Markus Partheymüller

Introduction

A while ago, I was fascinated by my father's old SLR camera, a Contax 139 Quartz. I used it with a Zeiss 50mm f/1.7 lens and was immediately hooked by that kind of photography. It was nothing like the point-and-shoot kind of stuff I did before. A whole new world of technical and creative possibilities opened up and I decided to get myself a used film SLR, namely a Nikon F65.

Before long I found myself watching tons of educational videos about photography, mostly about technical topics. "What is the aperture?", "What can I do with it?" – that's the kind of questions I was seeking answers to.

Not much later, I was able to dive into digital terrain, because a friend of mine, Andreas Siegel, was ready for a major upgrade in terms of gear. He added another Zero to his camera model and jumped to a Nikon D800, leaving me his older D80.

This opened up yet another world for me, because now I could experiment with the things I've learned without having to buy film rolls and wait for the results to come back from the lab. And so I did. Being on a quite tight budget, I somehow developed an obsession to achieve the best possible results with the least expensive gear that is still able to do the job.

On the next few pages you will find examples of the results of this process. Next up: Blogging.