My father was a very good amateur photographer. He had phases of enthusiasm, then lost interest for a time, and sometimes gave me his camera. I got a couple of decent ones that way, though he never gave me his lovely pre-war Contax. My first SLR was a Spotmatic (branded Honeywell) which I bought in Salt Lake City in the 1960s while doing bio-medical research at the University of Utah. I still have it, and another Asahi one also, but have only recently moved into the digital SLR world with a new Pentax K-x. Since retiring from scientific research in 1987 I have become interested in naval & maritime history and museums, and much of my photography centres around such images, including photographs of items in museum collections. My wife is a specialist in scrimshaw so some of my photographic efforts are directed there - though she is as good a photographer as I am, when it comes to museum specimens.