I got really interested in photography while in the US Army - 1967-1969 and had the opportunity to purchase top-flight camera equipment at the BX. I shot mostly slides then and when traveling after that.

Looking back it was because the person making my prints had so much leeway to control the final image when shooting from negative film.

When shooting slides, generally you either got it right or you blew it, but it was no-one else's fault. And I fancied that sometime, somewhere I would start to get some of my photos published and those publishers always wanted slides, not 3.5x4" prints.

(I did have one photo published by Time-Life books. It was a color slide of a water fall in the Smokie Mountains. They published it as a black and white in a two-page spread and I got a check for $400 (the color rate.)

Perhaps about 15 years ago, I switched to shooting only negative film and paying for prints.

But just before the 2001 Reunion, I gave up shooting 35mm all together and decided to shoot only digital images. I have a great deal of control over these images -- both from the standpoint of shooting and re-shooting if the image doesn't look good on the screen and through adjustment and manipuplation with PhotoShop.

The quality of the images is just great - and at least with prints up to 8x10 (largest I can print at home), I can't tell the difference between the digital and a print made at a lab from a negative.

Since buying my Nikon 995 a day before the Reunion, I've shot 5,037 images. Many of these are 'throw-aways' (I wouldn't have bothered taking a picture if I would have had to pay to have it processed and printed.)

But figuring that with film, processing and 4x6" prints it probably costs about $1 each, that's over $5,000 bucks I haven't spent on photography. The camera costs me about $799 (now newest model is $599) and the printer cost $199 (now about $99) and a 24' roll of 4" wide paper costs about $22. I only print a few images, the rest I archive to CDROM.

I was in a pro camera shop this morning and was looking over all the latest in digital cameras and middle format cameras and am still happy I made the decision to go digital.

Heck it might even be time to sell the 35mm equipment.