my photo equipment

i’ve got my first camera at the age of 14: a “voigtländer”

15 years old we developed the photos in a club, black and white …

and earned my first money by selling the pictures from my school class to the other students…

after i got my first “reflex”: the canon ae-1

i made black and white with the ilford fp4 and hp5 (200 or 400 iso !!) and finished by making “beautiful” slider: “dispositive”
I say “beautiful”, because in our memories the past was always perfect, and often I feel to go back to the times of “diapositive”! But in reality the quality of those pictures has not being so perfect…

my canon, the zoom etc. was stolen in cap-ferret during a holiday trip! I was very sad!
Because a camera; the time it is your camera, needs time, I think about one year, after this time you really feel your camera in your hand.

….so I changed to nikon :first nikon f3 + f4,

after I changed to the digital world : Nikon d1x + d2x + d3x +d4 + d5 and leica q and q2

i think that the real difference between classic and digital photographic came after the d2x, the “depth of field” in french: “profondeur de champ” was now the same with a digital camera.

i also tryed the fudji x-e1, (forget it, the autofocus isn’t that..) the canon g11; g12 and g15

but a slr camera is something different ! real pictures you do only with a slr camera
today I “work” with the nikon df (perfect in the city) and the new d5

lenses: my best pictures are taken with the nikon 24-70mm f/2.8 and the 70-200mm f/2.8
belive me: you cannot make better pictures with other lenses, if the picture isn’t good; the reason was: “you have not being too close…!!!” (Robert Doisneau)

he also said“ the first 10 000 pictures are not perfect” : I agree…

I also use sometimes the 85mm f/1.4

16mm f/2.8

105 mm f/2.8

500 mm f/8 fix (mirror)

and since ouganda the 80-400 4.5/5.6

i sold now this less, which i don’t recommand and changed to the

200-500 zoom

my adress in Paris to buy Nikon:
Nikon Store Rue de  Courcelles Paris 17

since june 2016 i now have also a leica q:

it took me 4 weeks to get a big friend to this camera, in many blogs you can read about the “leica fevrer”:

with a leica i make different pictures…

it’s just amazing !!!

i can tell you my opinion:

ok, you have now a leica and you keep care, the autofocus isn’t a nikon d5, the light is different (you have a 28mm !! …but you keep care and you just change your attitude to take the pictures, you take a step back to the 80th, light, focus and frame: you think more about it and you take more care about the “clic”, that’s it!, the camera gives you the border that a “normal” nikon doesn’t give to you and so you keep more attention to the best “clic” you can make…

but: if you don’t know what to “shoot” and why you “shoot” a leica will not make you a better photographer…!!!

by the way: to stroll around paris without 5 kg it’s just the perfect camera!

now in april 2019 i changed my leica q to the q2, focusing mostly in 35mm i use now the “hors-champ”

i can see what is out of the focus and so to compose my photo this is a big help,

If you have any question about my equipment please feel free to contact me !

thanks for your visit and see you soon at pictures-by-albi