This is a selection of my cameras with some specifications and showing the progression of simple amateur photographic gear.
“Continue reading” for more details and photos.

Think carefully before you buy a camera. A good proportion of my website success has been the ability able to take long exposure, low light photos with a digital SLR (That’s one of those bigger old fashioned looking camera’s which is digital and can have screw on interchangeable lenses). I could not have done many of my shots with my other point and shoot cameras. It’s not just the pixels, in fact almost all the photos on this site are 1 MP only (1000 pixels wide).  My cameras have varied from 4 MP to 24 MP.
Without the manual exposure option I would not have been able to take 3 of my top 4 photos and this more than anything sets my site apart from others. I was fortunate enough to win it and otherwise would not have had the opportunities that I have had.
I would buy a DSLR second hand rather than a new point and shoot if the money was the same. No you can’t take selfies or take it to parties.
My current camera is a Nikon D3100 as it has video, but that’s not important as it’s the manual/long exposure option and better low light capability that matters to me.

Here are my cameras:

Nikon 1 V2 – the white camera above. This is predominantly a high speed video camera.  The speed goes up to 1200 frames per second (fps) at a much reduced resolution of 320 x 120.

The Nikon D300 2009.  A 12 MP camera (above) replaced my D70S. Cost was AUD$2200 with 4 Gig fast Compact Flash card for the body alone (no lenses) which will store from 75 to 7000 pictures depending on the resolution. The decision to use this camera was reached for better low light performance (ISO to 6400) as well as better resolution (12 MP). Use is still familiar but with lots of new features which I have yet to fully explore but setting the autofocus point is a lot simpler and there is a live view option. Unfortunately the remote control is not built in, but the lenses I was able to use from the previous Nikon.  I didn’t have the hang of the white balance in the shot above. Accessories include a RF remote, and RF flash remote. I have a variety of filters including a new variable neutral density filter from 2-400, rainbow, star, UV and IR filters.  I have a kit as yet not completed, to give programmed delays and triggering for the flash.

A small camera like the GoPro (2014) can be attached to the Tesla coil for a unique point of view.

This is my Nikon D70s 6 MP camera won as a prize in August 2005 in our local paper photo competition  (Sunday Times circ 365,000).  Camera was valued at AUD$2000 with lens.  The competition had 5000 entries in 2 categories with 40 photos published in each and I won one of them.  The photo I entered was the Tesla coil with 7 foot sparks.  The camera has a bit of a learning curve but has much better low light capability (to ISO 1600).  I have accessories including a tripod (essential), normal and long distance IR remote controls and lenses including a Sigma 180 mm that does 1:1 macros (from 40cm) and telephotos. I have a wide angle lens and a UV filter.  I take over 5000 photos per year of which very few make it to my site.  Many are simple happy snaps without much thought and some have taken 100 hours to develop and compose (like Red Alert Tesla).  Sadly, in November 2008 it died after 18,000 shots. Probably not due to electrical interference as it wasn’t shooting sparks at the time. A fabulous performance.

After June 2005 I have used this Ricoh Caprilo 5MP camera. It is much better from many points of view including macros focusing down to 1 cm from the lens.  I didn’t get to use it for long.

Shown above from around 2003 is a HP 812 4 mega pixel digital camera with tripod for estimated 10 second exposures from what my wife regards as a safe distance. (There is some risk to electronic devices and some of the close up photos were taken with the camera wrapped in aluminium foil). MPEG video on website also taken with same camera. Here it takes a picture of itself (in a mirror on auto timer in a green room). I have a custom made tinplate box which can cover this camera or my Nikon 501 or Sony digital video camera which allows them to be used more safely with a tripod closed to the action.  These days I am not so cautious.

Photos
I feel that many Tesla coil shots on the web are blurred, out of focus or are just don’t convey the size of the sparks/streamers.

I have a list of criteria that I use for digital cameras

	Always use a tripod (or stack of bricks or the previous model TC). For medium exposures of seconds a hand held camera will blur a lot. The sparks will be sharp but the rest will be blurred.
	Make sure you get the end points of all the sparks to either side. Chopped off sparks don’t really give the impression of size. That is unless you do a Richard Hull and have sparks ONTO the camera.
	Try to get the sparks at a right angle to the camera by using a breakout point or grounded object.  Only by doing this will you see the full spark length in comparison with a known fixed measure (which is usually the secondary winding height).
	Have a person in the background for scale (at a safe distance).  Even Tesla himself got this right in his photos (admittedly with double exposures).
	Adjust the background lighting to be able to see the surroundings for scale. It is best to at least partially cover the spark gap as this tends to wash everything out.  It should have a shrapnel and UV guard on anyway shouldn’t it?
	Fix the focus on the TC toroid with lights on, hold the focus, then lights off, sparks on and shoot. This is needed as you can’t autofocus in the dark. You may need to grow extra hands for this.
	Let the camera do an auto exposure and it will finish when it has enough light (may be 10 seconds on my camera).
	Don’t put a large number of very similar shots on your site. You choose the best one(s) to save others the trouble of downloading many.
	I use thumbnails linking to a largish size of compressed photo of 200 – 400 kb but I am very choosy with the photos and lots get discarded.  I previously kept the resolution full (4 megapixel before cropping) but reduced the colour spectrum from 24 bit to 16 bit to save space. I can’t tell the difference. Now I just set to 1000 pixels wide giving a typical file size of 150 k.
	I use some RF protection if my camera close up to the coil with a metal can made for the purpose as above.
	Avoid windy times (unless you want to show the banjo effect) as it makes the streamers look blurred.