My name is Barron Fujimoto, I am an amateur photographer living in Austin, Texas, USA, and have been taking photos since 1988, when I was enrolled at the University of California, Irvine. I began this site at the recommendation of several friends who bought a few of my photos, and thought it might be a nice idea to offer them to others.

The camera that I used for my first photography classes was a Minolta X-700, which I still use today. Like many photographers, I am a bit crazy about my cameras and lenses. Since my college days, I have expanded my photography equipment lineup to include a Minolta Alpha 507si (film), several lenses, Minolta Himatic-F and G models, and an Olympus E-10 digital camera. I use Fuji Sensia II and Fuji Velvia slide films.

Email: orders *at* barronfujimoto *dot-com*.

I love photography, I am an enthusiastic amateur, and I am a bit of a Minolta enthusiast. I suppose it all started when my father lent me his Minolta X-700 back in 1989 for my college photography course. It was the same camera that was featured in the coursebook we were using, so I thought it was just perfect. I only took one semester of photography, but learned most of the basics of camera operation, film characterstics, and spent many hours in the campus darkroom developing film and making prints. I really learned how to use that little Minolta! After I completed the course (and college), I "forgot" to return the camera to my dad. I took more photos with it, mostly black and white, but then fell out of photography for a few years while I entered the workforce. I still took pictures, but mainly just snapshots with a Canon point-and-shoot.

In 1995, I visited Japan (Tokyo) for the first time with my parents. I bought a cheap 28-70 zoom lens (Soligor) and a circular polarizer just for the trip. I really enjoyed my visit, and enjoyed using the SLR once again. From that time forward, I have only used my point-and-shoot film camera once or twice.

A year later, I moved to Tokyo and of course took my X-700 with me. Tokyo is such a wonderful place for an amateur photographer such as myself. There are so many opportunities to take photos... on the streets, in the train stations, at the temples, at the sea, etc. Not being confined to a car is also a great plus for the photographer, because you have opportunity to look around you, and keep a camera at the ready. You can move about the city at your own pace, pausing to take a photo, or spending an extra few minutes exploring an interesting side street. Another wonderful thing about Japan is that it is a paradise for the camera-gadget freak, which I definitely am! Not only are there the many large camera stores, featuring the latest equipment, but there are also a bunch of small used-camera shops, with plenty of bodies, lenses, and accesories. It really is paradise!

I admit that I bought a few inexpensive, but nice quality lenses for my X-700. That is one of the great things about Minolta: lots of inexpensive, high quality gear is readily available. I picked up 28mm, 50mm, 35-70mm, and 135mm lenses for not too much money.

At that time, I was taking many photos, and started using slide film quite a bit. I loved the qualtiy of Fuji Velvia 50, but it was kind of expensive, so I took up Fuji Sensia II 100 as my film of choice. It was significantly cheaper than Velvia, but still had a nice saturated quality about it. Using slide film was fun. You had to learn to use correct exposure, as there was little to no correction that the lab would do to fix your mistakes, which is not the case with negative film.

In 1997 I bought my first digital camera, a Sony DSC-F1. That little camera was great. It had a swivel lens which made it easy to take self portraits (lots of fun with friends), an lcd screen on the back, and a whopping 4MB of built-in memory. It was very small too, so we could take it everywhere. The quality of the images it produced wasn't good enough for nice prints, but I could see the potential of the digital medium.

Fast-forward to present day. I still take photos with my 35mm film gear, and am still interested in all sorts of camera gear, including my new fascination with 1970's-era compact rangefinders. It's really fun to look through that kind of viewfinder to frame your subject. Totally different feel than looking through an SLR viewfinder, or looking at a tiny LCD screen on the back of a digital camera. I recently started taking photos with a Holga 120S "toy" camera. It uses 120 size medium format film, and is a blast to use! It takes very unique photos. Just do a search for "Holga" and you will see some great images!

Here's a quick list of the cameras I have used:

1979 - Keystone 110-film camera
1983 - Kodak Disc 3100 camera
1988 - Minolta X-700
1998 - Minolta a507si
2000 - Canon S100 Digital Elph
2001 - Polaroid i-Zone
2001 - Olympus E-10
2002 - Minolta Himatic-G
2004 - Minolta Himatic-F
2004 - Holga 120S
2005 - Minolta 7D