Early days

I started on the journey using a Kodak Instamatic using 126 film. A present from my parents for my 13th birthday. I put a few rolls of film through it as and when pocket money allowed over the next 5 years. Very few photos made it into any photo album, most made it into the waste bin or maybe even into a shoebox that has long gone missing.

I then bought a Fujifilm 35mm compact, a "Point and shoot" with no manual overrides. This got used a bit more as I've left school by this time, had a bit more money from part time jobs, however the photography bug still hasn't properly bitten me yet.

My first exposure to digital photography was through a friend who had a Fuji 1.3mp camera he bought in 2000. I bought me first digital camera in 2001, an Olympus C860-L. A very basic 1.3mp camera with no optical zoom for the pricely sum of £150 in a sale.

The colours from this little gem was fabulous, at least in my eyes. Not having a computer made life a bit complicated, thus photos were mostly left on the card and the unwanted items were simply deleted.

My wost experience ever came when i took my little Olympus to a car show at the NEC in Birmingham. An exhibition of priceless Ferraris were the stars of the show and I took photos of all these marvelous machines. However I made the crucial mistake of formatting the "huge" Smartmedia card using my computer not the camera itself. The photos were saved to the card, a lot slower than normal, however when I got home I couldn't retrieve the photos. A very sad day for me.

The Olympus eventually got replaced with a Fuji S3000, a 3mp model with a 6 times optical zoom. A vast improvement over the Olympus and got it for about £129 at the time, what a bargain I thought.

This camera seved me well taking photos at 2 weddings, each time as a guest. The bridal couples were well pleased as I gave them copies of the photos on a cd. By now the bug has sunk his teeth in properly. I wanted an even more capable camera, so the S3000 was replaced with a S5600.

The next chapter involves the forey into slr photography.