You crack me up, Bob! That's a great line ...! :-) When I was that age, I'd already bought my own first camera (a Minolta 16-P which cost me the grand sum of $19 at Camera Craft in New Rochelle, NY), having been given a couple of Kodak cameras before then. But I wanted something more adjustable. My mother loaned me her Argus C3... with which I learned a great deal about ruining film until I figured out how to work aperture, shutter speed, and focus. AND remembered to wind on to the next frame before re-cocking the shutter.
There really isn't a modern equivalent. I'd never start a youngster on a 35mm film camera nowadays, and any digital camera today has way more capabilities and automation ... And the expectations of young people today are quite different from my expectations of a camera in 1968. However, as a teacher of photography, my goal in getting people who are interested started out is to let them begin with focus and understanding light, and understanding the difference between what your eyes see and what the camera might record. Nothing on the market today would start a young person off with a better basic understanding of those things than an instant film camera with manual focus, and it would also serve to give them the immediate return on their effort that is so important to the learning experience. Something like the Lomo Instant Square I obtained recently or a Polaroid SX-70 with the Polaroid Original film would do a great job of teaching these things, and would also be special, different, from the smartphone experience in ways that would be beneficial to learning how to be patient, how to be economical of exposures, and how to "look, think, and consider" before shooting. G — No matter where you go, there you are. > On Mar 8, 2018, at 7:22 AM, Bob W-PDML <p...@web-options.com> wrote: > > Sounds like he needs an adult real-life lesson that will leave him feeling > inadequate, unloved and in despair at the pointlessness of existence, so > anything by Pentax will do. > > When I was about that age someone bought me an Instamatic, which quickly > frustrated me, but one of my schoolfriends had an Olympus Pen-F (the > half-frame one) and we could use the school darkroom, so I learned a bit with > that. There is a digital version now - something like that would probably be > good. > > B > >> On 8 Mar 2018, at 14:31, Eric Weir <eew...@bellsouth.net> wrote: >> >> >> A sister has asked me for advice on a beginning camera for her grandson. >> He’s 12, intelligent, creative, self-disciplined—all-in-all pretty >> precocious about many things. I have my own thoughts, which may not be best, >> but wondered what y’all might recommend. >> >> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ >> > -- > PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List > PDML@pdml.net > http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net > to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow > the directions. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List PDML@pdml.net http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
