. I remember that automatic "point-and-shoot" cameras dominated the market back then, where you didn't adjust anything and just pressed a button. I have to admit I liked the look of those compacts more than the Vilia. However, my father told me that I would never learn how to take photos with a camera like that. I suppose he was right, as I realized years later.

So, I walked around the house with my Vilia, photographing toy cars, toys, Lego bricks, the dog, cats in the garden, storks, meadows, trees, flowers, butterflies, trains... oh, what didn't I photograph! The Vilia had simple settings and no focus preview; I could only rely on estimating the distance from the subject. There was no light meter either, but the viewfinder displayed a "dark cloud, light cloud, half-cloud, dark sun, and sun"—a scale that represented the aperture. The camera was simple in construction, but not everyone could operate it without a basic understanding of focus and aperture.

After a few years, even though the Vilia took pretty nice shots, I found myself dreaming of a Zenit TTL that I had heard so much about.

In 1999 or 2000 (my memory is hazy now), when serious Canon, Nikon, and Minolta SLRs were already on the market, I was still trying to get my hands on a used Zenit. I visited a second-hand camera shop several times back then to look at different Zenits. During my vocational internship at a hotel, I had the chance to take on extra work and save some money. In the end, I succeeded and bought a well-kept Zenit TTL for what was—for me at the time—an astronomical amount: 75 PLN (around 20 USD).

With the Zenit TTL, I photographed cats, frogs, flowers, cars, dogs, children, street theater performances... pretty much everything. I was extremely happy with that camera: great sharpness, beautiful colors, and perfect for portraits. I also took it on school trips, where I had the chance to photograph the entire class and all my female classmates (I only had one male classmate). During this time, I gained more practical knowledge about photography. It was also then that I started wondering how zoom and autofocus worked—features I had only read about, but never experienced firsthand.

In 2003, when I landed an interesting job and was set to travel abroad for the first time—to China—in just a month, I asked my boss for an advance on my future earnings. I decided to buy a Pentax MZ-30 with a Tamron 28-70mm lens. I knew that flying to China with a Zenit would be embarrassing, as I had neither autofocus nor a zoom lens. My boss agreed, of course, and he later appeared in most of the photos from China himself. I rushed to the camera store and bought the new Pentax. I had always planned to buy a reliable and famous Nikon, but I didn't have the funds for it, and the Pentax happened to be on sale.

I remember the whole family watching in awe as the autofocus worked—the sound of the motor and the magic movement of the lens rings was amazing. Dreams came true.

From mid-2003, I lived in China. In 2004, my fiancée and I bought a Nikon Coolpix 2200, and I got absorbed in digital photography. It offered easy shooting, vibrant colors, good contrast, fast photo transfers, the ability to make edits in Adobe, and online publishing. The photos were nice and well-saturated, but they were different from the ones taken with the Pentax. A good close-up was out of the question (the quality dropped significantly), and depth of field was virtually non-existent. The digital Nikon shot on its own, and I had little control over it (no manual settings like ISO, shutter speed, or aperture—only preset modes). SLRs are definitely superior in this regard.

That led me back to the Pentax, but I realized I needed a longer zoom. On New Year's Eve in 2005, we went shopping in Hong Kong, and I acquired a Sigma 70-300mm lens. I visited five stores; when I told one "polite" salesman that it was cheaper back in Poland, he suggested I go back to Poland to buy it. Eventually, someone offered a reasonable price.

Currently, I own the Nikon Coolpix 2200 and the Pentax MZ-30 with the Tamron 28-80mm and Sigma 70-300mm lenses. On this website, you will see many digital photos from the Nikon, but I am slowly returning to the SLR. I even bought a scanner to share the results and achievements from the Pentax with you.

As it recently turned out, scanned photos are never perfect, even after sharpening and adjusting the colors, brightness, and contrast. Similarly, photos from an average point-and-shoot digital camera are never truly breathtaking, and the lack of manual aperture and shutter speed controls is another drawback that kills the charm of photography. In August 2006, I decided to buy a more professional camera—a Nikon D70s digital SLR—along with a fairly good Sigma 24-70mm lens. I am aiming to achieve even better results in the art of photography. Thus, on the China XXI website, you can admire photos taken with four different cameras, shot by my wife and me.

Welcome to the gallery!