I've been taking photographs since a long time ago, so long ago that cameras used film that had to be sent away before you saw your results, or as I got older and wiser developed them myself. Then digital happened.
Page Last Edited : Friday, 11th of April 2025.
© Dave Rowlands. All Rights Reserved.
My Digital Camera Journey
After spending years and years, more than I care to re-call, using 35mm film, lugging around a camera bag full of accessories and a tripod that would let me take a photograph that caught my eye I gave up photography for nearly 5 years and strangely enough it was a couple of years after returning here from Canada. I've always had an interest in electronics, computer programming and photography, so when I noticed the price of digital cameras falling I decided to try it out. This was in the mid 90's, I purchased an Olympus C100 1.3 Mega Pixel camera, it had a 35mm (in 35mm Film Format speak) fixed focus lens, ISO speeds from 100 - 400, an "Optical Real-Image" viewfinder as well as an LCD screen comprising of a whopping 114K pixels and a diagonal of 1.5 inches, and it took some truly remarkable pictures, one of them is shown above and another below.
I have also managed to print some 10 x 8-inch prints, which at the time was quite an achievement.
After using the C100 for a couple of years (I still have it and it still takes quality images, my great-grandson now uses it when we go out and about photographing everything we see), I wanted to upgrade, when I was using 35mm film I always had a Zoom lens attached to the body of my camera so the next logical step for me at least was to get a DSLR. After a lot of research, there was no way I was going to afford the kind of DSLR with a zoom lens that met my requirements. I settled for a Minolta - Konica DiMAGE Z1, it had a 38 - 380mm (in 35mm equivalent) zoom lens with a maximum aperture of f2.8 - f3.5 over the whole zoom range and it had a great 3.2 MegaPixel CCD sensor. The images below were taken using this camera.
I used this camera for years, it had no optical stabilisation or any of the fancy tricks put on new cameras these days to enable you to take a photograph, I actually to my dismay sold this great camera to upgrade my kit One of the last pics I took with this camera was a snapshot from my living room window, of a seagull, below.
I have had so many comments about this particular shot, and when the viewer is told it's from a 3.2 megapixel camera they don't believe me, they don't make them like they used to, do they?
After many years of using this camera, I decided that I should at least upgrade to something a bit more modern, I didn't need to, but I like to get close up to my subject, get closer that is without having to walk an extra 30 meters and end up falling off the edge of a cliff.
I was asked by a friend who wanted to upgrade his camera from his current one, which was a simple point and shoot similar to my Olympus C100 but with a 4 megapixel CCD sensor, he had outgrown it and wanted to do more than just taking snapshots. At the time he asked I had been looking around for new kit anyway and remembered seeing the Nikon Coolpix L120 on offer locally for less than £90.00.
Taking my advice and after checking the internet for various reviews he purchased one. He was absolutely thrilled to bits with his new camera, he photographed everything from macro to the moon, his moon shots were very impressive. After seeing the quality of the shots taken with the Coolpix L120 I decided that that would be my upgrade path from my Minolta - Konica DiMAGE Z1.
I went to purchase the Coolpix L120 but they had sold out, they had an upgraded version (their words) of that camera on offer for roughly the same price, it was the Nikon Coolpix L310 so I purchased it and came back home and as it was a Saturday I put it through it's paces over the weekend. It was an utter disappointment, the picture quality was nowhere near as good as the L120, the Stereo microphone had been replaced with a Mono version and that was only a couple of the differences of both cameras. Regardless, I took it back to the store and replaced it with a Fujifilm Finepix S3800 which on paper and in the hand offered more "real" camera features for a few pounds more the the Coolpix L310. The S3800 had all the features my Minolta - Konica DiMAGE Z1 had, including the EVF (Electronic View Finder), I used the EVF most of the time on my Minolta - Konica DiMAGE Z1 and is a must on any camera I use, I just can't get used to holding a camera at arm's length to compose and take a shot.
There have been many negative things said about the Finepix S3000 and S4000 series of Fujifilm cameras and they were all said by people who owned the top of the range DSLR cameras. The Fujifilm Finepix S3800 camera I have has served me well over the years and still produces high quality 10 x 8-inch prints, even prints that have had the image cropped and then printed at 10 x 8 inches. The image stabilization on the S3800 seems to be more efficient to me than on my Coolpix P600.
After a couple of years using the Fujifilm S3800 I was actively reading reviews of some of the "Super Zoom" bridge cameras, well the S3800 had a 26x zoom and that was, well, crazy. After months of research, I decided on the Nikon Coolpix P600. What a camera this is. The Coolpix P600 has a 60x zoom range of 4.3-258 mm (24-1440 mm in 35mm format). It has a 16 megapixel CMOS sensor and is capable of taking some stunning pictures for a camera with a 1/2.3-inch sensor.
If you want to see what all this zooming is all about have a look at my Nikon Coolpix P600 Zoom Range page.
Some sample images taken with the P600 camera are shown below, in good light, these cameras do really well.
After some not so good results in poor light with these "Super Zooms", I decided to have a look at some DSLR cameras. As a Canon SLR user in the past and after finding out that the Canon EOS digital cameras have a shorter flange distance than most of the cameras available I found a Canon 400D with 18-58mm Standard Kit lens. When I received the camera I purchased an adapter so I could use one of the many SD cards I have lying around.
I was blown away by the quality of images produced by this 10 MP camera. The images below were taken with the 400D.
The 400D has a non-adjustable rear screen and it didn't have a live view, and after using the Nikon P600 which has an articulating rear screen I searched for a Canon DSLR that could at the least give me the same kind of screen as the P600.
I found the Canon EOS 600D and it ticked all my buttons. So I sold the 400D and replaced it with the 600D. I used the 600D for everything, I bought a battery grip, spare batteries, and adapters for using my Olympus OM lenses, I took photographs with old film lenses of all kinds and had great fun using the camera. The images below were taken using the Canon EOS 600D.
I got myself the regular set of "kit" lenses for the 600D like the Canon 18-55mm, Canon 55-250mm and also a Sigma 18-250mm which blew away all those "Professional" opinions plastered all over the internet saying that this kind of lenses produced rubbish images. As I don't worry much about my photographs being pin-sharp when viewed at 100% on a computer screen as a lot of these professional pixel peepers do, so I wasn't concerned. The Sigma lens has given me some of the best images I have ever seen on a digital camera. Some of the images taken with the Sigma 18-250mm on the Canon 600D are shown below.
