Dave and his gear
Like I said in the “About me; section; I’ve had cameras since i was in elementary school. My first camera was a Kodak Instamatic that took 126 cartridge film and used disposable flash cubes. I enjoyed that camera but for a kid in the 5th grade, film, flash cubes and developing was pretty pricey! 
It was a great little camera for a kid and i took many pictures with it (don’t ask me where they are today).
When I was 16 my mother gave me a Minolta Weathermatic camera for Christmas. It took 110 cartridge film and had a built in flash (no more expensive flash bulbs!). It was waterproof and took pretty good images. This versatile little camera, with no adjustable settings or manual control, was what really got me interested in photography. I carried this thing everywhere and took hundreds of pictures with it. It came with me to school especially during advanced swimming, lifeguard training and water polo. I also too it with me on fire calls and stuffed it in my bunker pants pocket while serving in the city’s volunteer fire department. Developing the film was still a little pricey especially for a kid working at a grocery store so I wound up spending a lot of money at the Fotomat (conveniently located in the parking lot of the grocery store where I was employed). I absolutely loved this camera.
Hop in the DeLorean, fire up the flux capacitor and fast forward several years later when I was dating a girl who actually seemed to like me. Now this in itself was strange because, well, let’s just say, I can be “difficult”. But she seemed to not mind me being a little “different” and the relations ship seemed to be going places. To my surprise, she bought me a camera for Christmas one year
( that’s when I knew she was a keeper!). I tore off the wrapping paper that covered the colorful box emblazoned with the first word that caught my attention; NIKON. I stared down at the image on the front of the box and staring back at me was a Nikon 4004s 35mm film camera with a 50mm 1.8 lens. I suddenly felt like Ralphy from A Christmas Story when he tears the wrapping paper off of the Red Ryder BB Gun.
I was in heaven and before even removing the camera from the box I became convinced that I was now a “real photographer” like Ansel Adams, Helmut Newton or Peter Parker. Yes, definitely Peter Parker because quite frankly, Ansel Adams couldn’t climb walls and Helmut Newton didn’t have web shooters. I loved shooting with this camera and I used it a lot. I bought a SunPak flash for it because I couldn’t afford a Nikon Speedlight and a few Quantaray and Sigma lenses (I couldn’t afford Nikon glass either). I almost never used the 50mm 1.8 lens favoring the cheap telephotos I had purchased. This is before I discovered decades later that the “Nifty 50” 50mm lens was far superior and more versatile to anything else I had in my camera bag. And it was way before I learned the joy of Bokeh. The first time I was published in a fire department trade journal, the image was captured with my Nikon 4004s. The image was captured in Miami in the days following Hurricane Andrew in 1992. We came across a homeless man who rode out the storm by literally hiding in a drainage culvert. He suffered some minor injuries and was thirsty. While my partner talked to the man, I snapped the photo and it wound up on the cover of Code 3 magazine, a local firefighter union trade publication in South Florida. My first published work!
The Nikon 4004s was a great camera but I really wanted a better system with more versatility. I had been working for the county’s Emergency Medical Services as a paramedic and I met the departments AV guy/PIO, Gene Herrera. Gene was a photographer and like me, a Nikon guy. He also knew the areas Nikon representative who sometimes sold demo cameras. As it happened, he had one for sale. It was a Nikon N90s 35mm film camera body and I think I paid about $1,000.00 for it at the time. I used this camera for years and enjoyed every minute of using it. I shot a lot of action/photojournalism stuff and was published in the Miami Herald, Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel, 1st Responder News, Emergency Services News, Code 3 Magazine, and others. The N90s served me well, especially when I was the department’s back-up and ultimately primary Public Information Officer.
So what do I carry now? My trusty Nikon D750 FX full frame (as opposed to crop sensor rigs) camera with amazing capabilities.
My camera body inventory consists of the Nikon 4004s my girlfriend (now my wife of several decades. I told you she was a keeper) gave me back in the 80’s, a Nikon N90s film camera that I still use when shooting film, a Nikon D100 and D200, a Nikon D7200 (great crop sensor camera) and an old Yashica GSN from the early 70’s.
As far as lenses go, Ive got a mix of Nikon, Sigma and Tokina lenses for my full frame and crop senor cameras. I’ve got multiple Yongnuo speedlights (so many that i gave two to my nephew), a new Flashpoint XPLOR 600 and a giant load of light modifiers including soft boxes, parabolics, strip boxes, umbrellas etc.
Anyway, that’s all for today. I may head out to the Florida Everglades and shoot something. Also, I’m in the market for a back-up full frame body, but please don’t tell my wife.
Dave