Photography is my oldest hobby, I started out with my first SLR camera in 1976, it was a Fuji SR-701 (totally manual). I built a darkroom to process black and white pictures, I must confess that I don't do that anymore even if I still have all the equipment. Later on I replaced the Fuji camera with an Olympus OM-2 (they were modern back then), it actually still works even if I have retired it after 20 years of faithful service.

Today I have 5 Olympus camera bodies, don't ask me how I can use them, I'm kind of a collector. I also own two rangefinder cameras, a Minox GT-E and a Olympus XA4 plus 3 digital cameras. It almost seem to be the beginning of a future camera museum. The digital ones are a Canon ION, Kodak DC-120 (still fairly OK) and an Olympus C-2020 Z.

As you can see I have a soft spot for Olympus cameras, of all the 10 cameras 7 are Olympus. My reason for liking them is that they seem to focus on what I find essential. The OM system camera series is totally rid of unnecessary functions such as auto focus. They also all permit totally manual exposure, later versions of the cameras such as OM-4 had a very advanced spot-metering system.

The digital Olympus camera is a rangefinder camera, but still it got many of the features from the OM series of SLR cameras. Features I really value are;

• Manual exposure
• Spot metering system
• Possibility to use up to 16s exposure time
• A really good lens!

I forgot to mention my Mamiya 645 camera, a camera with 6 by 4,5 cm negatives (that is 2,36 by 1,77 inches for British and American readers) for really high quality pictures! Unfortunately I don't have a film scanner for that negative format.