I use to spend a lot of time in the woods....

I use to spend a lot of time in the woods, usually waiting for a guy covered in head to foot in protective equipment to flash past on £4,000 worth of downhill racing bike. This was before my son was born, though it had been winding down for a while before that. I do miss it, shooting transparency film, both 35 mm and 120 medium format (if I could of dragged a 5 x4 up the hills and mountains, I really would have), processing rucks of film and getting a good hit rate too. I did start shooting digital before I packed in the mountain bike shoots, the image above was shot on my first serious digital camera a Canon D60, a camera that changed my life and for a while my way of shooting.

It was a great little camera the D60, I still have it, the batteries are charged and except for a cracked LCD on the top plate. It's in quite good nick and ready for action, though it's not been needed for the last three years since I bought the Canon 1Ds MkII, a camera that once again changed my way of shooting. The D60 freed me from the worries of film and whether I'd got the shot I wanted, I use to rattle off shots like there was no tomorrow. The files were only 18MB and my Blue & White G3 could easily cope with them. The crunch came with the 1Ds, 47.5MB files slowed everything down, even after up-grading to a G4 powermac. My work style changed, I slowed my shot rate down, something akin to shooting medium format. That still didn't help my workflow though, so I bit the bullet and bought a MacPro. Now I'm happy with the camera, the workflow and am seriously thinking it's time to go back to the woods and catch some more action...