I’m probably too young to be feeling nostalgic, but nevertheless I am a little. I was checking out some of the Canon DSLR models that I’m less familiar with, more out of boredom than anything, and I ended up going back to read the review on the original Canon Digital Rebel, the 300D.

The 300D was my very first DSLR, and pretty much my second or third digital camera of any kind. I remember how excited I was when I ordered it – what a significant investment it was at that time in my life. Now I shake my head a little, looking back at it’s ugly body shape and terrible silver plastic, at the tiny LCD screen on the back and the 30k rated shutter life.

Canon changed the market with the 300D and at the time it was an impressive piece of gear. But, oh how far we’ve come since then. Shutter life has improved by a factor of 5; megapixels have tripled; continuous shooting and buffer speed are worlds beyond; and we now regularly shoot at ISOs that used to be the maximum, reserved for emergency sightings of Bigfoot and UFOs.

We all play the game of “what will we say in another 25 years?” What will cameras be like then? I for one refuse to speculate (although unofficially, I tend to think we’ll still be using some recognizable form of the DSLR). What interests me more than speculating on the future is looking back on the past, at where I’ve come from.

I remember the first gig I took that involved lighting – photographing antique furniture for auction. The client was a more distant family member, but it was still a big gig; it stretched out over two years (he had a lot of antiques). When I first started, I was using Home Depot clamp lights on PVC stands. By the second round, I had a cheap Quantaray hotshoe flash, and two even cheaper ($10 each) optical-trigger booster flashes, now on the PVC stands with homemade umbrellas (think rain umbrella and silver spray paint.) Together with the old Rebel, it wasn’t pretty, but it worked.

For most photographers just starting out, the early years are tough. They’re filled with primitive, cheap, and DIY equipment. They’re filled with a lot of trial and error and steep learning curves.

But thinking back, they were also a lot of fun. There was an excitement to the whole thing that I feel is sometimes diminished now. Not that it isn’t still exciting – just that there is less of that “explorer of the unknown” element.

Or maybe I’m just thinking about it all too much.