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Richard Jelbert - PHOTOGRAPHY

I can remember building my own pinhole camera at a very young age (around 11) out of a blue and red shoe box. It had a tinfoil plate with the pinhole in it at the front and I constructed a sliding shutter because I thought sticking tape over the hole was too crude. I sat it on my father's motorbike seat and took a picture of our family home. A few minutes later it was all done. We were fortunate to have a full darkroom at the top of the stairs in our home - it even had a red light at the top of the door to stop anyone walking in and exposing the film or paper. I built an electronic enlarger timer from scrap electronics (I did hobby electronics since the age of 9) which we all used to time the exposures. It is quite magic to see your own picture develop on a 5 inch by 7 inch board, from a camera you built yourself and I can still smell the chemicals… I have always had cameras of one sort or another since making the pinhole. I still have a YASHICA Pentamatic for black and white film work. I also have a Canon EOS50e (eye control) 35mm film camera but it's hardly used these days.

After briefly owning a Canon EOS20D I now use a Canon EOS5D, probably the best D-SLR that normal people can afford. It has 12.8 mega pixels and takes all the standard EF mount lenses from my earlier Canon. The 20D was excellent but the 5D is in another class. Since getting it just before Christmas 2006, I have taken over 5000 photos. 

I also have a 1000X binocular inspection microscope with camera adapter for the Canon and it's been fun playing with normal household objects photographed at high magnification. It's amazing what you find. I once found part of an insect leg stuck to one of the dots around the edge of a 5 pence coin. Go take a look, the dimples are very small and I couldn't see the leg by eye. It's an amazing world in miniature.