Whether you're going to explore places for the sake of photography or just having fun, it's important to document it. Many of the places I've been to have been torn down or burned, and sometimes I only had one chance at taking photos, like when certain mills are actually on fire.
Most of the photos I posted on this site were taken before I got a decent camera--i.e. everything I took before 2005. And if I posted anything before 2002, then it was taken with whatever film camera my family was using or a disposable.
I currently use a Kodak DM7590X, 5MP, 10x optical zoom, 3x digital zoom. (If you don't have funds for a camera...ask for them for your birthday! I find that works fairly well haha. I know my mom paid roughly $500 for mine in February 2005). I prefer optical zooms because digital zooms just make the image grainy.
Most of my pictures on the site were taken with a Sony DSC-P31, 2MP, 2x optical zoom, 3x digital zoom. When I bought it in 2002 for $200 it really seemed like the shit...it's shit all right...haha. I've never had a problem with it, except the quality really left something to be desired, especially when shooting from a distance. (Example: God House in the storage bunker. You can barely read it even though it was shot from about 50ft, and that's a shame, because it's gone now.)
The best example of seeing the difference between the two cameras is my Fort Mansfield pictures. The coloring of the photos are different; with the older pictures, the vegetation is kind of neon green vs. the newer pictures, where it looks more normal.
Decent cameras are getting cheaper and cheaper. The camera I use now could reasonably be picked up for around $350 or maybe less. Or if you want to get something nicer, 6.0MP cameras with 12x optical zooms are going for about $500.
Oh, and the other nice thing about my camera is that it can take 81 minutes worth of video with sound, and the old one didn't have sound. I use a 512mB memory card.
So what kind of cameras do you use?