Most of my trips out walking, camping, bushcraft is for the ulterior motive of photography, I always haul a dslr and spare zoom, a Nikon D70 which is a big camera and my hiking rig is the Lowepro S&F technical harness and belt arrangement to which I modify various packs to suit it for whatever duration of trip out. I find being out with the camera, one takes more notice of one's surroundings, but I tend not to travel far because of the wealth of photographic opportunities is astounding in one area, when you are there for the purpose of it.
I started photography as a child and have had various cameras through the years, every one of them I have worn out and I did do an LRPS at one point then left photography for a decade then when I came back, it was all digital and at the time I had moved to Sweden where I was given the use of a DSLR, the one I have now and I rekindled my love for photography.
I have Photoshop CS5 and much prefer it to darkroom activities and the stinking for days one got from being in that environment. I don't do much with the end results of my photography, usually they just sit on my hard drive doing nothing with very few seeing them. So I think my interest is the technical perfection out in the field and just the vast array of things that are seen when one clicks into photography mode.
I use an old obsolete dslr because for me it does the job and I don't use any of the idiot modes on it, I just use it in exactly the same way I used to use my film slr's back in the day and I still think before hitting the shutter release as there is no point in filling up a card with rubbish as that is space lost for better things. My only bugbear with the camera is the lack of wired remote shutter release and the lack of low ISO settings, so I have to carry neutral density filters and a bit of the Cokin system to compensate, otherwise it is a tough camera that has done well so far, although it does have a problem with a weak low pass IR filter, it is no good with blue skies unless I manage to find the correct correction filter at a more affordable price.
But with all the advancement in DSLR's I am waiting for the first manufacturer to create a weatherproof DSLR, so photos can be taken without worry in the rain as I have from time to time created seals for the lens/body interface to stop much of the surroundings getting in as sensor cleaning is not my favourite pastime.