Photographic Kit

I've long used Nikon cameras, starting with a Nikon FE film SLR, and moving on through D70, D300, D7100 and D500. Currently I use:

• Z6 II Mirrorless body, my first Nikon mirrorless, small and light weight, but only 20 megapixels, so limited cropping;

• Z8 Mirrorless body 45 megapixels, superb autofocus and excellent high-ISO performance, so great with long lenses and small apertures

• Nikkor 24-70 f/4 S, 'standard' zoom

• Nikkor 24-200 f/4-6.3, a great 'walking around' lens, not as sharp as the 24-70, but useful

• Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 VRII, an absolutely brilliant lens, used with the FTZ mount adaptor

• Nikkor 100-400 f/4.5-5.6 S. a terrific telephoto zoom that is much the same size as the 70-200

• Nikon Z-mount Teleconverter 2.0x Combined with the 100-400 zoom, this gives impressive reach, equivalent to an 800mm lens.

One of the advantages of the mirrorless bodies is the in-body image stabilisation that works in conjunction with lens-based VR to provide up to about 5 stops of improvement - particularly valuable with hand-held long lenses.

Software

I use Adobe Lightroom to manage my photographs, and to do virtually all the post-processing I carry out. For the most part, this amounts to minor changes to exposure and tone profile, and cropping.

I also use software from Topaz Labs, who make a number of AI-based tools for sharpening, noise reduction and up-scaling.

This website is managed using the Turning Gate Backlight system. Galleries on the site are managed through a Publisher plug-in in Lightroom.