Tony Volante's Page

First camera owned: 

On Joining the RAF at 17½ years old I bought a Kodak Box Brownie 620 and used black & white film.

Posted to Cyprus I swopped the Brownie for a Franka Solida 6x6 folding bellows job. We started a photographic club and I learned how to develop and print my own films. Still using B&W.

On leaving the RAF I worked for a fashion agency just off Regent Street in London, working in their darkroom. I bought myself a yashica 44 TLR, using 127 film in 4x4 format. Still mostly B&W.

Since then I have never been without a camera of some sort, ranging from a 16mm Minolta sub-miniature camera to a 6x9 plate camera. There were many types of 35mm camera ranging from a Zenith-E up to (my last 35mm) a Canon EOS 650 with which I specialised in natural history photography and was awarded an LRPS by the Royal Photographic Society. I only used Kodachrome 64 colour slide film in those days.

I built myself a darkroom, but only for B&W. I also enjoyed landscape photography and for this I used a Mamiya C330 6x6 TLR and a Zenith 80 6x6 SLR.

I then moved on to Digital cameras, starting with a Ricoh RDC-300Z (one of the first digital cameras), through to a Nikon D80 with a Nikkor 35/70+Macro f3.3. Nikkor 55/200 f1.4. Sigma 400mm f5.6. I then swopped that for a Canon EOS 1000D + 70/300mm f4 USM IS lens nand a wide angle lens. However, aty the beginning of 2011 I decided to concentrait on wildlife filming this year and so sold all my digial camera equipment to buy a Canon XM1 semi pro video camera. As this is rather heavy to lug around just for observation walks I also bought a Fuji S1730 bridge camera which is small enough to carry in a belt pouch, yet turns out surprisinly good photos and acceptable video. I also have two tripods, mono pod, shoulder stock, Bushnellm Trail Camera and have built my own portable hide. So I am never without a camera of some sort when I go out. I use that bridge camera in conjunction with a GPS Data Recorder which enables me to record the track of where I’ve been with the camera and place that track on Google Earth together with all the photos I took on each trip as the GPS can write the date, time, and grid reference of each photo was taken into each photo file. Yes, I’m a gadget anorak!!