Born in 1970 in a small village
somewhere in-between Amsterdam and Utrecht, I
discovered the beauty of nature in my early years. My
parents often took me and my sister on trips to the
nearby lake-district. These little lakes, connected by
small and narrow waterways, are the home of many
flowers, insects, birds and small mammals. Soon I got
my own camera (my fathers old one) and was making
pictures of everything that interested me.
As a teenager I bought myself a
new camera. With not more then 150 Guilders (< 70
Euro) I could hardly afford a Petri GX1 Super camera.
Petri was a cheap camera brand that disappeared in the
mid 80's, not being able to keep up with the Autofocus
booming period that had arrived. With this camera I
made school pictures and sold them my fellow students.
All the money I earned this way went in my 'Get Robert
a better camera' fund.
In the late 80's the world was
full of the new Minolta 7000 Autofocus camera. At my
local camerashop I was able to buy a demo-model, so I
spent the entire savings fund in buying that machine
and immediately replaced the standard 50mm lens with
the new 35-70mm AF zoom lens. Later, more lenses and a
flash was added. I gave this entire set to a
charity-auction in 2005. The highest bid was an
amazing 255 Euro, all that money went to orphans in
India.
The digital era began for me in
1999, with an Olympus D340L. Not really serious yet,
but it was great for websites and small prints.
Followed by a Sony Cybershot S85 (wow, what a lot of
colors) and some other experiments. Finally we choose
for Canon, the Ixus series was very much to our liking
in compact-camera's. We recently upgraded to an Ixus
75. At city-trips we always use this camera. It's
great to have it in the pocket. I still can't figure
out why people are carrying large DSLR's around in a
crowded area's (look at me, I'm a tourist, you can rob
me!).
In 2003 I started to look around
for a digital reflex camera. The choice was between
Nikon and Canon. This was forced when I was offered to
buy a used Nikon D1x, a dream of me. This massive
brick however was way too heavy to carry around in
nature, this one was made for indoor-work, so after a
few weeks I traded it in for a D100. This was at least
a bit smaller, specially when the battery pack was
removed. Great camera and we enjoyed our time
together.
When the D70 was launched, I fell
for the lighter body and some better specifications.
In 2005 we bought a piece of land to build a house.
All the work this brought made that the D70 was mainly
used to make pictures of the construction of the new
house. In 2008, the house was ready, I decided to pick
up my old hobby. Sold the D70 to my father for a fair
price and got myself a D200. See the equipment page
for my current set.
