Boys' High

Back in the early 2000s, when I was Vicar of St. John's Roslyn, my stipend didn't quite extend to such fripperies as the DSLR camera I so dearly wanted, so I put my many years of wasting time reading photography magazines to work. Having read reviews of pretty much every camera sold between 1970 and 2005, I was able to buy and sell film cameras at the time when many people were ditching them in favour of the new fangled digital ones. By carefully watching the listings on Trademe and Ebay, and playing off the New Zealand Market against any number of foreign ones I soon had a Canon EOS 300D and a couple of lenses to put on the front of it. This picture of Otago Boys' High School, taken in April 2005, was one of the first shots with my new pride and joy. The EXIF data tells me it was shot at iso100, 1/202 of a second at f10, with the stock 18-55 lens zoomed to 28mm. I can't remember taking this picture, but by the look of things I used a circular polarizing filter. I think this would be the second time I have ever looked at this shot, the last time being 13 years ago. I've reprocessed it tonight using Corel PSP.

By modern standards the Canon 300D was fairly primitive. Certainly the camera in my phone is now better in every respect except the ability to change lenses. But, actually, this picture is OK. As I've always told people, buying a new camera in order to be able to take better pictures is like buying a better pen in order to be able to write better novels. Photography, classrooms, churches, whatever - it's easy to get all hung up about the equipment, when really, the truly important stuff is something else, entirely.

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