In a past life, I was full time as a motor sport photographer. Using my late father's pride and joys, a Leica M2 , Minolta SRT101 and Pentax KX with the mandatory 210mm lenses and 2x converters, I modestly took some fine shots and made a living out of both taking the photos, and writing articles for such publications as Auto Action, Motoring Reporter and Sports Car World.

When my employment direction changed, I still followed motor sport with a passion, and still took photos - albeit without my Dad's cameras - death duty took care of that. I was reduced to somewhat of an amateur for many years, still writing stories however, but this time from a different angle for firstly VideoCamera magazine and later of course AusCam on the role TV played in the V8 Supercars, A1GP and Production cars (the Ferraris, Lambos, mighty Monaro and so on).

My tool of choice for this work was the original Minolta dImage 7i - still waving the Minolta flag y'see. While not suitable for super-dooper action shots on the track, this 5MP digistill was ideal for interview and pit work.

I never really needed to use them, so I bypassed the advent of the super-digi-still that probably started with the Canon EOS 1D Mark 1 (from a sporting perspective) and was quickly followed by models from Nikon and SIGMA. But today, I finally had a long, long play with both the Sony alpha 700 (really a Minolta who are now of course defunct) and a Panasonic LUMIX DMC-L10.

Trust me, if you are one of those that has been hanging on saying "film is still king", go and have a play with one of these gems (or equivalent Nikon, Pentax or SIGMA models).

They are simply astonishing. You'll never go back.