After graduating from a Zenith SLR that I had as a schoolchild, I moved on to a Canon AE-1 as a student. For birds, I mainly used a Tamron 500mm mirror lens, which was compact, but produced miniature ‘polos' in the background. For over 20 years I used Nikon gear, especially a trusty second-hand Nikon F3 that I took around the world. Whenever possible, I used the fine-grained but slow Kodachrome 25 slide film. My most-used lenses were Nikon manual focus f2.8 105mm macro lens (that I have only just sold - you rarely need autofocus for close-ups) and a 300mm f4.5. When digital photography took off in the early 2000's I started ‘digiscoping' – taking shots with a Nikon 995 camera attached to my Swarovski AT 80 HD telescope - images here. This greatly increased reach, with the telescope usually being used as the equivalent of more than a 1000mm telephoto lens. With the advent of cropping in Photoshop, the possibility of getting sharp images of distant birds became a reality. Digiscoping can be very frustrating however – it is difficult to locate the bird in the camera, and the method only allows relatively slow shutter speeds, which coupled with high magnifications often results in image blur. The Nikon 995 also has a lag after pressing the shutter button, so what you get as an image often isn't quite what you'd hoped for. I've now abandoned digiscoping and use digital SLRs (DSLRs), although my wife still uses the Nikon 995. My first DSLR was a 6 megapixel (MP) Nikon D100, which I used with my old Nikon manual focus lenses after being told in Jessops that the camera would meter with them (of course it didn't!). I stuck with Nikon because I had several old lenses, but would probably have switched to Canon at that point had I been given the correct advice about lens compatibility! I increased my battery of Nikon lenses, mainly shooting birds with a 300mm AFS f2.8 lens used with a 2x TC-20E II teleconverter. The 1.5x crop factor in Nikon DSLRs was useful for bird photography, and my favourite DSLR so far has been a 12 MP Nikon D2X. For travelling I would use a Nikon 18-70 DX lens and an 80-400mm zoom with vibration reduction (VR). Most of the images on the 2005 and 2006 pages were shot this way.

After shooting with Nikon for such a long time, it was with some trepidation that I switched to Canon gear in January 2007. Nikon gear served me well, and there are swings and roundabouts involved in switching. I still wish that I had my Nikon D2X body and that it would work with Canon lenses – my bird photography is now done with a Canon ID Mark IIN body, losing some of the crop factor (the Canon is 1.3x), and about 4 MP in the image (important when cropping images). The camera also uses bulky NiMH batteries (however these last forever). On the plus side, it has better autofocus and a higher shooting rate (up to 8.5 fps) than the Nikon. I switched to Canon because I think they have several advantages over Nikon. Although it is undoubtedly the photographer who makes a good photograph, it is also clear that Canon supertelephoto lenses with image stabilisation (IS) often deliver quality that Nikon lenses cannot. Nikon has adopted a strange strategy where it introduced stabilisation (termed VR) into shorter focal length lenses, but did not put it where it really counts - in the long focal length lenses. I've therefore followed a considerable number of photographers who have made this switch (see for example Omar Brannstrom and Mark Chappell 's discussions on these matters). I preferred my Nikon body to the Canon one, but the superior lens quality of Canon, plus the better compatibility between converters, extension tubes and lenses which all maintain IS and autofocus with the 500mm lens left me in no doubt about moving. At last (2008) Nikon introduced Vibration Reduction into their long lenses, but the lenses are considerably more expensive than Canon's, and now Canon have brought out an 800mm lens! The competition can only be good for new developments and cost reduction. Once I sold all of my Nikon gear (it held its value well), I invested in the equipment below. I buy a lot of my equipment on the good-condition second hand market, because like with second hand cars, depreciation can be rapid at first, and savings can be considerable. Equipment bought from reputable dealers is also covered by a warranty in case it is faulty. I especially recommend Aperture Photographic in London. I have never bought anything via eBay because of the risks of getting broken or stolen gear, especially if you are handing over thousands of pounds -although bargains are no doubt out there, the risks are just too high and the bidding system can be very frustrating. I buy most of my new equipment via the Internet, often through Warehouse Express who have competitive prices, good stock and rapid delivery.

My current (May 2008) equipment is:

Canon 1D Mark IIN body

Canon 5D body. A full frame camera (no image crop) – nice for landscapes and has 12 megapixels.

Canon 17-40mm L f4 lens. Mainly used at 17mm. Didn't need a wider aperture lens for landscapes when I mainly stop down.

Canon 100-400mm L IS lens. Mainly used when travelling. Good zoom range, has IS, though like the Nikon 40-400mm VR could be sharper at 400mm - don't shoot at full aperture if possible. I deliberated between buying this lens and the 400mm f5.6 for travelling, and chose the zoom because it is more useful for photographing bats, dragonflies and even landscapes when shorter focal lengths are often useful. The 400mm lens is no doubt sharper than the zoom at that focal length.

Canon 100mm f2.8mm macro.

Canon 500mm L IS f4 lens. Excellent for wildlife photography, and not much heavier than my old Nikon 300mm f2.8.

Canon 1.4x and 2x EF II teleconverters. Usually used with the 500mm.

Canon 12mm extension tube.

Canon 580 EX and EXII flashguns. A dreadful instruction manual makes these a nightmare to learn. Default is fill-in flash when used with Aperture Priority, so don't use this in the dark (it will use very long shutter speeds!). In dark conditions I use ETTL mode, high-speed synch, and manual exposure to vary aperture and get good depth of field. I use a Canon ST-E2 wireless transmitter for off camera flash.

Gitzo 3530 LSV carbon fibre tripod. My first serious tripod – light and sturdy. Seriously over-rated and expensive though, and the design of the feet is dreadful (they self-unlock and fall off).

Wimberley II Gimble head. Used with Arca-Swiss lens plates (P40 for the 500mm (don't forget to also get the ¼” to 3/8” thread adaptor), and a P10 plate on my telescope).

Manfrotto 679 monopod – sometimes used when travelling

I also use a Canon PowerShot S5 IS camera when travelling light. It has a 12x zoom, image stabilisation, superb macro abilities and can take nice videos.

I usually carry all of my gear in LowePro bags – usually a Supertrekker, or an Off Trail II bag or in a Jack Wolfskin Berkeley daypack if travelling light.

I have recently started shooting in RAW rather than Fine JPG. The uncompressed RAW files are much bigger, and take much longer to load into Photoshop, but there are some advantages in shooting RAW. Because most of my work is only for computer display, the advantages of RAW are arguable (see Ken Rockwell's sharp observations about RAW vs. JPG). The main benefit that I notice is the increased tonal range in shady areas when shooting RAW. The underside of backlit bird wings can look black in compressed JPGs, but a RAW-processed shot can reveal a subtle gradation of tones. Remember that the camera buffer size can also limit how many RAW images you can acquire in a short time - I once lost a potentially great shot of a penduline tit on a reedmace stem while I was waiting for some earlier poor shots to load onto the CF card. Initially I processed my images in Photoshop CS2 (especially using the Smart Sharpen option for sharpening and the 'Save for web' option), and in Neat Image to reduce any background noise. I use sRGB colour space for web images. My web page was initially designed using Macromedia Dreamweaver with thumbnails and slide shows generated in Arles Image Web Page Creator. I now use Adobe Creative Suite Web Premium that includes Dreamweaver and Photoshop CS3 versions, but the transition has been painful - installation of some components of CS3 can be a nightmare if you have old registry entries of Acrobat or Macromedia flash players on your computer, and Adobe made a real hash of some compatibility issues after taking over Macromedia. If you get similar problems (and they can be extremely frustrating!) I managed to sort fixes via this link and here.