I have been photographing birds/wildlife for about 3 years.  My wife suggested I take up a hobby (she has regreted it ever since) and I had been interested in wildlife photography when I was younger but could never afford the equipment.  I therefore brought a Fuji Finepix s5500 and a 1.5 srew converter and off I went.

I do most of my photography in Bedfordshire and Northamptionshire with Summer Leys may main site.  There are several very good photographers here as well as birdwatchers who are very happy to help and advise.  All in all a very friendly site.

I have upgraded my equipment several times and my current gear is:

Camera

Canon 1D Mark 3

Canon EOS 40D

Canon EOS 50D

Lenses

Canon 500mm F4

Canon 400mm F5.6

Sigma 70-300mm Zoom

Canon 100mm F2.8 Macro

Canon 1.4 teleconverter

I enjoy both portrait and action photography.  For portrait work I tend to use the Canon 40D (I have recently purchased the 50D and am very pleased with this so the 40D tends to stay at home now).  The 1.6x crop give that extra bit of magnification and I find the 9 autofocus points really easy to use and very accurate (using the Canon 500mm f4 lens with the 1.4x converter and 1.6x camera crop give me 1120mm focual length at f5.6).  I have set the camera autofocus points to be changed with the thumb stick as this is really quick when you need to change focus point in a hurry.  I did/do use this camera for flight work and you can get good results but I always keep the camera on centre point as I do not find all 9 active works very well.

For flight work the 1D mark 3 is the one to use.  The focus is lightning fast and accurate and and my hit rate went up quickly when I purchased this camera.  The image quality is super and the noise at higher ISO is very low. 

I hope you enjoy this site, please leave a comment in my guestbook.  Also check out the links to some great photo sites.

Neil