[sspphoto]

I became interested in photography on my eighth birthday in 1950 when my parents gave me,in addition to a bicycle, a "HappiTime" Film Size 127 camera with a fixed-focus lens and one shutter speed, presumably 1/50th second. I used it for three years shooting only Kodak Verichrome B&W film enjoying it all the while. Then in 1953, my parents gave me a Brownie Hawkeye 620 camera with its built-in "single-lens-reflex" finder plus a flash gun for Press 5 and Press 25 flashbulbs. I shot my first roll of color film, vintage Ansco Color which I also processed at home with my dad's help. What a rush it was to take part in bringing out all those beautiful colors even though it took 90 minutes to do so! I got my first 35mm camera on my 12th birthday which was an American-made Mercury II half-frame camera from Universal Corp. which I used until 1964 when I got my first 35mm SLR camera, a Voigtlander Bessamatic Deluxe while I was in the U.S. Air Force and stationed in Spain where my "shutterbugging" really took off! I played tuba in the 16th AF Band and we traveled all over Spain where we played concerts, marched in parades, played dance gigs and bullfights when they were in season and I was shooting different color films all the time including Kodacolor, Kodachrome, Ektachrome and European color films such as West German Agfachrome, Belgian-made both Perutz Peruchrome and Gevachrome and even East German Orwochrome. We also visited Dijon, France, then-West Berlin and London, UK with me shooting all the while. Sadly, in 1971, my Bessamatic was given to my first wife as part of our divorce settlement which placed me into a "photographic hiatus" until I bought a 35mm rangefinder camera in 1984 which I used until 1988 when one of my brothers gave me a 35mm Yashica FX-3 SLR with 6 different lenses and a 2X teleconverter to which I eventually added another Voigtlander Bessamatic as well as an Asahi ME 35mm SLR I actually found in a dumpster, that camera still being in good working condition. On Christmas Day 2012, my sister and brother-in-law gave me an Apple iPhone 4 with its built-in digital camera, my very first one and in 2013, I bought a Canon PowerShot SX160 IS digital camera and I now use both alongside my 35mm SLR's which I still prefer to use being that I am 74 and of the "old school" film photographers even though digital photography is now vastly superior in quality to film photography. However, with film, you have a tangible and an immutable original document that digital photography cannot produce which is why film photography is preferred when photographing legal documents and you cannot airbrush out anything from black-and-white negatives, color negatives and color transparencies. hence the logical reason for the continued need for film which I still prefer to use.