For me travel and photography have tended to go together. As a result I have taken more than 12,000 colour transparencies during thirty five years of holiday travels. I decided to call a halt and just take prints, thinking that storage would be less problematical. Not so!! After only six years I experienced storage problems with prints, so decided to return to transparencies.

I now have the technology to convert slides to web images. Samples of my work can be seen in my Picture Library.

My first faltering steps in the world of serious photography were taken in the 1950s with a Ross Ensign camera. Nowadays it would be described as 'medium format', i.e. 2¼ inch square. The (monochrome) results could only be described as a mixed success.

In 1960 I bought my first SLR, an Edixaflex, and ventured into the world of colour photography. At that time prints were very expensive and of poor quality - so transparencies it was. This camera stood me in very good stead for over 20 years, but by 1981 it had worn out.

So I then bought an Asahi Pentax ME Super, plus a couple of additional lenses: 28-70mm and 80-200mm. The camera came with a 50mm f/1.7 fixed focus lens. This combination lasted quite a while, until the wide angle lens gave out. I then bought a 35-70mm zoom of better quality and a second, identical, camera body. This enabled me to take in addition prints which, by this time, had become much cheaper and of better quality. I used the same set of lenses for both.

By 2003, after years of sterling service, one of the camera bodies had failed and the other was clearly not far behind. So, once again, it was time to renew. In the intervening years technology had come on by leaps and bounds and it was the moment to take the technological plunge.

The first purchase - to take over the print photography which, once more, was to be relegated to second string - was a 'compact' camera: Canon Sureshot 155. The results of this, entirely automatic, camera have been mixed. Mainly problems with the automatic focussing.

One last holiday with the Pentax in the autumn of 2003 and it was replacement time for the 'slide' camera. The unhappy experience of automatic photography tempted me to go for manual once again. but I was persuaded by a Jessops salesman to compromise with a camera capable of both: a Canon EOS3000N. This has proved to be very good.

In the meantime my success with a slide scanner (Dimage Scan Dual III) had aroused my interest in digital photography, so I purchased a Konica Minolta Dimage7Hi camera. I have been very pleased with the results from this, many of which can be seen in my Picture Library. Until March 2007 that is, when - after less than three years' service - it was declared 'beyond economic repair'. For a camera that cost in excess of £500 I think this is disgraceful, so it's just as well that Minolta has withdrawn from the digital camera market.

My replacement is a Fujifilm FinePix S6500fd. Currently I am working my way through its instruction manual. I'll let you know how I get on with this in due course!