400

Four hundred. That’s the number of blog posts that I wrote for srphotos.co.uk in the last 5 and a half years, and in the last year of that, there have been fewer than 30 posts. That’s a lot of blog posts that I don’t really want to get rid of as part of the merge with Lightbulb Head, accounting for a good few hours of my life! It’s lucky that I don’t have to – Kiri has said she’ll make a book out of them, creating the story of srphotos.co.uk.

However, within that vat of old blog posts, there are a few which are still pertinent today, others which are amusing to read in hindsight (think technology predictions!) and others which, quite frankly, deserve to be dropped on the floor. So, my plan is to choose some of the better posts, update them and pop them up here, but don’t worry, you won’t get all of them! I’ll start with one about my camera equipment.

Back in January 2008 (almost 5 years ago to the day) I wrote about my cameras as the most frequent question I was asked was “what camera do you use?” followed by “what do you recommend I should buy?”. I’m still asked these questions today, and I’ll come on to recommendations in a bit, but firstly, this is how my kit bag has changed:

• Main digital camera – back in 2008, this was my trusty Nikon D50 – I still regard this as a cracking piece of kit, but I sold it to my brother-in-law. Nowadays my main digital camera is a Nikon D700
• Main film camera – a Canon AT-1 that was my Father’s and Grandfather’s was the answer in 2008 and it’s the same answer today – it’s doing well considering it’s around 30 years old
• Backup digital camera – I don’t think you could call my Canon Powershot A510 a backup camera, but it was the only other digital camera I owned. Now I have a Nikon D5100 that I use both as a backup, but also as my main camera when I have to think about weight of equipment
• Backup film camera – funny story here – the answer in the original blog post was a Canon AV-1. Between then and now, I have owned every single camera in the Canon A-series (A-1, AE-1, AE-1 Program, AL-1, AT-1, AV-1) – they are beautiful items, but it did get a bit silly. I’ve now downsized again, and have just the A-1 as a backup
• Lenses – I’ve got largely the same lenses for my film cameras – 28mm-70mm, 70mm-210mm and 50mm. Digital is where there’s been the biggest change – back in 2008 I had an 18mm-55mm. Now I’ve got an 18mm-200mm VR lens (almost welded to my D5100 – the best all-round lens I’ve owned), a 50mm, a 24mm-70mm f2.8 and an 80mm-200mm f2.8. They weigh a tonne!

So that’s the kit, but what about recommendations? Please feel free to let me know what you want to be taking photos of, and I’m happy to make individual recommendations. What I will reveal is that I intend to buy a new compact camera soon and the Panasonic Lumix TZ30 looks very attractive!