Hi,
Just to mention, we had a small shooting with our photo club. Let's see what we had
- A lady shooting Nikon
- Another lady shooting Nikon
- Another lady shooting Sony A7
- Another lady shooting Panasonic GH3
- A gentleman shooting Canon
- Another gentleman shooting Nikon
- Another gentleman shooting a DSLR the make of which I don't recall.
We also had two young ladies (14 and 15 years of age) acting as models, normally shooting Canon and Pentax DSLRs, but this time they were using my Sony Alpha 99 for technical reasons.
Myself was shooting my Hasselblad as I lent out my Sony Alpha two the two young ladies.
Some other observations:
The lady shooting the Panasonic GH3 felt that it was not serious enough, but I gave her a hint that James Russel regards it as one of his favourite cameras. I guess he is a photographer serious enough. That lady was making her living in database development and also happened to be the grandmother of one of our young models.
The young ladies both wanted to upgrade their cameras. The 15 year old wanted higher FPS, the younger one wanted a Canon, because all her friends had Canon.
So, it is not really my experience that ladies are shooting with inferior equipment. One of the ladies, the one shooting Nikon has made some of the best wet darkroom B&W prints I have ever seen. Ansel Adams class…
Some of my images from that shoot are here (full disclosure, both JPEGs and RAWs :-) :
http://echophoto.dnsalias.net/ekr/Articles/Shoots/Nynas_NFK_2014_09_13/First time I was shooting portraits in 40 years…
Some observations on the Hassy/P45+:
Shooting against the sun I got bad hazing in parts of the image on the Sonnar 180/4, somewhat unexpected.
In high contrast situations the screen and histogram was difficult to see.
I got decent focus on quite a few images. Better than what I expected.
In general I was happy with the Hassy.
Best regards
Erik
I worked in photo retailing in the past. Though some women had good equipment, most used the simplest and least expensive, and used color negative film, as their photos were mostly for family. Photography was not an end in itself. I bet 99% of 126 and 110 cameras were sold to women. The men customers tended to be serious hobbyists (most were doctors, dentists, professors or businessmen); they owned Alpas, Leicas, and Hasselblads. Most used transparency film and had projectors and screens.