Tord S Eriksson
Tord
birdforum said:
Well, where to begin?!
I think my dad is the man behind my interest in birds:
John Eriksson, my dad, who even as a kid in the 1920's was a keen bird-watcher/bird-listener (he had bad eye-sight, but excellent hearing) - his best friend as a youth was the - later to become - famous nature photographer/writer Sven Gillsäter (then known as Sven Eriksson).
I loved to hear about their adventures while stalking birds (for instance: two swans kept them holed down in a barn for an entire day after they had tried to get close enough to take pictures of their nest - only after sunset could the two hungry kids sneak back home). As was the norm then, they also spent much time raiding nests, and picking bird eggs. Like everyone sensible, they stopped doing that at a fairly early age - but dad kept his collection for at least 20 years
!Dad eventually bought a Rollie, not ideal for bird photography, while Sven could afford Minoltas, and long lenses. So they moved different ways, but kept contacts most of their lives.
Sven eventually published several photo-books about his travels, alone, or with his daughter Pia, to far-away corners of the world, like Australia, The Gallapagos, and Africa, before he passed away some decades ago. Dad died about the same time, severely struck by cardovascular dementia, and most of his slides from visits to North America, and elsewhere, doing research, has turned to dust. Those wonderful autumn colours from around Ottawa, all gone!
But I got the bird-watching bug, no doubt about that, at a very early age. I had a few toy cameras in my youth - none suitable for bird photography, but the big step forward was my sister's boyfriend's Edixa Reflex kit, that he sold cheaply to me when he switched to Hasselblads. So from practically nothing I now had an SLR, with four lenses, including a 400/f8, extension tubes, the works! All this I carted off into the mountains at the tender age of 16, never to repeat again, as it was just too heavy - some 14 lbs in all! Slowly my kit increased in size, and I eventually got both a Mamiya SLR body, and a Pentax 50/1.4, as both used M42 in those days!
I also got my first Gitzo tripod, and Gitzo ball head (this was in '75!). The latter I still got, but the tripod I sold recently - still mint!
But the perennnial question about weight, and/or utility, made me for many years walk around with just two Minox 35s in my breast pockets: one contained slide film, the other B&W. Not very useful for bird photography, but it increased the chances of taken a good picture at all. Have tens of thousands of slides taken with them, mostly from trips in the Scandinavian outback, paddling, trekking, or living in a base camp. Adding a eye-glass lens to the snap-on lens shade made the cameras into excellent for macro photography, but you never new how it went, till you got home got the slides back from the photo shop! Since then I like aperature priority!
Wore the Minoxes down I did, eventually. But life is not a smooth sailing for most: I was run over in Scotland by a nurse in 1990, near fatally, and the chances for trekking ever again is nil.
I didn't work for eight years, and for about ten years I took very few photos, but eventually I did get back to my old job, something nobody at the Bridge of Earn Hospital thought possible, driving buses.
First modern camera I bought - any new Minoxes were by then just too expensive - was a Konica Big Mini. Kind of nice camera, if wee bit boring - eventually I had owned three!
I then met my love - Ann-Chrsitine, the widow of a very keen photographer, who once was a photo studio owner.
I had bought a Polaroid in the between years, as a quick route between snap and result when doing editing and illustrating various minor publications, totally volnuteer job!
One day we got talking about getting a digital camera, and the choice for me was pretty obvious, as this was unknown territory: a Konica!
The Konica KD-500 is marvellous close up and macro, rich lovely colours (if set to -0.3EV) and nice flash, if you tape over the flash head to lower the output (not my trick, but works perfectly).
Then I got myself an Olympus C-8080, that was a little marvel optically, but flawed by a lousy, if articulated, display, and EVF, that both washed out in any backlit conditions - a pity!
To that I bought a secondhand Raynox 2.2X from bird photographer Peter Hvass http://faglarrs.hvassnatur.se/#home , who had found it lacking, and I did eventually, too! Vignetting was pretty massive with the C-8080, and felt like it overloaded the lens mechanism! But got some decent pictures ...
It worked much better with my first long zoom compact, the Fujifilm Finepix S9000. Still not quite as good for bird photography as I had hoped!
I also used it for a while on my Canon camcorder, with acceptable, but not brilliant, results!
Dust problems have followed me as long as I've had cameras, not least digital compacts (no way of getting it out, bar sending the cameras off to the camera doctor, is there?! Expensive exercise! I've only done it with the C-8080, twice!).
The Olympus C-8080 had another flaw as well, and that was that its maximum ISO, without entering massivenoise problems, was 140!
So I wanted more ISO, and less dust/pixel problems.
I checked what I could afford at the time, and while the E-PL1 looked nice, it didn't have flash, nor an integrated viewfinder. Similar was with other EVILs, but I could possibly afford a D300S, if it would fit my hands - only practical holding & handling would tell!
So on the last day of 2009, on New Year's Eve I bought my first DSLR, as I figured that would be a way of getting what I wanted: A Pentax K-x, as we were going to Thailand for the first time in my life (the wife's son was getting married!).
Soon afterwards I bought my Tamron 10-24 and my Tamron 70-200/2.8. That mixture (Tamron's long zoom and Pentax's high ISO-capable camera) is a mix made in heaven! At last I am able to take fairly decent bird pictures! Still learning, of course!
I love all kinds of birds: aircraft (including Gooney Birds), flying insects, avian, and human
!Been on bird-watching trips to Camargue, Taavavouma (now a bird sanctuary - partly thanks to us kids work, documenting the bird fauna. It is a true haven for Common and Great Snipes, as far north you can get in Sweden (easily reached by helicopter, or a few days walk - in short: a bird and mosquito haven), and Slimbridge and similar places in Sweden and elsewhere
! And I've been to Tåkern, Kävsjön & Hornborgarsjön, to see the thousands of cranes, arriving each spring, on their way to their nesting grounds all over Scandinavia, flown among bald eagles over Tofino, had a merlin chasing a snow bunting round me, within touching distance, seen hundreds of golden eagles in Jasper, and a few in Sarek, been meters from a bald eagle in Sörfjordmoen, Norway, on a very early morning (2 am), and seen more golden eagles in Sjaunia, had a peregrine circling just a few feet overhead near Tärnaby (the home of Ingemnar Stenmark & Anja Persson), when the peregrines were rarer than just about anything (thanks to friends the stock is now better than it been for hundreds of years in Europe). And I had a jackdaw as a pet as a kid! Eventually it caught pneumonia, and disappeared, but the cat looked pretty pleased with herself ...
Plus I've seen a lot of seabirds while paddling round Skye, a delight in every which way!
And I've been to Newent, and said helloo to all the raptors there!
In addition to driving buses I am MA in journalism, and have worked as a technical illustrator!
My wife Ann-Chrsitine has four cameras, I have five (a Canon A580, in addition to those mentioned above). The wife has two Olympuses (including the lovely E-PL1), one Nikon P5100 and the Sony DSC-TX5, that runs rings round most of our other cameras when it comes to macro photography!
On order is a Pentax 1.4X and Olympus 14-150, possibly a 500mm lens, or something like that! But no hurry!
Bye, bye!
Tord
You're free to email me at my first name At mindless (cicular item) com
!
