Received: by fanciful.org (Wildcat! SMTP Router v5.6.450.8)
          for photo{at}fanciful.org; Tue, 23 Mar 2004 07:11:37 -0800
Received: from saf.tzo.com ([216.55.16.67]) HELO=saf.tzo.com
          by fanciful.org (Wildcat! SMTP v5.6.450.8) with SMTP
          id 135072015; Tue, 23 Mar 2004 07:11:36 -0800
Received: from 66.92.165.103 by saf.tzo.com
 id 2004032310094069117 for photo{at}fanciful.org;
 Tue, 23 Mar 2004 15:09:40 GMT
Received: from flock.org (octavia.flock.org [192.168.1.1])
 by ursula.flock.org (8.11.6/8.11.6) with ESMTP id i2NGjQH22152
 for ; Tue, 23 Mar 2004 11:45:26 -0500
Message-ID: 
Date: Tue, 23 Mar 2004 10:11:32 -0500
From: Bruce Feist 
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.6) Gecko/20040113
X-Accept-Language: en-us, en
X-Orig-MIME-Version: 1.0
To: photo{at}fanciful.org
Subject: (Re)Introduction (long)
X-Orig-Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
X-Orig-Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Hello;

I'm Bruce Feist.  I was active on the Fidonet PHOTO echo years ago,  
back when I ran a Fidonet bulletin board.  In 2002, Bob Dial contacted 
me and invited me back.  So, here I am!  (It took a while for me to get 
around to it! ).

I'm 45 years old, and have been taking photos enthusiastically since I 
was about 10.  At that time my father bought a new Mamiya-Sekor 500TL to 
replace his Bolsey B2; he wanted the convenience of electronic flash 
more than anything else, I think.  So, he gave me the Bolsey, which is a 
very nice fixed-lens 35mm rangefinder.

I started collecting cameras when I was 13 years old; my father's uncle, 
who knew of my interest in photography, was an avid Leica photographer.  
He was slowing down, though, and decided to sell me one of his Leicas, a 
IIIc, for $35.00.  I used it heavily through high school, and also began 
to accumulate various other old cameras, most of which I still have.  By 
the end of high school in 1975, I had about 100 cameras... cheap stuff, 
for the most part, such as old box and folding cameras.  But, I did have 
some more serious equipment as well, although the Leica was still by far 
my most flexible camera.  In these years I also had a B&W darkroom at 
home.  Among other things, I used to photograph school plays (I was in 
the drama club) and sell prints that I made myself to the other 
students.  My prices were *excellent* ... I barely covered my costs.

In college, I tapered off from photography.  I brought a couple of my 
cameras with me, and used them occasionally, but mostly my interests 
were elsewhere.

In the 80s, I started to get more interested again.  My girl 
friend/fiancee/wife (depending on the year) had a Minolta X-series 
camera -- I forget exactly which one it was -- and I enjoyed playing 
around with it.  For the rest of the millenium, I'd say that I was a 
typical amateur photographer in many ways.  I'd mostly take photos on 
vacations.  We replaced the older X-series camera with a pair of X-700s 
and a series of lenses for them; I brought them to Belgium, the 
Tambopata rain forsest of Peru, and Hawaii, among other places, and I 
took some photos that I'm still pretty happy with.

In the late 90s, for a 40th birthday present I got my first serious 
digital camera, an Olympus D-600L.  This reawakened my interest in 
photography in general, both for digital and film.  Digital cameras are 
*fun*, and the D-600L did a very good job.  Suddenly I was taking lots 
of photos again!  I also discovered eBay around then, and bought a 
couple of interesting old cameras.  One was a Stereo Realist, and the 
other a Russian Zorki.  Back in the  70's, I had occasionally seen ads 
for Zorkis, and was interested in them as an exotic and Leica-compatible 
camera.  Suddenly, they were affordable!

In late 1999, my wife and I had our first (and only) child -- a daughter 
named Naomi.  This drastically added to my interest in photography, 
especially since I became a stay-at-home dad.  I bought a newer digital 
camera (a Toshiba PDR-M70 3 megapixel) in late 2000, because I had some 
money from a class-action lawsuit against Toshiba that I could only use 
towards Toshiba equipment, and started shooting like mad, with both it 
and the X-700s.  I also went berserk on eBay with all my newly available 
time (during Naomi's naps), particularly with more stereo photography 
and former Soviet Union (FSU) equipment.  My collection is up to nearly 
500 cameras, and my wife recently strongly suggested that I stop buying 
for a while.

Naomi is now in preschool full-time, so I've sort of been fired from my 
stay-at-home status.   I'm in a certification program to become a 
licensed high school math teacher; while I do that, I'm working 
part-time at my favorite camera store, Ace Photo, near my home in 
Northern Virginia.  I mostly set up eBay auctions for their used 
merchandise.  In addition to letting me play with cameras all day, 
they're very flexible about my hours and time off, so that I can pick up 
Naomi from school every day and so on.

I'm active on a variety of photographically oriented electronic forums 
such as this.  In particular, I'm on a bunch of Yahoo lists (I moderate 
the very low-activity Bolsey list), and also some BestStuff and Topica 
forums.

My main interests in collecting cameras continue to be the stereo and 
FSU equipment; I've also been indulging myself in subminiature lately.  
My most heavily-used equipment varies from week to week; currently it 
includes:

Minolta X-700s
Toshiba PDR-M70
Stereo Realist
TDC Colorist II (another stereo camera)
Minolta 110 Zoom Mark II
Kiev 6C medium format SLR
Zenit 122

Early on, I used to mostly print my stereo photos as paper stereoviews; 
these days, I do a mix of that and mounting my images as slides.  In 
addition to the cameras I mentioned above, I sometimes shoot medium 
format stereo with a Sputnik, and for 35mm sometimes I use an image 
splitter or Loreo 3d Lens in a Cap (3dLIAC).  I also have a vertical 
mounting bar that allows me to join two SLRS base-to-base for stereo 
photography; I'm in the process of deciding that it's just way too 
cumbersome to use.

I have two trips coming up that I'm looking forward to photographing: 
Costa Rica and Prince Edward Island.  For the Costa Rica trip, I'm 
planning on bringing the X-700s along with the vertical bracket, an 
image splitter,  and a 3dLIAC, the PDR-M70, a camcorder I didn't mention 
above, and a Nikon ActionTouch for underwater photography.  Lenses for 
the X-700s will include a 500mm Minolta mirror lens, a 35-70 mm Minolta 
zoom, a 70-210 Minolta zoom, a 28mm Minolta wide angle, and a FSU 
MIR-20M MC 20mm lens in M42 mount with a Minolta adapter.  Oh, yes, and 
a pair of 50mm lenses too .  I haven't figured out the Prince Edward 
Island trip's cameras  yet; that'll be over the summer, and I have time.

When I shoot film, I scan it using a Nikon CoolScan 4000 ED or Epson 
Perfection 2450 Photo scanner, depending on the format, and post it to 
my web site at www.flock.org/photos.  Software I use for all this stuff 
includes Adobe Photoshop CE (until recently I was using Elements 2.0), 
VueScan and NikonScan for scanning, and Pokescope Pro for stereo image 
manipulation.  Information and photos of most of my equipment is at 
http://www.flock.org/photos/Digital/Camera%20Collection/index.php.  And, 
a self-portrait I took of myself with FSU cameras is at 
http://www.flock.org/photos/Scanned%20Film%20Clones/2003/20030306%20Self-Portraits%20Zenit%20122/resized/14%20Cameras%20Photoing%20SideResized.jpg

.

Any questions or comments would be welcome -- they might lead to 
interesting discussions!  I'm looking forward to participating in this 
echo/list/forum/whatever you like to call it, and experiencing what it's 
like these days.

Bruce Feist

--- Platinum Xpress/Win/WINServer v3.0pr5