My father introduced me to photography in 1950 when I was age 4, which means I was shooting photos with the pinhole camera he made for me and developing prints (crude as they were) in his darkroom before I could read or write.

For many years after that I shot photography for both business and pleasure, until I eventually lost interest in it as a hobby due to diminishing returns for increasing costs, but continued to shoot commercially as an adjunct to my graphic design work.

Then in 1999 I bought my first digital camera, a 2 megapixel (MP) Nikon CoolPix 950, which allowed me to shoot with no concern for cost and this sparked an interest in shooting for pleasure again and I haven’t bought a roll of film since.

The 950 was soon replaced by a 3 MP Nikon CoolPix 990, which was soon replaced by a 5 MP Sony Cyber-shot F707, but the real excitement and joy of photography didn’t reignite fully until April 2004 when I bought an 8 MP Minolta A2, the first digital camera I owned that I considered to be a serious camera.

Then in late November 2004, due to needing higher sensitivity, lower image noise, and longer telephoto reach, I bought an 8 MP Canon EOS 20D digital single lens reflex (DSLR). Originally, this was not bought to replace the A2 but to complement it.

However, the A2 has now been handed off to a family member and the 20D, after taking nearly 90,000 photos over four years, was getting tired and needed work done on it, but since that work would cost more than the camera was worth, I retired it (it does still function) and in April 2008 replaced it with a lightly used 10 MP Canon 400D/XTi DSLR bought from a friend for less than the 20D repair would have cost.

For all practical purposes for the kind of shooting I do, the XTi is as capable as the 20D as well as having a bit more resolution with 10.1 MP compared to 8.2 MP, which isn’t a significant increase but does provide some additional cropping room, so the XTi was what I shot with exclusively for the following year.

All this said, I’ve found in the time I’ve owned those cameras that 8-10 MP isn’t enough resolution for the many requests I get for extra large images, which would require something like a 21 MP Canon 5D Mark II, but due to the costs and other factors involved with such a move, I instead compromised in June 2009 and bought a 15 MP Canon 500D/T1i DSLR and in October 2010 bought an 18 MP Canon EOS 60D DSLR and continue to keep the 400D/XTi as a backup camera in case one of the other DSLRs fails.

And as if all those cameras aren’t enough, in June 2010 I purchased a little 12 MP Panasonic Lumix ZS7 (aka TZ10 outside North America) as a pocket camera to have with me when I don’t feel like lugging around the big and heavy DSLRs and while the ZS7 was a decent camera, it was limited by not providing RAW format files and its image quality just wasn’t good enough to suit me, so in April 2011 I replaced it with a 16 MP Fuji F550 EXR. The F550, while not perfect, provides RAW files, has better image quality, and has higher sensitivity. It is a very capable camera for a pocket camera.

So, at this point (2011), twelve years after buying my first digital camera, I’m finally satisfied with the resolution and features consumer digital cameras have achieved and have no plans for any future camera purchases.