Somewhere near the turn of the century I thought it would be a good idea to adopt digital technology. A friend was using an Agfa camera with the swivel lens (Agfa ephoto 1680). For anyone doing street photography this was in the day, as they say, a game changer. Why? You could roam the streets without anyone realising what you were doing. So, photos were pretty candid for the most part. The design as you know allows for photos to be taken from the hip as it were, just as you can now with a flip screen. Only now, people are very savvy regarding photos taken in this way.

I remember paying around $2100 (AUD) for this camera when it came out. Back then CF cards were mighty pricey too. A 32MB (not GB) card cost me $230! I was pretty happy with the quality of images it put out though. The above photo was taken in Jaipur, India around sunrise. At the time of taking the image below, I also took the same shot with a 35mm film camera. I much preferred the colours on this one.

Finally, this image below. I probably thought I was more invisible than I actually was. Or, maybe he was just curious about my fiddling about with a camera at waist level. In any case it was a step-up from the Agfa which did 1 Mp files while the Nikon did 2 Mp files. Funny Agfa didn’t pursue digital camera production much. They went bankrupt in 2005. (the digital arm at least). I think these images hold up relatively well as digital images albeit smaller size.

38-115mm - 3x optical zoom. f2.8-f4. 2.1Mp. No RAW but tiff format available. ISO 80 / 100 / 160 / 320 (Default 80). Focus modes - Continuous AF mode (when using LCD), single AF, manual focus.