I've also had a long lasting interest in photography, with my favorite camera being a Minolta SRT 201 ... I got to take some great shots with that in full manual mode ... Unfortunately it was stolen from my hotel room while on a business trip ... I replaced it with a Nikon FE2 which was also very nice, but I think I did a better job with the Minolta ...
Then came digital ... I now use a SONY DSC H50 ... nice, feels like a camera, but it is NOT an digital SLR, which perhaps I may get someday ...

Some of you guys have had some heavy duty hardware ... I envy that ...