I recently published a list of all the Macintosh computers I have owned. This got me thinking about my other hobby – photography.
It would seem that I don't get through cameras as fast as I do computers (or cars, my brother would tell you — not true!):

I started photographing things while I was at Art-School. I can't, for the life of me, remember the camera I used in those days, but I still have some of the pictures. Black and white.
For some reason photography didn't interest me a great deal in those days. It might be due to the fact that I found the costs prohibitive.

Around 1970 some kind person gave me a used Olympus Pen 35 mm Half-Frame Camera which I promptly took on holiday with me to Germany – that person may step forward because, I'm ashamed to say, I have no idea which relative it was.

From then I have progressed:

ca. 1978: Yashica TL Electro-X
1980: Olympus OM 1 (second hand but still in immaculate condition today)
1983: Olympus OM 2
1987: Olympus OM 2 SP
1992: Olympus iS 3000 (L3)
1997: Olympus CAMEDIA C-1400L 1.4 Megapixel
1999: Sony DSC F505 2.1 Megapixel
2001: Sony DSC F707 5.2 Megapixel
2003: Sony DSC F828 8.3 Megapixel
2006: Sony DSC R1 10.3 Megapixel
2008: Olympus E-3 10.1 Megapixel
2008: Nikon D700 12.5 Megapixel

Strangely I have no idea what happened to either the Olympus Pen or the Yashica.
I still have the OM 1 and the iS 3000 and only very recently gave the OM 2 SP to a friend, who'd broken the OM 2 I'd given her ten, twelve years ago. (The OM 1 and iS3000 are up for sale to the highest bidder!)

I've always been a fan of Olympus cameras and was terribly disappointed with the first DSLR they put on the market. It seemed so inferior compared with the Sony 'point-and-shoots'.
At the end of 2007 Olympus at long last introduced the camera that I'd been waiting for, for all those years. After reading the technical blurb, I ordered one and, when it arrived, was immediately disappointed with it!
Oh, dont get me wrong – it is a state-of-the-art device, but I had never read up on the pros and cons of the chip-size that Olympus uses.
The Sony chips are so much larger (at the same resolution) and deliver a picture (sorry Olympus) of much higher quality.

Having an SLR back in my hands, though, had me hooked again and when Nikon introduced an SLR with a full-sized (35 mm) chip...

As soon as I've got it calibrated to shoot panoramas, you can expect some high-quality alpine pictures (technically that is, not necessarily content-wise)!

Watch this space ...