Nice shot jwr, was that taken with a lens or through a scope?

TT wins so far.

What was it taken on?

My daughters 550D and my Canon 400mm, lets try again to see it

My effort from tonight, f/8 at 1/200

tonights effort, at F11 funnily enough

Just out of interest, what focal length was that taken at?

Going to give it a go with my 400mm prime, thinking ISO100, f/8 and something like 1/125, might up the shutter speed a bit though.

On my very stable albeit heavy old manfrotto 055CB tripod, spot metered, remote and mirror locked up then see how it goes.

Not so sure about this find out what your friends use advice
Won’t be lending out my lenses to anyone and fairly sure most people feel the same

While you are at it have a look at Pentax, their entry level DSLR’s are excellent value

Shame that Darwins theories didn’t put an end to all this religious nonsense.

Best chance now is for the discovery of alien existence, that should about do it, no wriggling out of that one no matter how hard they try

Do these church officials need to have CRB checks done to let them have contact with children?

I did just for coaching Table Tennis and child molestation seems to have been endemic amongst some religious orders.

No more hypocritical than getting married in church for people who never go and don’t intend to in the future

Churches are just as bad taking the money regardless of the circumstances

Good old Ken, amusing enough most of the time, but some of his advice is shockingly bad

Having them on the wall of local cafes is one outlet or a stall down the market is another way of bringing in a few quid.

Suppose it depends where you live, more chance I would have thought in somewhere like Bournemouth than Grimsby

Thanks for this thread, good reminder to get out and take some wide angle shots, forgot what nice results they can produce.
Will dig my Canon 10-22mm out at the weekend and hopefully take a decent shot or two.

Very easy to just get lazy and stick with one or two lenses, could have done with it the other day for a landscape shot and lowest I could go was 17mm on a crop sensor.

The Cluster Headaches that plague me, broken bones, dislocated joints and slipped discs, but nothing hurts like these bloody things

Had one back in the early nineties, they are great for towing and fairly easy to set up.
If you go for one with an awning that adds weight and considerably increases the setting up time

Not as well insulated as a caravan, but mine had a nice enough kitchen/dining area and the beds were of a good size and comfortable.
It was made by a company called Conway and the model was a Cruiser, no doubt even more luxurious now and also handy if your storage space is limited

My daughter just bought a Canon 550D and must say i’m very impressed, got a good deal in Comets witha code that gave 7% off and even rang to say when it could be collected (hour after I ordered online)

Very easy to use, plenty of direct buttons for functions, great screen and image quality to match. Really like the auto ISO feature that lets you set a limit that the camera will go up to and the quick control button that gives access to oft used settings.

Seems they have got it about right with this one and should think anyone would be happy with it

Good points, worth it just so we can interfere with events in Libya too. Why should they be allowed to kill each other when we can help out

I bought fish and chips up north and they came with a slimy green sick looking mess.

Bad enough them putting the salt and vinegar on, but that abomination was totally uncalled for

Went to the Cycle Show at Excel a few years back and shared a table with Doddy having a coffee. Seemed a nice enough bloke and had a chat about this and that, certainly didn’t seem aloof or bigheaded.

Suppose we all have good and bad days when we are not at our chattiest or feel like socialising.

The new Sigma 17-50 OS is supposed to be very good, constant f2.8 and stabilised too
Flog your current lens and buy that instead of the 50mm, best of both worlds then.

If you are getting paid for the weddings treat yourself to the Canon 17-55mm and 70-200mm.

The period after Diana died was the most embarassing time I have ever witnessed. Just another celebrity dying younger than the norm and although sad not that totally unexpected.

Hope we never see that media fuelled mass hysteria again and didn’t even get a day off from it

Buy disposable plates, cups and cutlery

Hackney Gazette and Waltham Forest Guardian online for news about the O’s

Sometimes buy the Cambridge Evening News, same old stories though which are A14, Guided Bus, Travellers and how crap/skint Cambridge United are

They also have a minimum filesize, think its about 24mb

Science I reckon, might be some hands on stuff there for the nipper.

Evaluative wouldn’t be a great idea, spot is fine, but maybe lock it in and then just concentrate on the AF issue

Rather than continous AF you could try predicting their flight path rather than tracking the bird/s, had some success with this method. Pick the spot you think they will fly into then fire off a fair few continous shots rather just using single shot mode.

Aside from the shake issues if I have centre weighted or spot metering on it’s quite difficult to keep it on target for the continuous AF to work

Got me a bit confused there, surely the spot and centre refer to the metering (which you could lock) not the AF points or mode you choose.

Wonder if that gimball head would work with my lens as it doesn’t have the lens tripod mount bit, only the camera. And hence the thing would be front heavy

If your setup is that light surely a normal balhead would do? For birds in flight you need a long’ish lens, fast AF and good technique.
Camera with decent continous tracking focusing is handy too, what sort of birds were you thinking of photographing?

This might be worth a look at Lensmaster[/url] not damped, but with the support and high shutter speed shake shouldn’t be a spoiler

Still better to work on a good hand held stance, can’t say iv’egot it sorted quite yet, but its improving

Gimbal head would probably be better although birds in flight pics take some practise, probably even harder with a tripod than hand held.

The high shutter speed required should negate the camera shake though, had limited success with a spotted woody yesterday, little sod insisted on only landing at the top of the highest trees.

Hard to get the balance between manageable lens, fast AF, IS and cost. The ideal for me would be the 100-400mm IS, but with normal twist zoom and the IQ of the 400mm f5.6 which I use.
The 500mm IS f4 is very nice, but just a bit too weighty (and expensive)for me

Very topical thread for me, was walking round to see my old ma last sunday when all of a sudden a border collie popped out from behind a hedge.
I carried on walking along the pavement and it just went for me, lucky I had baggy old joggers on because it ripped a hole in them rather than my leg

It then ran into its house, knocked and spoke to the owner who was a very nice lady, but I was a bit shouty mostly due to shock and said i was going to call the old bill

Calmed down and went and saw ma, had a cuppa, decided against the old bill business and knocked at the house on my return. The owner was very apologetic, did say that perhaps she should muzzle the dog as it was obviously a tad dangerous. She was a bit weepy and said they were going to have it put down. Apparently the doq was nippy when younger and would never forgive herself if it attacked a child

All rather sad really, sort of wish I had just ignored it, but know how bad I would have felt if I read that a kid had been bitten and I could have prevented it.

Or West Ham fans from East London, most seem to live in Basildon or Southend

My late father flew in Lancasters from various bases in Lincolnshire
Didn’t like to talk about the war that much, saw some of his crewmates burnt alive after a crash landing

He had only good words for bomber Harris and despite all the Yanks over here business spoke highly of their bravery for flying daylight raids

strong tory government

They couldn’t even get a majority to replace a very unpopular labour administration so can’t see that happening (thank god)

Nearly fourteen quid for a strip of stick on plastic strip to replace the worn seal on the bottom of my shower screen

POS fell off within a week and I followed all the instructions to the letter, now bought a proper clip on job for 17 quid posted and its fine. Taking the first pee poor effort back to Focus tomorrow for a refund, definitely not of merchantable quality

As for watches, still wearing my 30 year old Seiko Automatic, no batteries and just keeps ticking along

I’m always tempted to go into one of those shops that advertises “Watch Batteries Fitted” and ask if I can stay and watch

How about “kids eat free” would love to take a few nippers in and say go on feed them then please

Exactly Mr Tall hence my not wishing to gamble, know which group I would have been in.
My old man always said never gamble unless you can afford to lose, afraid I can’t

Cancelled all my subs to magazines, much too expensive for the content and then just to get binned

Got a stall in our local market that sells month or two old magazines for a quid each or three for two pound fifty. Bought fifteen quids worth of photography magazines there this week for £2.50, does for me

Prefer not to gamble with the roof over my head thanks, leave that to the Lloyds names and punters at the bookies.

All sounds good until you end up owing a fortune, bit like the poor sods who were sold endowment mortgages. The words we expect and should don’t promise bugger all, like to know once the mortgage has finished the house is mine

I think a lot of Canikon’s sales are to that market segment. And that’s why Oly/Panasonic/Pentax etc etc don’t get a look in

I had a Pentax SLR and two of their DSLR’s as well, only changed to Canon because of the limited Pentax lens range. The longest lens they currently sell is a 300mm and frankly that’s too short for wildlife especially birds. Not sure about Sony and Olympus, but guess its pretty much the same for them too.

The Pentax K-5 looks a fine camera and would happily buy one, but would like a better range of lenses to put on it.
Yes there are the third party makes, but the Canon and Nikon longer lenses in particular still set the standard and one of the main reason they corner the market

Why do we seem to be the only economy in the world that is based on house prices

If there had been tighter rules on mortgage lending we would all have been a lot better off, houses can only sell for what people can afford to pay
When we bought our first house we had to put down a 10% deposit and then could only borrow a strict amount based on our joint income.
How can people be buying on terms like an interest only mortgage or more than the value of the property

Madness and if the interest rate does go up its going to cause a lot of pain. Only goes to show that many people couldn’t actually afford to borrow what they have and perhaps its the levelling exercise that needs to happen

No idea, but its got the potential to be about as successful as care in the community