Photography has been a hobby of mine since the age of 14 when I bought a box-brownie at a village jumble sale. I was hooked after the first roll of film!

Back in the 1970's I had my own darkroom and worked exclusively in mono apart from a brief dalliance with Cibachrome (colour from transparencies). My favourite camera in the 70s was my Canon FTb QL with its amazingly sharp Canon 50mm f/1.4 lens. Other 35mm cameras owned in those early years included a Praktica L, Zenith E (didn't everyone!), Chinon Memotron CE (surprisingly good) and an Olympus OM1n which was probably the sexiest film camera ever designed. I also used a Yashica Mat 124G TLR 120 roll-film camera which gave superb results, especially for portraits.

After several years engaged with my career (Logistics & IT), family life and other interests, the arrival of digital cameras rekindled my love of Photography. I primarily shoot Canon and have owned a 300D, 350D, 40D, 760D, 80D, 5D mkii, 6D, 7D mkii, EOS R, R6 and now the Canon R5.

My current lens collection includes: Cannon EF 50mm f/1.8, Canon EF 16-35 f/4 L, Canon EF 100-400mm L mkii, Canon 100mm Macro L, Canon 90mm Tilt Shift (original version), Sigma EF 150-600mm C and EF Sigma 150mm macro. For the new mirrorless RF mount I have the RF 24-105mm L, RF 35mm f/1.8 Macro and RF 800mm f/11. I was pleased to find that my EF mount lenses, including the Sigmas, all work faultlessly with the mirrorless R bodies using the EF>RF adapter.

In 2020/21/22, thanks to "Coronavirus lock-down GAS*" I had a sudden desire to go back to my film days, initially purchasing a Yashica Mat 124G followed by an embarrassingly long list of 35mm and 120 MF cameras from Zorki , Fed, Kiev, Canon, Olympus, Nikon, Fuji and Mamiya to name just a few! I also have adaptors for all of my film lenses to allow me to use them on my R5 (just for fun although most are surprisingly good!). Whether I'll find the time to shoot much film remains to be seen!

I edit my images using a mixture of Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Lightroom Classic, and DxO Photolab -the latter primarily for the excellent [but slow] Prime Noise Reduction and lens corrections. I also use NIK (now DxO) filters, DxO Film Pack and DxO View Point.. The excellent Negative Lab Pro is a new software addition to help with my recent return to the world of film. I scan my negatives with my R5, Canon 100mm Macro L lens and Essential Film Holder negative carriers. I also have a Plustek 8200i Ai negative scanner which I prefer for scanning old negatives of which I have 1,000s! Using the Plustek is a slow process but old colour negatives get auto scratch and spot removal which saves lots of time with in Photoshop.

Flickr gives me the ability to share pictures with family and friends which they would probably never see otherwise and, finally, if other photographers out there "fave" any images that I make public, well, that's nice too.

* Gear Acquisition Syndrome