Hi Czardoom.
I appreciate what you mean, and I have been heard to say pretty much the same thing.
My 8 year old nephew has been borrowing my EOS 20D, a very capable camera made until August 2006 so falls within your 15yr range, the last time we went out to shoot wildlife he asked after a while if I had a camera that would focus better that he could borrow!
Now I know that the camera focuses extremely well if you get one of the nine focus points on target, so I know the solution to his problem is AF point spacing, too much gap too few points, the next camera I have that has more points is the 7D with 19 points, what is more, I think this is the first APS C camera with more than nine points, the 750D and 70D are the first in their respective ranges with the 19 point AF system, the 1300D is still 9 points!
Unfortunately my 8yr old nephew is not mature enough to have charge of my 7D, there is still too much value in it, the 20D and 17-85mm lens only cost £50 as the seller thought it was faulty, well the lens was faulty, the ribbon for the aperture was broken, cost me £3 and a couple of hours of my time to fix it, a good portion of which was spent looking for the teeny tiny screw that I dropped!
I think my point is that not all old cameras are suited to all genres of photography when the photographer is inexperienced, I can make the 9 points work, I think most adults can, I think many if not all children trying to learn, especially as they probably have experience with camera phones, will struggle!
Cheers, Graham.
