no problem, it’s not a race. And welcome ;)

Same here. As soon as I could read I always had my nose in a book. Only competitor to those was the computer my parents got.

I can easily relate to that.

It was sure nice talking to you, looking forward to more conversations!

Could not have said it better. Hoping this will encourage others to share some of their own experience ;)

Thank you for your story! I envy you a bit for your childhood friend, that sounds like an awesome acquaintance!

He was kinda amazing, indeed. But nowadays the same amazing dude would be frowned upon (if not worse). An adult man (for some reason it seems less problematic for women) spending so much of his time with a child that is not his? Better call the police! Which is real sad (and very unflattering for us as adults) because out of the many adults I met back as a child he was one of the few that was never an asshole with me.Plus, he was so inspiring ;)

I’m just an amateur photographer who was never too interested in photography back then.

Not a pro either. I’m more of a word person, while photography has been a lifelong passion of mine (btw, I’m well into my 50s, nowadays).

If you want to get back into photography, I’ve heard all the cool kids shoot now with Nikon F3s

If I had to pick an all around film SLR, it would probably be the Nikon F100. Not the lightest but the one camera, I still regret giving away even more than my rangefinder… even though I know I most probably would never use it again.

but he author gushes about the camera more than a paid YouTube influencer today.

:)

The lens should be the Canon FD 50mm 1.8, a very good lens, but I have my eye on the 50mm 1.4 and 55mm 1.2 S.C.C.

Thx!

I was a a Nikon and a Konica (rangefinder) guy myself, when I used film. As a matter of fact, my first ‘real’ camera was a Nikon one a photographer friend gave me when I was still a kid, back in the late 70s early 80s. It was a Nikon FE SLR body with a 55 Micro Nikkor F2.8 AIS lens.

The guy was a pro that traveled the world and he quite fancied kid-me as I was so much into photography, with my tiny plastic toy camera, always wanting to come along with him and learn all I could from him (he regularly took me with him to go to expositions). One day, we were at his place just the two of us (back then, things were much simpler) I was ‘helping’ him in the dark room (I was mostly watching him work and listening to his explanations, only doing the simplest tasks like hanging the wet prints or press a button here and there). We stepped out of the dark room and he asked me to have a look at my toy camera, which I happily let him do as I imagined he would show me some new cool stuff I could use. Instead, he thanked me before putting the camera in one of his bags, he opened another of his many Nikon bags (which he also gave me, that same day) and handed me the camera end the lens, telling me these may help me learn good habits much quicker. (It did.) He also gave me a Nikon flash, some batteries and plenty Ilford and Kodak B&W, plus a few slide films too, telling me I would be allowed to use his darkroom when I wanted too provided he was there and not too busy. He then asked if I agreed to us exchanging our gear for good, as it was something photographers could do from time to time. I was not 11, I admired him like more than anyone else and I believed him, I had no idea the value of what he just gave me. I happily agreed. He then showed me how the camera worked, and how to use it. And using it, I fucking did.

We stayed in touch for decades he and I. If he never admitted it openly I’m pretty sure he bought the gear just for me while he was doing a shoot somewhere in Japan (he was not really the 50mm type of photographer, but he knew I was quite intrigued with macro and with street photography back then so a 55 macro lens was kinda a good mix between the two). No matter the gear I have owned since then, I never quit using this lens… up until it finally broke one last time and could not be fixed anymore, maybe a decade ago.

Since then, I’ve given away almost all my photographic gear (I moved to sketching/painting) but this lens is one of the three non-book objects on display in my bookshelves (space is really precious and reserved to books). It’s beaten up beyond belief (it was built like a tank) but it’s also filled with memories and it reminds me of that amazing dude I was so lucky to meet when I was a child (nice adults were kinda not usual for kid-me).

Enough nostalgia, I think we will all agree ;)

Nice :)

Now, on an almost unrelated subject, I must ask you: what book is that next to your journals? A few years ago, I would also have asked you what lens is that but I gave on photography a while ago and would not want to be too much of a bother ;)

I quit doing that… 4 or 5 years ago (started doing it in late 70s) ;)

Pour faire gagner du temps, je me suis déjà emballé moi-même et j’attends sagement qu’on me migre avec les autres données ;)

Bon courage aux admins.

Thinking about it now, this can probably seriously challenge a kid’s faith in their abilities, and rob them of a sense of accomplishment.

I literally took that as a personal challenge, and then started getting better ;)

This was so much kid-me. I was so frustrated comparing my ‘finished’ model planes with the box art. Still, I kept building and painting them :p

J’espère que malgré tout que vous resterez avec nous. :)

Si on devait se quitter les uns les autres dès qu’il y a la moindre friction (version tout public de ‘avoir une couille dans le potage’), de un y aurait beaucoup trop de claquements de portes dans ce monde, et ensuite on vivrait tous bien seuls ;)

Je suis surtout curieux de savoir ce qui cause les soucis (enfin, si c’est intelligible par un incompétent moi)

cool (et curieux de savoir ce qui merdouille) ;)

OK,merci ça ma rassure… Enfin, non c’est pas ce que je veux dire mais au moins je sais que c’est pas mon ordi qui a une nouvelle crise ;)

An interesting read, thx.

Flat-Earthers seem to have a very low standard of evidence for what they want to believe but an impossibly high standard of evidence for what they don’t want to believe (Lee McIntyre, Boston University)

This sums it up perfectly, for me. And not just for those flat-earthers. They don’t want to discuss their ideas, they want to be right. There is no way we can have a sincere debate with any ‘believer’ (of whatever).

And why should we? Why should we do the work to prove them wrong knowing they will blissfully ignore any demonstration that does not end in ‘omfg! You were right all the time! The Earth is indeed flat, and hollow, and reptilians are our true overlords, and the only time NASA send anyone to the moon is when they were all high!’

Why not let them do all the work themselves, instead? They seem to be so willing. I would even happily see some public money used to fund their ‘space exploration’ probes if I did not know for sure that the instant their stupid ideas would be proven wrong by their very own probe, the fact that any public money would have been involved in making it, they would argue it’s one more irrefutable proof of the conspiracy against their (unshaken and unshakable) truth.

Imho, the real issues is not those people believing their moronic ideas. There always have been a bunch like them. Flat-earthers, doomsday believers, anti-vax, conspirationists of every single type you can imagine, and so on. We should be fine with them holding to their believes. Why? Because they should not matter, they should remain the statistically insignificant minority they are, no matter how loud. Also, we should not be afraid to call them for who they are.

Have we really become afraid of calling them by their name? Amusing morons at times, but morons nonetheless, and shameless assholes for those among them that take advantage of those people’s gullibility for their own personal profit.

Have we become that fragile ourselves that we’re afraid to simply ignore them when we’re not frankly laughing out loud at their ‘theories’? Because if we have, that bunch of eccentrics and their theories, is certainly not the issue I would worry about. We are.