I like Cappa's blog about his cameras, so here's mine. My old company-issued Canon G3 is sort of the photographic equivalent of my '53 flattie.

Like Cappa I'm a film *** I get all warm and gooey every time I get a batch of Velvia 50 back from the lab and get to bring it to the white board to pour over my photos with a loupe. It's sort of like Christmas morning every time. There's no wait with Digital cameras. The instant-gratification of the review screen kills the suspense as to whether or not you're getting that perfect shot.

Regardless, as to my gear, I started my magazine career with Cappa and Cole Quinnell at 4-Wheel & Off-Road almost a decade ago. That's back before nearly anybody was using digital cameras for print publications. I had an old Canon AE1. It had manual film rewind and manual focus. I was jealous of Cole and Cappa's *** auto rewind - I'd be frantically spinning the little rewind lever to reload film while their cameras buzzed away while they shot the breeze. I eventually stepped up to an F4s and now I've got two of them as my trail cameras - one for the short lense and one for the long lense.

When the company came out with the digital mandate some year ago I ignored it because Jp only received two company-issued Digital SLR cameras. I have several thousand dollars wrapped up in my film gear (we bought our own back then) and Trasborg got the first one because he didn't have any other camera. Cappa took the other one because I didn't want the bother. Trasborg's had locked up on a few trail rides and I had to step in to finish a feature shoot or two for him with my dinosaur Nikon. I'm not about to drop $3,000 of my own money on a digital SLR, so if you see me at TDS, Moab, or any other trail ride loading film into either my Nikon F4s, you'll know why.

I do have a digital for magazine work, though. It's the same Canon G3 4.0 megapixel camera I've been shooting with for years. It's shot well over 10,000 frames and it's still going. I've dropped it several times, and as such it's been repaired several times. You can't drop a G3. They break. Period. Despite the frequent repairs, replacement parts are getting harder to come by. In fact, the last few times I took it in for service they told me it'd just be easier to replace it with a newer model because the parts aren't made anymore. That's why the lense cap is gone, the CF data card door is held on by painter's tape, and most of the silk-screened images on the selector dials are worn off and illegible. It's beat, it's not the best looking, it's greasy from countless tech photoshoots, but damn if it doesn't get the job done.