Say "Cheese!"
- Kodak Brownie (the mushroom-coloured plastic one). Probably ended up at Oxfam
- Kodak Instamatic with flash cubes (does anyone else remember the horror that was flash cubes?). Also probably went to Oxfam
- 110 automatic with *gasp* "built-in flash and retractable film wind-on". I still have this ... wonder if it still works? Wonder if one can still get 110 roll film?
- A cheap 35mm with flash, bought second-hand as a "tested model" from my employers at the time, Consumers' Association (Which? magazine). Possibly still around somewhere....
- The Olympus OM10 SLR - bought with a simple 50mm lens and basic flash. I replaced the flash a couple of times, but have broken both the telephoto ones, so am back to using the basic one, even though it doesn't work too well with the very good telephoto/zoom/macro lens I invested in. Very useful for taking close-ups of things on macro, and takes better than average snapshots, when I can remember all the fiddly details of how to use it!
- A somewhat better 35mm ?Miranda? - may have been Minolta. From Dixons, anyway. Somewhere around still, I think.
- The extremely nice and very useful so far Pentax Espio 135M, with its excellent zoom lens. Very much still in use.
- The tiny experimental will-I-like-this? less-than-1-megapixel matchbox-sized digital camera. Eats batteries. Works, sort of.
- TODAY'S PURCHASE!!!! A Fuji Finepix S5600 digital camera, 10x manual 5.7x digital zoom; 5.1MP. I bought a 256Mb XD card for it, which at 3MP will do me about 200-250 pictures, according to the manual. That equates to 4 or 5 rolls of 24 exposure film, which should do me a full weekend at a con, for example. £223 from John Lewis. Much experimentation will ensue.
And before anyone accuses me of wasting money on a new camera, the only one in regular use is the Pentax, and I have £150 of birthday money, plus I'm expecting quite a bit more from the forced sale of my O2 shares. Next purchase on the list: a new mobile phone, when I can find one I like!