In what year did you realize the arrival of digital photography, and in what circumstances?
For me, it's the little 1996 Kodak DC20, I had read an article that wasn't very positive about it.
It made me want to know more…
Kodak DC20 (1996)
During the earliest days of digital, I was still happy with my slrs or smaller film cameras, the preferred family share method was pass around the twin prints, etc. , not slide show. The early digital cameras were either quite expensive and/or the rapid pace of development was such that if one jumped in and grabbed one, there was a newer and better one quickly available.
Film was getting frustrating. Pretty much everybody had a processor, but I was experimenting some with the different 400 print films and magazines/on-line sources suggested that for best results, one needed to have the "right paper." The convenient/cheap processors had one paper so one might need to find the right place with the right machine with the right paper or stick to a real camera store with higher prices and maybe send out processing. Although I'm not sure I really noticed the differences. But my local real camera store was getting pricey, it wasn't real convenient and several "local" processors had periodic ghastly quality problens.
I eventually decided to try a Minolta, IIRC, it was the S404. I was using Minolta and KM slrs so at least some loyalty. At the time (aside from unaffordable for me dslrs) one could generally choose between an optical finder, many had 3x zooms and a few got to 4x or what we call now bridge cameras which had perhaps 6x or so zooms with a digital viewfinder. Rear panels were not great and digital viewfinders at the time were reviewed as pretty awful but not completely unusable. So, I looked to optical finder model.
Numbers and specs looked good on the Minolta. whichever one it was, I hated it when I got one in hand. The sales guy suggested the fuji S602, said he'd been selling a lot of them and getting good feedback. Tried it. The finder wasn't all that bad, not up to optical finders of course. I liked it, stayed with it for several years. Things kept racing along and we also got an A model Canon for my wife and daughters to use, not as small as the Ss, which were maybe nicely small but hard to handle, and As were not as bulky as the larger Gs.
Then got a KM 7D and it was back to really good ergonomics and competitive specs wise (for a while), nice quality, used my existing lenses although had to deal with crop factor some. Dslrs for me and eventually replaced the Canon A with an RX100 when my daughter went to Italy for school for a year. Now I'm Sony mirror-less.
