I have been involved in amateur astronomy for the past 25 years, encompassing such areas as lunar, planetary and deep sky observing, meteor observing and telescope building. I have participated in many star parties and camps, and conducted observing sessions and educational talks to students at some of my local schools.
 
These days I participate in the hobby in the privacy of my own backyard and selected private rural locations, and only very occasional visits to star parties and astronomy camps.

 

My pursuits these days is mainly visual observing but I do indulge in small amount of imaging. As well as using today's popular CCD technologies to capture images, I have also scanned and restored some of my early astrophotographic work  taken with an Olympus OM-10 SLR.

Many telescopes have come my way over the years. My first being a 60mm refractor given as a Christmas gift in 1984. My next was a leap into telescope making with a home-built 6" Newtonian reflector. This served me well for a number of years before being 'out-built' by a 12" Dobsonian reflector.

Following the home-built telescopes, I have owned a GSO 12" Dobsonian reflector and both a Meade LX90 8" and LX200 10" Schmidt Cassegrains. My current telescope is a 16" f4.5 trussDobsonian telescope built by SDM Telescopes, Australia.

When I began amateur astronomy 25 years ago, this specialty field with in the hobby was called astrophotography, however with the gradual demise of film photography and the advent of digital technology as a photographic medium, today it is referred to as astro imaging or simply imaging.
 
I do not participate in imaging very often as I am mainly a visual observer, but when I do, for still photography I use a Canon Rebel XT 350D Digital SLR (DSLR) with two lenses; an 18-50mm and 70-300mm and a tripod. When imaging the planets, I use an Imaging Source DBK21 CCD camera.