I'm not quite sure why I hang on to old digital cameras.

Technically, they are inferior to anything that I shoot with today. They're often slow starting, slow focusing, have low resolution, and are noisy at ISO 400 or higher. Yet, I keep them.

Actually, it goes beyond that. I have the battery chargers, connection cords, cases, and in some instances, obscure memory cards that work only with particular devices. With nearly every camera in my "collection," I can still take a picture.

This includes an Olympus Camedia C-211 with a 2.1 MP sensor and a built-in Polaroid printer, an Apple QuickTake 200 with the multicolored Apple logo on the front, and a Canon PowerShot G1 with a 3 MP sensor that takes great Infrared pictures. I even have the original Kodak digital camera that doesn't have an LCD or removable memory.

Maybe I keep these aging devices because they remind me of my own history, and how excited I was taking pictures with them. I still have those images. The metadata tells me which device was used and the time the picture was captured.

These might be low-resolution accounts of chapters in my history, but I have them. I can look at those pictures today. And that's probably why I keep those old digital cameras. They are as much a part of my past as the events themselves.

-Derrick