In this talk I will present the latest results of a series of experiments investigating the strong-field ionisation of two different novel species of atoms. The first experiment involves the strong-field ionization of neon atoms in the 3P2 excited atomic state. This is a metastable atomic state of neon with a lifetime of 15 s. I will present the results of the strong-field ionisation of this species and demonstrate the application of these measurements to investigate over the barrier and tunnel ionization of atoms. In the second part of the talk I will discuss precision measurements of the ionization of atomic hydrogen and demonstrate how these measurements can be used to measure the intensity of ultra-short light pulses to the 1% level and the absolute calibration of carrier-envelope-phase tagging in strong field experiments.