This is the first digital camera I actually owned. Sure, I was repping for CameraWorld.com (and later, Pro Photo) so I had access to all the latest pro digital gear that came down the road, but I bought this very one at some point in 2002: the Olympus E-20. Enormous 5 megapixels, shot jpeg's and tiff's, although it took about 10 seconds to write the tiff files. I dug it out the other day, popped in a couple fresh batteries, and voilá! like Frankestein's monster, it came to life. Well, maybe not life as we know it. Although it took CF cards, it couldn't format anything bigger than 1Gb (and maybe not even that) and for the life of me I couldn't find any CF card in my collection smaller than 8Gb. And I was so looking forward to shooting some side-by-sides with my 7D and Fuji Xe2 to see how image quality has evolved and improved over the years. Anyone have any antique cards? Although this photo I took on the Oregon coast with that E-20 in the Fall of '04 shows it had some worthwhile chops.
Time is not a constant thing; it flows at crazy rates all throughout the universe. The film cameras we owned -- the Hasselblads, the Nikons -- were just as good and useful to us after 10, even 20 years. But the twelve years that separate that E-20 from when it was made till now seems like an eternity, and it's now functionally obsolete.
And some mornings when I wake up, I think I know the feeling.
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