Genie, my daughter, with her trusty Sony F707 camera.

Before a DSLR was an affordable tool, back in 2001, a lot of serious photographers produced a lot of outstanding images with this camera (Sony F707).
At a certain point in time, the number of messages in Sony Talk Forum of DPreview.com surpassed that of Canon Talk Forum. The F707 was that respected by the photographic community.
Even today, almost 10 years later, I still found that the F707 to be a very versatile camera that consistently produces excellent images, albeit it is painfully slow for today's standard.