A Little Bit of Personal Digital Camera History and My Photography Hobby

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I have been a long term hobby photographer, starting with compact digital cameras more than 16 years ago. Prior to that I have used some analog cameras as well, but was never too interested in photography with them, maybe if I was actually a bit older I could have started with analog photography instead of digital one. Just by chance I had a fateful encounter with still just emerging digital cameras in my first job and that was enough to get my early interest in digital photography sparkled...

The first digital camera that I have used was probably somewhere around 1999, I remember that one well as it was a Sony Mavica camera that was recording 640x480 photos on a 3.5-inch floppy disk (anyone remember floppies?). Back at that time digital cameras were something really new and hard to find, expensive and nowhere near as good in terms of image quality when compared to good analog SLR cameras for example. I probably still have some of the photos I made with that camera stored somewhere, so I might as well try to find them to post here on Steemit, so that you can see what kind of image quality was considered good back then for a digital camera. I did not own the camera, I have only used it as a part of my work...

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I did not get a Sony Digital Mavica MVC-FD73 camera, but in a few years I have changed a few different compact digital cameras as things were quickly developing in that time. Nothing worth mentioning much here as I was learning and experimenting with different things and I really liked the quick development of image resolution and quality that was going on with the improvements in the sensors. Then sometime in 2004 I think another fateful event and it was again associated with Sony as a brand for digital cameras, I got a Sony Cybershot DSC-V1 digital camera. It was a really wonderful product back then even though it was just 5 Megapixel camera with a 4x Optical Zoom. It wasn't cheap, but it came with a good Zeiss optics and really offered a lot of features, not to mention that the image quality for that time was really superb. I actually still have that camera (two in fact as I later bought another one as spare) and it is still working fine and making good photos, though I don't actually use it anymore.

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I've been using the Sony DSC-V1 a lot for the next few years until I got my first DSLR camera - Canon EOS 350D at around 2006. Since I missed the analog SLR days going for a digital SLR camera was actually a big step for me as I had to learn quite a bit of new things, prior to that I was using only compact digital cameras. That is why I started with an entry level DSLR camera and it was pretty much either Canon or Nikon back then, so I went for Canon as I found I liked it better and it seemed more convenient for me. The 350D was a nice upgrade with 8 Megapixel larger APS-C sensor and more features, but I quickly learned that my compact Sony V1 camera could still do better photos in some conditions like for instance for Macro photography. Still the 350D did provide more learning experience in the photography world as I started using different lenses...

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Just about 3 years later, sometime in 2009 I got my first full-frame DSLR, namely the Canon EOS 5D Mark II and buying that one was a really good choice now that I think about it some years later. I'm actually still using that camera and it is still great in terms of features available and image quality that it manages to deliver and that goes not only for photos, but for videos as well. Actually half of the time I'm using the 5D II for recording videos and the other half for taking photos, so it doubles as a video camera as well... this is the DSLR camera that has sparked the boom in video recording features of digital cameras in the recent years. The reason for that was in the really good video quality that it could deliver, rivaling the quality of some professional video cameras back at the time, even though it still had some limitations in terms of use for video recording.

Since I've use my 5D II for my photography hobby as well as for my work I actually did carry it around with me a lot even though I did not use it every day I did like to have it handy when I needed it. The 5D II however is a big and bulky camera, especially when you add in the lenses and additional accessories. So I did solve the problem fairly recently by just getting a smaller mirrorless camera - the Canon EOS M3. A compact, yet powerful and feature rich camera for everyday use that does not take up a lot of space and I can carry around with me every day if I like to. Sure it does not come with a full-frame sensor, but the APS-C one does a great job as far as quality is concerned. I'll talk a bit more about why I got the M3 in a separate post at a later time as there are actually a lot of things to note there and also tell why I do recommend that one...

Now, with the recent introduction of the Canon EOS 5D Mark IV I think I'm finally ready to replace my good old 5D II camera and by replace I really mean not to sell the old one, but just to switch to the new model and keep the II as a backup. When Canon introduced the successors of the II - first the MK III and then the 5DS / 5DS R they did come with some useful improvements like better video recording features on the III and higher resolution sensor with improved sensitivity on the 5DS / 5DS R, but I never considered them much as a replacement for the good old II. Now with the Mark IV however I really think it is the time to upgrade, just need to solve one tiny little problem... save enough money to buy it... and maybe Steemit can actually help me help me with that :D

If you have a question or want to add something, then please leave a comment below.

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