Many family members do photography so I guess it is a little in my blood. I started in High School, in 10th grade, with a 35mm SLR borrowed from a friend. I went through many rolls of film but mainly just took pics of classmates and such. I didn't have any formal training and mainly left the camera in the default auto mode. I did not do much photography again until 1999 when I bought a Canon SLR Rebel of my own.
This did not get used much sadly. I got mixed up in this scam to develop film. It looked like such a good deal but I just did not take enough pictures to make it worthwhile and I paid more than I would have without it.
Now came my first digital camera. I cannot remember where I bought it although I think it was Yodabashi Camera in Kawasaki. It was a Fujifilm and it was a weird shape but I loved the features and how well it fit in my pocket.
Yes, that camera took thousands of photos around the world and inside the ship. After I broke my first one (gravity check SAT) I bought my friend's camera off him and kept on shooting pics. Here is the era folks... I thought I was awesome when I bought a 16MB card for it! Wow.. we have come a long way. I took pics of aircraft, ships, lots of sunsets and volumes of water. I had it for so long, I have trouble figuring out what I bought next.
I am pretty sure I bought another Fujifilm but I cannot remember the shape of that one. The number of years we used it is also beyond me. It was an xD memory card I think.
I do remember buying a Pentax though, I was thinking it was a replacement for me and actually featured some good stats. Big back screen for its time. Finally using an SD memory card, vowed it would become the industry standard. I'm glad they listened to me. Compact Flash will eventually win in the end though. Whenever we finally cannot shrink memory any smaller, the largest industry frame will hold the most- hence Canon and the Compact Flash will reign supreme. We used the Pentax for a long time as our main camera until we moved into the next tier.