The Cameras:-

I've had more digital cameras than hot dinners - it all began in 1988-9 with the purchase of a Canon Ion camera which was more a video camera than anything else... hugely expensive (about £700 if memory serves me) and a totally useless resolution plus expensive shuttered disks. I then migrated to a Casio, an Olympus, a Nikon, before finally embarking on a proper DSLR in the form of the Canon 10D - this was an expensive bit of junk - ultra-soft pictures, problems with autofocus, which despite a visit back to base was still a very expensive failure. Bought a Sigma SD9 instead - a delight to use and the sharpest pictures ever! A bit later, upgraded to the SD10, but got fed up with the lack of development from Sigma and Foveon and decided to get the Nikon D70 - a very smart camera with fabulous colour and white-balance, very forgiving of mistakes. Latest purchase is the super Nikon D200 - this is the best camera to date if you can afford the body-only price of £850, and then some more for the battery pack. I'm also using a second-hand Minolta Dimage 7 (see below) for infrared work. I've made the excursion back to film - there are some super bargains around on Ebay for secondhand Nikon F90X bodies - some as cheap as £60. It means I can use all my Nikkor lenses.

When a dSLR is just too bulky to carry around, I'm using a Canon Powershot G9 - not a faultless compact, but possibly the best compact camera out there at the time of writing. My new addition to the family arrived today (7th December 07) and I'm already fired-up by an outstanding camera.

The Computer(s):-

Apple Mac G5 (Intel), quad core, 4.0Gb RAM, 23" cinema screen (calibrated with Spyder), Lacie external Firewire drive, Iomega 2Tb RAID, Edirol micro monitors, RAID array, backup and storage =3Tb , external Sony dual layer DVD burner. I edit video from my Sony High Definition HD-FX1 on Final Cut Pro. networked to//

Lenovo 3000 N100 laptop purely for digital field work. Running Nikon Camera Capture 1.1 and Adobe Onlocation for time-lapse photography. DVD-RAM drive installed, plus USB2 and Firewire 400. Wireless and Bluetooth.

Additional equipment:-

Nikkor lenses: AF Fisheye 10.5mm 1:2.8 G ED DX,
Nikkor AF-S Zoom 17-55mm f/2.8G IF ED DX (some lens!)
Sigma 50mm 1:2.8 DG EX Macro
Sigma 70-200mm F2.8 APO DG (HSM). Vosonic VP2160
Secondhand Nikon F90X (35mm camera) with wireless remote control
Sigma SD10 with the stunning Foveon sensor (see the sensor review)

Software:-

Photoshop CS3..Nikon Capture NX, Adobe Lightroom 1.3, Rawshooter Premium 2006, Nik Dfine 2.0 for noise reduction. Photomatix for HDR work.

Website created in Dreamweaver.

Below - the original Canon Ion.