Over the weekend I sold my Canon 5D... having taken over 15,000 photos over the years it had a good innings but since I got a Canon RP I just don't need it - someone bought it as a backup to a newer Canon so there's still life left in it.

It struck me that while lenses can keep on going (okay, image stabilisers have improved in newer lenses) and film cameras can still be kept for certain projects, the older digital SLRs simply can't perform as well as new ones in terms of low light and image size, possibly even sensor cleaning.

I guess you can mod them for infra red (although you can do that in a digital darkroom anyway) but what else can you do with the older semi-pro gear? They are too heavy for children to learn on as well.

I think it's sometimes too easy to look for what I call postcard shots - i.e. the photos which are good enough for postcards. I'm determined this year to try and find some new and different views of my home city, London, so I'm going to be sure to have my camera when I'm out and about and hopefully will post some on here later in the year.

It's also quite fun trying different formats. The standard 3x2 works nicely but I really like the wider panoramic aspect ratio and also square. It does amuse me how many photos are taken with mobile phones on portrait mode though... I find it just the wrong shape to show much to be honest.

Out and about I see lots of SLRs being used, and lots of mobile phones (although I still don't get why most photos and videos taken are in portrait mode - landscape is surely better). However, what I don't see much of at all any more are compact cameras.

I don't get it... a reasonable compact camera with RAW imaging beats any mobile phone hands down - I don't care about pixel count, I'm talking lens quality and low light capability. I've had a couple of Panasonic compact cameras over the years and I love them - they are the size of a pack of playing cards, easily last all day and I get some really good photos out of them - they are great when you don't want to be carrying an SLR and the other stuff with it.

I've always used UV filters or Starlight filters on camera lenses back since I had film cameras and it was needed to reduce haze and improve images. The habit has continued with digital lenses particularly with the adage "it's cheaper to replace a UV filter than a lens". I hadn't really thought much about it until this week.

On a family holiday last week I went to use my Canon 80D only to find the lens was shattered. On closer inspection it was the UV filter that was shattered and the filter itself was too tight to remove from the 18-135 lens. I removed the grass fragments and was able to use the camera as before (no damage to the lens or camera) and removed the filter this evening with a pair of pliers.

I then went about researching what UV filter to get as a replacement, and the general consensus was that if anything you are better without it, and that digital cameras don't need UV filters. However, I then remembered that the whole reason I was reading this was that I had nearly broken the lens... so I just bought the same UV filter as I used before.

It is definitely worth having the filter to protect the lens... if you are in such an environment when you really think it has a negative effect on your photos you can always remove it.

A few years ago, I was really keen on slide photography but didn't do much with them other than put them into a folder. I have been wanting to digitise them for ages, but kept putting it off, primarily due to the cost of the various provider who offer the service - basically between £100 and £200 for 100-300 photos dependent on quality and provider etc.

Recently though, I was looking through some old family photos (40-50 years old) - in truth these were not great quality slides, have been sitting in a cupboard for decades, but looking at them it's the memory I want to digitise more than the resolution.

Looking online I discovered that a modern DSLR and a macro lens (in my case a Canon 80D and a Sigma 105mm macro) combined with a light box (which I got for less than £40 off Amazon) can give pretty good results... rather than photograph the image via a projector you are photographing the slide itself... the camera resolution is good enough to let you do this, and the light box provides the back lighting.

The results have been really good, especially those which had been taken outside, but I think that's more a reflection of the slide than this technique.

I'm going to start digitising my more recent slides over the coming months and will try to post some results here.