Zoë Bowyer

Yesterday I ordered a Digital SLR camera and am so excited I can hardly wait for it to arrive. It will be added to our camera collection, which already includes: a classic Olympus Trip 35, a Canon IXUS V2, a Canon IXUS 700 and a Canon EOS 300V. No prizes for guessing that my new camera will also be a Canon. There may also be a few vintage cameras lying around somewhere.

The DSLR will not replace any of the above cameras, it will just be used in addition to them. I think I’m going to need a very big camera bag!

I find myself thinking about my life taking photographs and the cameras I have owned. My first camera was a birthday present from my Granny and Granda in England. Every summer we would spend the last two weeks of our summer holidays visiting Gladys and Ken (or Granny and Granda Bow as we called them) in Leek, Staffordshire. The camera was bought in a shop on the market square and was, I think, a Kodak Instamatic - one of those cameras which used cube flashes. I have a feeling I was about 8 years old, but I could be wrong. Anyway, there started my love of cameras and photography.

My next camera was my mum’s old camera. It was a 35mm compact and took very nice photographs.

I didn’t really take a lot of photos when I was young, film and processing cost money and I liked sweets more than photos!

My next camera was a Pentax SLR. It cost me £100 and I got it in Camden. At the time it was the most expensive thing I had ever bought. I used my savings from my summer work in the kitchens at Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre. I was 16 coming 17 and wanted to be a photographer. I took the camera back to the shop after getting my first film developed as all my photos came out blurry. I thought the camera was broken, but really I just didn’t know how to work it. So, that September I enrolled on a Black & White Photography course at the Tech when I got back to Ballymena. The first photograph that I developed myself was of Katy.

I continued to take photos and developed quite a few by myself. I got my own photographic enlarger and trays and would lock myself in the bathroom for hours, occasionally coming out with my test strip to check which was the correct exposure time.

Back in London for a year I attended a part time photography course but found that my camera just didn’t allow me to learn the skills properly as it was aperture priority. Quite often I couldn’t get the photographs that I wanted. But I loved my camera and it followed me everywhere for a while.

In the end it came with me to Belfast while I studied Fine Art, but the house I was staying in was burgled and my camera went.

I bought a replacement but never truly liked it as much as my Pentax, and it too was stolen when my house was broken into.

I spent some time camera-less as I couldn’t bring myself to get another camera which would surely be stolen. During this time I saw the Olympus Trip 35 in the Barnados charity shop in Ballymena. I think my mum may have bought it for me and it became my camera for a few years.

Eventually, the need for a real camera hit me and I got myself a Pentax K1000. My time using the classic Olympus Trip made me want to get a classic SLR and the K1000 did everything I ever wanted it to do. It is the camera I should have had when I did my photography course.

It is such a good camera that when I eventually upgraded, I sold the K1000 to my sister Hannah and am so glad that it is still in the family!