In high school I had a course that included a photography component. We took pictures and developed and printed the black and white film. I bought my first camera then - it was the Canon AE-1 with a power winder, which was a 35mm Single Lens Reflex (SLR) shutter priority camera (you set the shutter speed and the camera set the aperture). I joined the schools Year Book staff as a photographer and I still have that camera today (pictured above).
As much as I liked the old AE-1 my one year old Nikon DSLR (Digital Single Lens Reflex) is a thousand times better than the old film beast. With the continuous improvements in camera development future cell phones will be be just as good as today's DSLRs and point and shoot cameras may fill only a small niche market.
