[Adey Baker]

My first photos must have been taken some time during the '50s with my Mother's Box Brownie or my Dad's Ensign Greyhound.

My first 'exhibited' shots were two photos taken in Paris, with my sister's Brownie 127 during a school trip in April 1962. They were selected along with some from other pupils to illustrate the trip report on the school noticeboard.

I'd always been fascinated by photography though I was completely ignorant of the mechanics/processes involved - it was all magic to me!

When I started work in 1963 my first 'big' purchase was my very own camera at last! A Kodak Instamatic 200 with drop-in 126 cartridge and 'dial the weather' exposure. I thought it was the dog's whatsits and it went everywhere with me.

There was something missing from my photography but I didn't know quite what that was until my mate showed me his SLR (a Zenith C!) with both 50mm and 135mm lenses. It was one of those life-changing (and wallet-emptying!) experiences.

I bought a Practica L with seperate meter,35mm, 50mm and 135mm lenses and set off, whenever I could, to photograph the surrounding area from every angle. Having been a shift-worker for over thirty years, I've always had some daylight hours available during the week,so this gave me lots of opportunities.

I added a second 'LLC' body and, more significantly, a 400mm Soligor pre-set F6.3 lens to see if I could get any worthwhile shots of the local birds and other wildlife. My Zenith-owning mate had also introduced me to the basics of developing and printing my own films so I would shoot whatever I could in the day and then process at night and, hopefully, identify any mystery birds from the resultant blurred images!

The Practicas were quite noisy so the introduction of the Olympus OM1 was a godsend with its quieter cloth shutter and dampened mirror. I could never afford their 400mm lens so had to make do with a 300mm, which was a bit too short, until Sigma re-introduced a 400mm Apo in about 1989. I added other bodies from time to time though I've not had much luck with OM auto bodies both OM2n and OM4 failing to well-known faults.

With the OM system obviously coming towards the end of its life in the late '90s I bought a Canon EOS50E to get into a system that wasn't going to disappear just when my camera bodies might need replacing! I also added another Sigma 400mm lens to fit the new body

From there I've moved on to a 20D digital body which is a whole new ball-game and by-passes all those crappy 'machine' enprints to show you how good a photographer you really are! I can't believe how much better my bird photos look now - I'm not doing anything differently at the taking stage (other than taking more shots!).

Along the way I've also bought and sold on an Olympus 35RC compact and a Leica M4 50th anniversary model with 35mm F2 (that had to go just before I got married to help pay for a car as my old one was falling to bits!)

I've also got a Sony S85 digital compact camera which is quite nice though a bit slow by today's standards