A 30d is quite a chunk camera and really quite outdated in terms of AF performance, resolution and certainly dynamic range.

You can get really capable and compact mirrorless cameras now for not much money, the a6000 or a6300 are incredibly capable for the money, for instance and you can use all your old lenses on them with either AF, or MF for manual lenses/ non-compatible lenses.

Many compacts like the Lumix series or RX100 series will also be much better than the 30d and provide zoom range and very good AF.

DPReview is a great resource for comparing old and new bodies and lenses and for different price ranges, along with youtube etc.

Another option is to buy a more modern entry-level canon body (2000d, 800d) if you want something familiar. They will blow the 30d out of the water without requiring much investment or reskilling, but still fall short of most other brands.

If you’re not too fussed about handling, then E class Merc estates are pretty huge and very comfy on rough roads, pretty quiet and comfy cabin too.

If the camera is being chosen on being a good platform to learn specifics about photography, rather than absolute image quality, then I’d recommend getting an APSC system with full manual control (Full frame lenses are expensive, so probably not worth going that far).

Having a larger sensor means that you get a better impression of the effects of focal length and aperture on depth of field, image sharpness aberrations etc. than something like a micro 4/3s or quality compact.

Sony’s a6000 range are excellent as are pretty much all of Nikon’s offerings. Canon has some hits and some misses though, so check that you’re getting good value if you go that way.

DP Review have an excellent summary of the merits of different cameras at a number of price points to make it easy to compare.

Going with mirrorless bodies opens up a lot of fun with old, cheap manual lenses, so something to be considered if they want to get creative.

£200 a month saving on the insurance could pay for a lot of taxis!

A very good point!

If she is repeatedly driving when tired then she’s a criminal in the eyes of the law, and many other road users, myself included.

It’s unlikely, but certainly very possible that putting her convenience before lawfulness will result in serious injuries or even deaths.

If the collisions are her fault, I’m surprised the insurers will cover her at all – £50k of costs is an awful lot of money. Do you really want to spend so much of your family’s money on treating the symptoms rather than the problem?

I had a great trip to the Maritime Alps in the Sospel/Moullinet region a couple of years ago. Some great routes, but not resort-style riding so a little more faff and plenty of climbing.

I’d heard skimmed milk isn’t quite the same, often has has added titanium oxide to make it white, else it would look wierd and people wouldnt buy it.

Some will come with better coolers and/or circuitry than others which means they can overclock them slightly to boost performance by a modest amount (as you may already know) . They better coolers may also run more quietly, but I doubt a 1050 would put out too much noise anyhow.

There’s different levels of traditional-ness, but for goodness sake, don’t wear a wing collar, or a coloured and/or pre-tied bow tie.

Peaked lapel and marcella shirt with fastening studs is generally the way to go IMO. Shawl lapels also fine, but notched lapels just look naff as far as I’m concerned.

If in doubt, have a look at the royals.

Don’t wear a kilt unless you’re Scottish.

I wouldn’t bother buying any more lenses for your Canon as you’re not really too invested in with that body being worth £50-70, about £100 with the kit lens (unless you’re happy just buying 2nd hand ones and selling them later once you decide what you like).

I would just use it as it is until you get a feel for what you like and then possibly buy a better camera from another manufacturer as Canon are sadly falling way behind across most sectors of the market. So I’d personally avoid getting invested in lots of (admittedly quite reasonably priced) lenses unless they relase a great new body/sensor.

<span style=”display: inline !important; float: none; background-color: transparent; color: #444444; font-family: ‘Helvetica Neue’,’Helvetica’,Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 14.4px; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;”>I intend to learn the camera and techniques the question was more would the lens I have be a hindering factor beyond skill/ability</span>

Not at all – take a look at the Flikr galleries for that lens, I’m sure there will be hundereds of great shots to be inspired by.

Corned beef (corned beef), oh love,

When you’re ready we can share the wine, corned beef

Which is why I have a fat bike, it’s not just bad, its ridiculously bad at most things!

Having been beaten by fat bikes at both an XC race and enduro this makes me feel rather useless :-)

I think you’ll really struggle to find a DSLR or mirrorless set up for your £2-300 budget (which should probably include a tripod) that will beat a good secondhand compact.

So what about the Canon and Nikon ones I’ve listed above, too old or behind the times? I really don’t have much knowledge in this area. Thanks

The prices are terribly uncompetitive. I’d suggest looking at eBay or MPB – you should be able to get a D3300 within your budget, or a rx100 i (maybe ii).

Many of those are very old cameras – I’d advise getting something more modern as the sensors have moved on considerably.

I wouldn’t look at interchangeable lens cameras (ILC) if you’re looking at the £200 budget, you’d be stuck with an old body and a crappy kit zoom lens.

One of the earlier sony rx 100 cameras would be a great choice, or possibly a similar spec Panasonic.

Canon make decent lenses but their dslr bodies and compact cameras haven’t been competitive for 5 years. If you’re going to get an ILC I’d stick to Nikon or Sony e-mount.

If it matters to you, check that the jackets you’re looking at are at least RDS certified http://responsibledown.org/.

Most jackets from big brand around the £100 mark ususally are these days, but the very cheapest ones from Go outdoors/Decathlon/Sports direct might not be .

I’ve stayed at Pentire farm in one of the bigger houses, but the national trust has a bunch of smaller properties close by and it’s a great location for coastal walks with Bedruthan steps being in easy reach.

You can’t operate a drone if you radio and radar don’t work properly.

I’ve watched enough Battlestar Galactica to be worried about the degree of networked military systems in modern western forces. I guess quantum encryption would in theory solve hacking issues, but every technology usually has an exploitable weakness somewhere along the chain.

I tend to buy less often these days, but never new – just too much money to loose come selling time.

My last three bikes (£750- £1200 before upgrades) have all sold for with £30 of what I bought them for after 2 years’ use as 2nd hand bikes seems to go for less at certain times of the year when demand is much lower. I usually keep upgraded parts and move them over to the next frame/bike, selling the outgoing one as I bought it.

Which words are you struggling with?

I guess It’s hard to pay full regard to an animal’s welfare whilst knowingly letting archaic and/or religion-based mistreatment occur.

Just as soon as you give me a legal definition of the word, and confirm whether in your opinion it fits all animals.

Who needs legal definitions when the basic science of how the nervous system and stress hormones work are widely known? Unless you’re just vainly trying to get someone to concede that less “complex” animals feel pain or emotion to a lesser extent? No one is going to argue that a sponge will feel pain the same way as a cat. But any animal used in agriculture within the UK is perfectly sensitive enough to pain to suffer.

We’re all pretty similar as far as our biology goes in the mammal world – all feel pain etc – you have to get down to sharks and rays before there is a solid argument for diminished pain, and even then, they still respond to tissue damage in such a way as they are conscious of the harm being done to them.

Apes, many cetaceans, elephants, carnivrora, ruminants etc all have emotional responses to their own mistreatment or their group/families’.

The only losers here are the white cider / superstrength lager producers, which can only be a good thing for society.

Yep, as far as I can see the only drinks badly are affected are the ones being bought simply to get drunk (in most cases), and therefore not that different from substance abuse of other varieties.

I visited a friend who was working in Monaco at the UN and most of the staff there commuted from the French side – the train service is cheap and very easy to use once you know how. Anywhere around Monaco is generally a nicer place to be anyway, perhaps excluding Ventimiglia. Great part of the world for riding, food, weather and general variety of landscape and outdoors pursuits.

That body with a basic kit lens will produce decent pictures, but probably not a lot better than many modern compacts. It’ll be cheaper, but a lot bulkier.

However, if you buy some prime lenses (which are reasonably priced for Nikon bodies) you can then get some decent pictures and simply upgrade the body when you see fit.

If it’s not your thing, rise above us all and hunt through the web for what you want to watch.

I love watching it as much as the next person (The original Blue Planet played a big part in me foolishly getting a PhD in oceanography), only that as some have said, the more contrived instances of scripting through editing and jarring overdubs can cheapen the consistently incredible footage somewhat.

I really hope they release lots more footage from the 4 years’ filming in due course through standalone episodes or as blue ray extras etc. I imagine there must be hours and hours of fantastic footage that didn’t quite make the grade!

Do animals and birds and fish really make all those whoosh sounds like the BBC wildlife programmes overdub?

I know a couple of folk that work(ed) with natural history unit and companies they subcontract for footage. The answer to your question is almost always no. Particularly for things like fish and other marine animals that don’t use sound to communicate.

It’s also the case for virtually any type of movement, fighting, rustling through leaves etc that you see in land-based filming. You just can’t capture specific sounds from the distances you’re working with in most cases, unless the action will happen in a predictable place.

But I agree, it has gone too far, but this is editors’ faults, not sound crews – a lot of prime-time natural history productions are very dumbed-down and anthropomorphised or edited to tell a “story” – a real shame in my view, as it undermines the craft and artistry of the film crews.

Another thing I was told was the nasty side of filming kills, nest raids, offspring abandonment etc – e.g. we don’t see the 15 minutes of agonising death whilst a gazelle is being opened up via its bottom and having its guts pulled out and eaten while it watches.

Torlundy “death tracks” are great if you like super steep, loamy trails, Alt-a Mhulin is also a cool trail that comes down to near the 10 under route. Generally speaking, any random trail through the woods at Nevis Range will be pretty good and usually rooty/techy/steep rather than the typical dodgy jumps built by kids in many woods.

Kinloch is also decent, bit more rocky and not too slippy in the wet, save for near the dam.

There’s some decent stuff in Glenloy, I think, but it’s yonks since I’ve ridden there.

Stob bàn often gets mooted as a good ride but we found it to be pretty naff for the bottom three quarters, and thus on a smiles-per-mile it basis it gets outshone by a lot of other local routes IMHO.

Tofino is great, but I went in November and it was pretty quiet – might be packed in summer. Generally anywhere around the forests and coast is pretty special – we saw bears, salmon, eagles, whales etc just while we were wandering about. If you’re going to take the trip down to Victoria then Goldstream park and Sooke potholes and the nearby coast are two lovely areas with flat walks and good paths for old hips. I sat watching the sunset at Sooke and saw seals, sea lions, porpoises and loads of seabirds and otters splashing around in the river at the potholes.

There’s usually good car parking and access at most sites of interest so you hopefully won’t have any problems with your mother.

Would also echo what others have said about the driving distances. If you have the pennies, there are some seaplane routes that can skip long drives and offer some great views. Still, you’re reasonably central where you’re based.

Obviously, that’s why every 50 limited motorway section I’ve driven has the second lane full of HGVs trying to carry their limited speed and passing cars doing 50.

Don’t lorries have more realistic speedometer? Or at least the drivers know what their true speed is?

I’m really not a fan of people braking on the motorway for anything other than oncoming traffic or speed cameras – if you can’t just move over, and the traffic behind you is quite dense, then braking to let someone merge is surely inconveniencing more people than the merging driver?

Tryfan is great but route finding, especially in low cloud, can be very difficult. It’s probably better to do it with people who’ve done it before. I’ve done it 15-20 times and probably never done the same route twice, as it is easy to go off-piste to have some scrambling fun!

Can confirm this, we did the north ridge, bristly ridge and headed along the glyders but got pretty lost in the cloud as there was no path to follow over the huge lumps of rock. Ended up bailing down the side of Y Gribbin into the Nameless Cwm.

The Scrambling is a bit more trickier in the wet given some sections are a little rounded and polished.

Wide carbon on the front, alloy on the back. Rocks and carbon don’t mix in my experience.

Any scope for using the evidence of such anti-4×4 vigilantes’ exploits towards pressuring council into putting up bollards or other means of restricting access that wouldn’t affect other users? I guess MX riders are hard to stop but it might be a start?

Yup. It’s granite

Great for a headstone however…

Bach or Ryan Adams, very very different!

Good shout! Though I’d maybe go Beethoven..

Might be a bit pricey but the mountain hardwear hyperlamina/ lamina series sound perfect for what you’re after. Synthetic and designed specifically to be warm when wet, so good for UK conditions/not having to be delicate about your fancy down bag.

I currently have -£200, Usually teeter around +£400 to -£300 and don’t see that changing for at least a couple of years.

I am off to Lofoten in Feb, not specifically for N Lights, but optimistic about seeing them.

I did the same this year, lots to see and do (if you book in advance) and the lights were a lovely bonus. Just bear in mind that you’ll probably have a few very late nights if they do come in!

For kids you have whale watching/fishing trips, the Viking museum, tonnes of wildlife, husky rides etc etc.

2ns hand a6000 with the sigma dx lenses (19mm, 30mm, 60mm) will give you great pics for not a lot. Sony RX is worth a look if you want a bridge with a fantastic lens, but you do pay for it.

Not sure why people pay so much for m4/3 cameras other than a slight size advantage and pretty looks.

Cheers for the advice – didn’t realise there could be decent snowfall so early!

It really depends on how bright the lights are as to how good the kit lens will reproduce them. On good nights even a smartphone would be fine, but on many nights you’ll only notice a faint glow until you look at your long exposures and see all the colour. In these instances a kit lens will struggle to get as good results as you’ll need long exposures which give star trails at 18mm (assuming it’s an APSC camera). If you can get a nice 12-16mm prime (Samyang are great value) you’ll be set for landscapes with the lights, but if you’re hankering after a 35mm or 50mm for general use then you’ll still obviously be able to get some really nice frames of say the peaks of a mountain, trees or a bit of nice architecture with the lights overhead.

Hand people’s litter back to them.

Also not using a plastic divider when at the checkouts.