I didn't really get into photography until I was in college, but I've been fascinated by cameras ever since I was a little kid. There's just something about the way they look that has always appealed to me. And aside from being works of art in their own right, they're also cool because of their mechanical, electronic, and optical complexity.

I've owned quite a few cameras over the years, most of which I still have, and I thought it might be fun to document some of them here. They basically fall into three categories: 1) vintage cameras that I've never used and purchased mainly as "works of art," 2) film cameras that I used before I made the switch to digital, and 3) my modern digital cameras.

MINOLTA SR-T 101

The Minolta SR-T 101 was my dad's first SLR which he purchased in the late sixties to take on Navy carrier cruises overseas. Years later, he let me bring it to a photography mini-course at my grade school where I first learned the basics of composition and technique, and it subsequently became my primary camera when I started to get a little more serious about photography in college. I only ever had one compatible lens, the MC Rokkor-PF 1:1.7 f=55mm that came with it as part of a kit. Apparently, this was the "economy" lens, with the standard being a 1:1.4 f=58mm. A very fast 1:1.2 f=58mm lens was also available as a rather expensive upgrade, and these sometimes come up for sale on eBay for around $300 plus depending on the condition. I still take this camera out on occasion, and it's always a lot of fun when I do, although digital has made me a bit lazy when it comes to actually developing the film.

MINOLTA DIMAGE S304

My first digital camera was a 3.3 megapixel Minolta Dimage S304 which I purchased because it had a very good CCD and lens combination for a point-and-shoot. The resolution was great for 4 X 6 prints or smaller, but you couldn't enlarge to 8 X 10 without some noticeable pixelation, and as I started to use Photoshop to crop images more and more often, I began to find the resolution a bit lacking. I took a lot of pictures with this camera, though, and I'm still pretty impressed with the clarity and sharpness of many of them.