I remember my father spending hours upon hours with his camera and a bag full of lenses a ton of film B&W and colour and the arguments with my mother about keeping film in the fridge, then whenever we went anywhere dad had the camera out to take a minimum of 3 photos each time (no motor drive either!!!).

Then the addiction really kicked and my father being a toolmaker/engineer (toolmakers don’t make screwdrivers)started making extension tubes for lenses his own enlarger and developing set and the abduction of my mother’s laundry to become a "dark room" he even rebuilt a small tri-pod into a behemoth of a studio grade tri-pod.

And during all this my mother and myself got dragged around with me thinking I’d rather watch Dr Who(I was only 10) this included going to swap meets and every camera store in the city and watching my father drooling at the displays of lenses and other pieces of arcane wizardry that I could never touch or fathom all the while leaving me thinking “hurry up I wanna look at toys”.

But it changed one day when dad handed me the camera this was the equivalent of giving me the keys to the Ferrari, at first I was scared of dropping the camera then the light meter was hung round my neck and then the lecture began and I went from fearful to asleep on my feet but after I took a few photos and then dad developed them I was hooked and it began from there.

But like all romances I drifted away after my father died in the early 90's the old 35mm Practika SLR was packed away and the enlarger, tripod & extension tubes were sold or thrown out, It was hard for me to look at these and not feel the history and love then the inevitable tears that followed (even now the eyes get a lil misty). And the years roll by and the addiction subsided but never really went away.

Fast forward to recently, thanks to my friend Anthony the bug came back when he put his Pentax DSLR in my hands and let snap a few pics, don’t get me wrong I’d used cheap All-in-one digitals but it wasn’t the same as the heft of a SLR. Fast forward again and I now have the Sony A200 twin lens kit and a lot of re-learning to do but I’m lucky to have my friend Uldis with me on the journey (cheers bud).

Well this is where I started to realise the addiction my father started out with grows, I couldn’t make a tripod so I jump on to Ebay and there goes $500 on a Manfrotto tri-pod, then I decide my every day lens doesn’t have a big enough aperture so a Tamron 17-50mm f2.8 is acquired then I need all the appropriate filters to go with said lens and of course a better camera bag and a more memory and laptop, software......

and then one day I notice myself staring longingly at all the shinny glass in a shop window and smile in understanding at my father’s addiction.

An interesting little note I still carry my father’s light meter it’s a Unittic meter it doesn’t work really well anymore the brown colored leatherette cover is fraying and the strap is gone replaced with a old brown shoelace, but I love the lil gadget more than all the others. As that was my job to keep me quiet when dad was snapping away.

Cheers
Jon