If you listened to the manufacturers and marketing teams, you would be buying new equipment every year. They tell you all about the great features on the new whizz-bang model, usually highlighting how many megapixels it has.  My phone has twice as many megapixels as my DSLR cameras, but I know which I would rather use.

I bought a Nikon D40 new, it has 6.1 mp.  Since then, I've bought a used Nikon D80 for £85! It has 10.8 mp. All the shots on this site were taken with these two cameras.

Back in the days of 35mm SLR photography, we didn't have autofocus, sometimes we didn't have autoexposure. Since then, the laws of physics haven't changed, so why not use manual focus and exposure now? After all, autofocus struggles to keep up anyway. A Weston Eurosix light meter still gives good exposure readings today.

I saw a 600mm lens in a shop for £5!  It has a T mount, so it will fit any SLR, it has manual focus & manual aperture.

Forty-four of the shots on this site were taken through a £5 lens!

If I had a pound for everybody who sees my pictures and says " you must have an expensive camera ", I would be able to afford the camera they think I have!

The only modern equipment I have bought is a flashgun that my D80 can remotely adjust, it cost £60.

EDIT: I've spent some money! I bought a used D7000 body and another flashgun. The D40 has now been sold.

1. Shoot in RAW format. Yes the files are bigger, yes you need to process the shot...BUT  I reckon I can do a better job deciding how the shot will look than my camera.  Editing a JPG is too late, most of the data was discarded when the camera made the file. RAW saves all the data from the sensor.

2. Try incident metering. The colours we look at are a reflection of the light falling on them, exposing for that light gives a truer representation of the scene. A secondhand incident meter still gives excellent results.

3. Find your style. You'll be happier with the results if you take the shots you like, rather than try to take what you think people expect of you. If other people don't like them, that's their problem, this is supposed to be fun!  My style?  I aim to get in close, candid, very rarely set scenes. I think of billboard posters, detail & colour. If i HAD to follow another photographers' style, I would look to David Bailey for portraits and Ben von Wong for imagination.

4. Black & White isn't old fashioned. I try converting most of my shots to B/W, sometimes it's just better. David Bailey showed more in monochrome than most of us can show in full colour. Slowly introducing colour to a B/W image sometimes works.

5. Background. Move if you have to. If you are using flash, you can darken the background by upping the flash power and exposing for the subject. Most of my portrait shots were taken against the living room wall !  If the background is too light, set the exposure to make it look dark, then set the flash to get the subject perfectly lit. An umbrella will soften the flash, so will a piece of A4 paper. A bunch of black drinking straws bound together will focus your flash to a spotlight.

Too many people claim " Photoshopped " when they see a picture these days. I can't afford Photoshop!

Back in the old days, you chose a film you liked, took the shot, processed the negative, then printed in the darkroom.  All those steps have an effect on the outcome. And yet these days, people seem to expect the image to come out of the camera in it's finished state.  Just look how many bad selfies assault our eyes every day.

Yes, I adjust colour, brightness, contrast etc... Yes, I crop a shot to only show what I want, but now I don't need scissors.  I regularly remove dust spots, sometimes a bird or insect gets removed. One shot had an errant lamp post removed, it was easier than chopping it down. But the editing process is no more than a good darkroom assistant has been doing for years.

Nothing in my shots was not in the original picture, a lot of it may have been brightened, or darkened, but it was all there in the viewfinder.