The first camera that I ever owned was the Kodak CX7430 which I bought in Perth, Australia in 2005. It was a 4MP basic compact point and shoot digital camera with minimal control and made to be easy to operate for beginners. The Kodak CX7430 introduced me to the world of photography and got me falling extremely hard into it. My earlier days of this blog were filled with images taken with the Kodak compact, but I have achieved those blog entries for privacy reasons. After 3 years of extensive use, or abuse, depending on how you look at it, the CX7430 died. Recently, I found similar camera in the used marketplace here, a Kodak CX7525, which was not exactly the same, but it was 99% similar. They have similar body design, controls layout, lens, LCD screen, everything, the only difference was the CCD image sensor in CX7525 being 5MP vs 4MP in the CX7430. I thought it would be fun to relive the nostalgia and bring this old Kodak out for a spin! I made a video to share my thoughts about the camera here (click).
I won't go into length about my thoughts on this camera here, I think that is redundant for an outdated dinosaur of a camera. However, I did spend a significant chunk of my earlier photography journey with the Kodak CX7430, and it was the camera which I used to learn all my fundamentals - exposure settings, composition, lighting, high ISO noise, dynamic range, etc. I spent so much time shooting with the camera, it was practically with me everywhere I went to. I was a slow learner, it took me a long time to figure a lot of things out, but I was keen and I was very patient. I was also persistent and never gave up very easily, and kept going and going until I was happy with some of the shots that I was aiming for. This first camera, Kodak CX7430, helped me to grow as a photographer and I would not have asked for another camera.
During my earlier days of photography, everything was magical. I would point the camera at anything. I see beauty in all subjects around me. I did not care that much about highlight blowouts, or harsh flash, or images being slightly blurred due to camera shake, or the lens having flaws like distortion or purple fringing. I was too busy exploring and experimenting and taking new images. I was a lot happier as a child, being a learning photographer, discovering new things every time I click the shutter button. I envy my old self, and sometimes I do want t revisit that old self.
The old basic Kodak also made me a better photographer by being extremely restrictive, technically speaking. The highest ISO was 400, and at ISO200 you see noise that would make anyone today cringe. Dynamic range was so bad, it was impossible to avoid highlight clippings. The lens was not really wide enough for any landscape shooting, and the autofocus was so slow, you'd rather shoot with manual focus if it was available. I don't imagine anyone being happy using this camera today, with so many issues and shortcomings. These limitations helped me to grow - I work around the weaknesses and maximize the strengths. In low light, I would carry around a tripod and shoot at base ISO, mitigating camera shake and I got clean images. For wider shot, I did panorama stitching. There are always some solutions to problems, if we worked hard enough and not complain too much. We just have to try harder.
I think photographers today complain too much. Whatever you have today is 1000000x better than that Kodak CX7430, and I don't see anyone being as happy as I was shooting with it in 2005. We should just care less about chasing technical perfection, stop complaining about what we don't have or what our gear cannot do, and start to be happy with what we have. What you have is enough. We should focus on shooting and making photographs happen!
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