My Life With Cameras...

Since 1989, I was a hardcore birder (bird watching through binoculars).

- Clement Francis

Those where the days when only film cameras were in existence. The digital revolution had not begun. Photography was not for everyone – only the rich and the elite were able to afford slide film roles (TPs) for INR 300 each and have them developed and mounted for another INR 450. And there were only 36 frames in a roll of film! With salary as low as INR 1500 a month, exposing even one roll once in three months was a luxury for a middle income group guy like me. But I wanted to get into serious photography and eventually I managed to purchase a Nikon FM10 body (manual focus SLR) with a manual focus Vivitar 70-200mm f/4-5.6 lens.

I soon realised that it was a struggle to photograph birds using a manual focus camera. My wife then gifted me my first autofocus film camera, a Canon Elan II, along with a 70-300mm f/4-5.6 AF lens.

Though this camera helped me to achieve better photographs, it still had some problems with auto focussing.