You know what I have been wondering...

Shot a feature with 3 (rented) DVX100's. Joined this site to soak up as much working knowledge as I could. Later made two more features with 1 owned and 1 rented HVX200's, the latter feature also used Brevis 35mm Adapters. Remember those?!? Participated in the DVXFests as the DSLR movement came along. Sometime later I was asked to be a moderator and enjoyed those years helping to foster the community.

Then a member that was permanently banned for repeated problems took it so personally that he flew to LA, claimed he knew where I lived and threatened to come to my home. My interaction here became very limited after that and I stuck with the filmmaking communites on Twitter and Facebook.

Made a movie about a smuggler with my AF100. Finally cracked the nut of a feature that *made* money. An now I'm a EVA1 and GH5s owner and couldn't be happier, travelling the world with them from gig to gig.

I still pop in here from time to time, and each time I get nostaligc for the heyday when the DVXFests were getting upwards of 50, 60, 70 submissions. Those were great times.
 
Well, if film cameras owned and operated are in the mix for this discussion, I still own a B&H 2709, serial number 54. Built in 1914, it cost 1200 bucks new. Originally purchased by Essanay Film, and certainly used by Charlie Chaplain until he purchased his own at a later date. This was not just a display piece for me, it was my main animation camera for rotoscope projection and matte downshooting from 1986 until 2000 or so. Also own a Wall 35mm bought from Martin Hill in '85 as a young college student looking to up his game from his 16mm Bolex; the Wall is an Army Signal Corp camera, which was my inexpensive dual pin registered Mitchell "substitute". Shot a number of matte paintings and VFX shots with it for crappy made for TV movies such as the Knight Rider reunion movie. I shot hours of time-lapse and stop motion with it in the 80's/90's and sold out my time-lapse collection for stock footage to Adobe in 1999. Owned an Eclair CM3, my "compact" 35mm for live action & travel time-lapse work right up until 9/11. On the VFX side, I've run Oxberry Master Series camera stands, and was a pretty bitchin' freelance Optical Printer tech, having done every kind of film optical typically seen in the movies. Yes, including comping reasonable looking film on film blue screen shots on a single head printer, no mean feat. To this day I have two fixed pin registered 35mm ACME optical printer heads, modified into single frame projectors, basically the full kit you'd need to shoot authentic Ray Harryhausen style rear process stuff (not that anyone would ever do that again!). I've AC'ed and loaded every Eclair or Arri 16mm or 35mm common in the 70's/80's/90's, but never touched Panavision, land-locked as I was/am in mid America.

Those were good times, and it's also good that those times are gone. Glad for the chance to do all that stuff, while never living at either coast, and not in a hipster/millennial "Oh look at us, how trendy we are shooting this one time with a 100 year old camera", but in a "Crap, I've got to pay the bills with this second-hand ancient gear" sort of way.

I have an appreciation, and, dare I say a sense of continued awe, like a few of us older folks here, of our modern digital tools that can only come from once stuck with just photo-chemical, magnetic & mechanical means to accomplish every aspect of a visual production.
 
I started working with the M2 cam and the Beta SP. In 1996 the production company I worked for bought a Panasonic mini DV. I made a U bracket handle so I could film skate boarding and get closer to the ground. Mini DV changed the world for me. Wow, time flies :)
 
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