Tony Hyman
Camera Biography
I bought my first camera, a Kodak Pony 35mm, in 1957 when I was 17 so I could document my new life in the Navy. Within a year or two I moved up to an Aires 1.9, a remarkably good inexpensive Japanese 35mm camera. The reviews said the biggest complaint with Aires was inconsistency of lens quality, but I got one of the very good ones and used it for two or three years, taking a few thousand pictures with it. While stationed in Hawaii I began experimenting with a larger format Roliflex I won in a poker game, but found it cumbersome.
After the Navy I bought a Pentax and a Canon. I didn’t go the Nikon route travelled by most of my serious photographer friends. Nikon 35mms are fine cameras with lots of accessories, but they are too dang heavy for me to be comfortable shooting. I learned early on that I won’t shoot a camera, no matter how good it is, if it doesn’t fit my hands and my style of shooting. I sold the Canon as I didn’t find the camera or its controls comfy but loved my Pentax so much I bought a second one as back up, or for times I wanted to shoot two different films. I worked with Kodachrome, Ektachrome on rare occasions, and for a while used one of those mail order companies that sold movie film, but I also shot a lot of Plus X and Tri-X. For a while I experimented with high contrast b/w films while teaching a course in experimental photography at Ithaca College.
In the LA airport while waiting to catch a plane to China, I held a Minolta 7000 carried by a fellow traveler, fell in love with it, and bought my first one as soon as I got to Hong Kong. I liked shooting a Minolta 7000 so much I used it for almost ten years, and bought four more identical bodies, one on the net, two in pawn shops, and one in a second hand camera store.
It was a difficult camera to give up, but the digital hand writing was on the wall. A Sony using three inch floppies was followed by two of those “twisty” Nikon CoolPix, most recently by a Panasonic 18X with a built in 500mm zoom equivalent purchased in 2008 for shooting animals and birds in Africa.
Most of the pictures in the galleries at left were shot with the CoolPix or the Panasonic.
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Personal Biography (abridged)
Tony has a BA in History, MS in Socio-logical Research and an EdD in Information Management. He has been a Navy draftsman, cartographer for a mineral research company, USFS fire-fighter, Federal game law enforcement officer, Peace Corps trainer, HS teacher, college professor, regional school administrator, library director, professional photographer, author, lecturer, newspaper columnist, radio talk show host, QVC pitchman, publishing company CEO, and spent three years on-camera with CBS-TV Network News in New York City.
He worked in college and community theater and for twenty years lectured on antiques and collectibles in most of the larger cities in North America. He has written more than 20 books and catalogs, and more than 350 newspaper, magazine, internet, and television stories and features as well as being a guest on more than 2,500 radio and television talk shows including Oprah, Donahue, Gayle King, Terry Bradshaw, Vicki Lawrence and Tammy Faye Baker.
Tony is currently Curator of the National Cigar History Museum and writes on the history of advertising and packaging on the net and for CIGAR MAGAZINE.
His National Cigar History Museum currently contains the equivalent of 198 book chapters, and displays more than 4,000 photos. Visit:
If you should want Tony’s Cigar Biography or his Work and Family Biography, both can be found here:
<http://cigarhistory.info/The_Museum/Tony_Hyman.html>
Feeding gulls in my backyard.
Photo by Marilee 2009
