David Colburn

I recall, and not so fondly, my early days at the University of Kansas and my very first, and only, computer science class. We had a large computing center on campus, a standalone building, filled with mainframe computers behind windows so we could view the awesome computing power directly. I’d key my code into the punch card maker and then stand in line waiting to hand my thick stack of cards off to an attendant who would eventually run them through – there were soda and snack machines to help bide the time while we waited. It was perfectly dreadful, and while I was somewhat fascinated with the computing process itself, that class was incentive enough to avoid a career in computer programming altogether.
But when Zenith (remember the TV company that tried to lead the way into personal computing) came out with its suitcase-sized “portable” computer with a tiny built in amber monitor in the early 1980s, my fascination was rekindled. We got other Zenith desktop models in the Human Development department where I was studying early childhood education, and I immediately set about trying to learn basic DOS system commands that were necessary to invoke various programs. Forget the typewriter, I thought – this is what I’m using to write my master’s thesis. I was one of those you might have dubbed an “early adopter” compared to my fellow grad students – I wholeheartedly jumped in with both feet.
And when this little upstart company called Apple came out with an equally strange looking box with a built-in monochrome screen called the Macintosh, I jumped to that almost as soon as I got my first postgraduate paycheck in 1985. The graphical interface was magical and seductive, particularly with all the different typefaces available for design. I was a devoted Mac user until they finally priced me out of the market, and I reverted back to the realm of Windows and PCs.
I was inclined to be an early adopter for many kinds of tech, but for some things I had to be forcibly dragged into them. Pagers and cellphones are good examples of things I stayed away from as long as I could manage to do so. Both I got only after my employers required me to have them. I much preferred the tethered desktop phone that did not interfere with my time away from work. I progressed quite slowly in the cellphone and smartphone worlds, finally getting on board with the latest and greatest Samsung Galaxy phone in 2019 before making my first overseas trip. That lasted until this year, when I went back to Apple and the iPhone 16 Pro, a piece of equipment that’s estimated to be a thousand times more powerful than those 1970s mainframes.
But in the world of digital cameras, it’s been a mix of early adopter vs. wait and see. When Apple came out with its first digital camera in 1994, I used some of your tax dollars to buy one for the child development program at St. Louis Community College where I was a professor. Using Polaroid cameras to document children’s developmental progress was commonplace at the time, and the digital camera promised far more pictures for far less price over the long haul. It made sense to introduce students to the new tech.
But it wasn’t until around 2005 that I bought my own digital camera, and I didn’t go for one of Canon’s DSLRs that were being touted heavily at the time – nope, I went with a little point-and-shoot model. But when I was between education jobs and took a temporary gig at the Marion County Record newspaper in 2006, I picked up a Canon Digital Rebel XTi and a couple of lenses. It wasn’t pro-level gear, but it felt like it when I was shooting for the paper. As digital camera tech continued to improve, I held back from upgrading – back in the world of education, the Rebel was quite suitable for recreational photography.
In 2014, I left education for good and went back to the Record as news editor. New job, new career, and finally a new camera, a Canon Rebel T5i. Still not a pro-level camera, but far, far improved over the now ancient XTi. It had what seemed at the time to be a huge 18-megapixel sensor, a DIGIC 5 processor (all I’ve ever known about the technical aspects of the DIGIC series is that a higher number means better – what else is there to know, really?), and wonder of wonders, a variable angle touch screen. I could flip that screen out and tilt it to bend down low to take a picture of a dandelion or hold the camera overhead and tilt the screen to take crowd shots that had more visual appeal.
I had a good working knowledge of the basics of photography, and now I had a camera where I wanted to take it more seriously. I did enough reading and online study to get good enough that I upgraded to a Canon 80D just two years later, and I won some Kansas Press Association awards during my four years there, but my knowledge was more a mix of bits and pieces that worked rather than an integrated approach.
That changed in 2018 when I left the Record to take a break from the world of work. I enrolled in a summer photography school in Montana and bought a pro-level Canon DSLR, the 5D Mark IV, now fully committed to good camera tech. I felt a little bit hypocritical buying that camera – I’ve long been one of those who’s said that the great Ansel Adams didn’t have a digital camera to take his incredible landscape shots. He knew everything about the camera he had and the darkroom skills he needed to produce magical shots that were perfect in any age of photo technology. It’s the photographer, not the camera, that makes the difference. But I wanted something top notch, something that would last, and something that would give me extra incentive to learn in photography school.
I’m quite pleased to say that the combination worked. I pulled those bits and pieces I had accumulated together in a thorough understanding of what goes into taking good pictures, and the 5D Mark IV has served me exceptionally well through international and domestic travel as well as for my work at the Timberjay for seven years.
But I had a choice in 2018, because Canon, Nikon, and particularly Sony had introduced these newfangled things called mirrorless cameras that were all the rage in the photography world. Many of my fellow students at photography school and even the founder, who studied under Ansel Adams, had new mirrorless cameras. But they were still quite new, and I wasn’t about to be an early adopter this time, going instead for a tried-and-true DSLR.
Well, last week, I finally made the switch, getting a new Canon R6 Mark II that is far better than my old Canon in so many ways – shutter burst speed, low light shooting, focusing, and much more. The lure of improved tech finally won me over, and after a weekend of shooting with it, I couldn’t be happier. The wait was worth it. This thing is great!
Of course, you readers probably won’t notice much of a difference. First of all, you’ve only ever seen the best pictures I’ve taken – you’ve never seen the hundreds, no, thousands of shots, that didn’t make the cut for print. And my knowledge of photography hasn’t changed a bit from last week to this. But the tech is going to get me a much higher percentage of “keepers” – far fewer shots of referee butts during basketball games and more in-focus shots of a player driving down the lane for a basket, for example. The focus system will now ignore the ref and stay stuck on the player, and better low-light performance means less noise in the picture to clean up, better definition in the shadows and the crappy light of high school gyms, and twice as many photos in a second, which means more pics of better quality to choose from. As I don’t do nearly as much personal photography as I used to, perhaps one of the main reasons I upgraded the camera is to give the readers who are moms better shots of their kids in the paper for their scrapbooks. Truth – good scrapbook material is one of the best things about small town weeklies. And all readers will see better pics of whatever event I’m covering, be it an eagle-banding excursion or a breaking news story. I suspect this camera will do me well for another seven years, which may or may not take me to the end of my run as a weekly newspaper journalist. It’s awfully hard to think about giving up what I call the best job in the world. Doesn’t feel like work, particularly with a new toy to play with. Hope I’ll keep giving you the pics and stories to add to those of my colleagues to keep you coming back week after week for a good long while.