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I first got into photography back in the 70's with an inexpensive Mamiya Sekor 35mm SLR film camera and a short zoom.  I took all sorts of pictures and eventually assembled my own darkroom.  Nothing fancy, but it made me appreciate how much work it was to produce a picture (let alone a good or great picture!).  I even went as far as printing ONE color photo (back when the color process became available to small darkrooms with the old roller canisters to develop the paper).  Too much work!

Eventually I replaced the Mamiya with a Canon (?) SLR in the 80's, but I had given up on the darkroom.  Always enjoyed photography, but too many obstacles as a hobby at the time.

Break to 2001, my lovely wife Patsy buys me the Nikon (?) compact digital camera for Christmas.   A 2 megapixel compact camera with a fixed lens.  I had a GREAT time with that camera.  Being a techie by training, it was a revolution in processing images instead of film on my computer. Photography had become FUN again!

My friend Dave Cardinal made the big switch from hi-tech to become a full time digital photographer and invited me out to go shooting with him.  Dave's a Nikon guy (read the book, "The D1 Generation") and let me use his second camera and 400mm lens. WOW! I was hooked.

Once again relying on my wife's good graces, I was able to purchase the Canon D60; I chose Canon because I thought I could use my old Canon lens, WRONG! After shooting with Dave's Nikon glass my poor little zooms just weren't going to cut it.