PLEASE NOTE: This blog is accompanied by a video clip on my Starlo Gets Reel channel on YouTube, which you’ll find by clicking here, or going to https://youtu.be/YX6sMZf1cBU. As a full-time fishing writer and presenter, a big part of my job obviously involves capturing photographic images and video to accompany my work, so cameras are important tools for me. My main work camera is a big, heavy, full-frame DSLR (currently a Nikon D610) with a bunch of different lenses, but I also like to carry a compact point-and-shoot: both as a back-up, and for those times when I simply need something smaller and lighter. Over the 40 years or so that I’ve been writing for magazines, I’ve owned lots of cameras. I’ve eventually worn most out, broken them or drowned them… The fishing world’s a pretty harsh environment for sophisticated optical equipment! Through all of that time, I’ve always been on the lookout for the “ultimate” fisherman’s camera, and I reckon I might have finally found something close to that mark with Nikon’s AW1. While it’s certainly not the perfect solution, it ticks enough boxes on my list to come very, very close. The AW1 is a reasonably compact, mirror-less camera with interchangeable lenses that’s capable of capturing 14.2 megapixel images in both RAW and JPEG formats via a reasonable-sized sensor… Those are all good things. But the best thing about this camera in my book is the fact that it’s fully waterproof! Not just “splash-proof”, but actually waterproof! Without any form of housing or additional case, it’s rated to a depth of 15 metres, or almost 50 feet… That’s pretty impressive! It’s also rated as shock-proof if dropped onto a hard surface from a height of 2 metres… Ouch! The AW1 is sealed...

My continuing series of blogs on how to become a successfully published fishing writer is attracting quite a following and a fair amount of feedback, particularly regarding how to take better fishing photos. With this in mind, I figured it might be worth devoting a few additional blogs specifically to that subject. Here’s the first of them: These days, just about everyone owns a camera, even if only the one built into their mobile phone. Digital cameras (including the mobile phone variety) are getting better, easier to use and more affordable every year, so there’s really no excuse for not coming home with a few halfway decent images of your latest angling adventure. What you do with those photos is a personal choice. You might e-mail them to friends, put them on your Facebook page, show them to club-mates at a meeting night, post them on an internet forum, blog them, or even submit them to a published, hard-copy magazine. Whatever the fate of those images, the better they are, the more impact they’ll have on the people who view them… But what do I mean by “better”? Obviously, any good photo needs to be in focus and properly exposed; neither too dark nor too light. It also helps if the horizon is reasonably straight and the picture composed in such a way that the subject stands out and the viewer isn’t distracted by extraneous objects in the background. But beyond these basics, there’s a world of difference between an adequate fishing photo and a brilliant one. TO READ THIS BLOG IN FULL & ACCESS OTHER PARTS IN THE SERIES, GO TO “STARLO’S INNER CIRCLE”. NEXT TIME: In the next blog in this category, we’ll go beyond the grip-and-grin and look at some of...