I picked up my Dad's Olympus OM10 in 1989 on a trip to California and... I've never stopped looking back!

In the 1990s I went travelling in Asia for a year with a Minolta 700si with a Sigma 70-200mm f2.8 APO ZEN I and a Tokina 28-70mm f2.6-2.8 AT-X PRO. I loved those lenses! They were much cheaper than the Minolta equivalents which I couldn't afford but still had great quality glass with large apertures. I came home with a few thousand slides and a broken camera!

Around 2002 I sold all my gear to go digital but could only afford a Canon PowerShot G3 with 4 Mpixels! Later on I also had a Panasonic DMC-FX35 but I wasn't doing much serious photography.

In the late 2000s I had another sabbatical year, travelled a lot and for this I got a Canon 40D together with a Canon 70-200mm f4 and a Canon 17-40mm f4. The 17-40 was disappointing, it lacked detail at all apertures (maybe I just had a very bad sample)! But the 70-200 was the exact opposite, the sharpest lens I've ever owned and absolutely amazing. Many of my wildlife and plant life photos are from this period. I was out most days taking pictures.

I returned to work and founded a family and have tens of thousands of pictures of my kids! In 2016 I decided to switch to Fuji and got an XT-1 together with the Fuji 35mm f1.4. That lens was uber-sharp and after few years it was joined by the excellent Fuji 16mm f1.4. However, I felt I was missing the flexibility of a standard zoom so I part-exchanged those for the excellent Fujinon 16-55mm f2.8. I've also just added a Fujinon 50-140mm f2.8 to my gear. Man, that is a difficult lens to handle with an XT-1. Time to explore getting the XH-2S maybe?