tony starr / remembering the ixus

Oct ’02: John Mayer at Melbourne’s Hi Fi Bar.

Mar ’03: Selfie with the IXUS.

20 YEARS
It must of been around the time of my birthday, 20 years ago that I purchased my first digital camera. The compact Canon IXUS 330 (PowerShot S330). I’ve actually had a few of them over the years but that’s another story. Even though digital cameras were starting to become more affordable, this little IXUS was still a huge investment at the time – for just two megapixels and a tiny image sensor. But the move from using mostly a point-and-shoot film camera to digital transformed my photography.

I carried that little camera everywhere and shot everything and everyone (and and documented it all). I learnt things without being conscious of it at the time, like composition (how things looked within the frame). I took more photos that I could deal with and still have a lot of my early shots—as seen here—backed-up on CDs.

Looking back, there’s not many photographs from those early years that I’m still fond of (it was actually difficult pulling together this selection). There were those odd moments of magic, like with John Mayer and the reflected selfie. I guess if you take enough photographs, you’ll end up with at least one standout – one of the the advantages of shooting digital.