Alnath

I was lucky with the Kestrel i have to say, i have never seen a wild bird pose so much for a camera in my life! Again thanks for the comments and to everyone that voted

Ooo, cheers a nice surprise

Very nice

Just one of the occasions where raw will save your bacon. +/- 2 stops is a massive difference to have to liberty to play with, just select the window, invert the selection and bump up the exposure on the rest of the shot, it really is a 30 second fix.

dont use AV BTW if you have a flash on and you are using AV the body will still use a shutter speed it would need if the flash was not there so indoor shots will be blurred as the body will select super slow shutter speeds. And dont be tempted to go in the section of the dial that has portrait mode on it etc. because you will no longer be shooting raw and you will lose your joker card. stick with TV and manual. EDIT: AV is fine for outside if it is good light and you need f16 for a group shot

Don't be afraid to get firm with people as well, at the end of the day you will only get one shot at this and TBH when you have a big camera in your hand you can herd people around with surprising ease. When you are about to take the shot don't just pile in, stop and look, take a deep breath, this will give you the second you need to compose yourself and see if anyone is is out of place (big at the back small at the front etc.) After each shot tell people to wait and chimp, tell them what you want, just checking for eyes closed on that one Lady's and gents is the normal line they think you are making sure it is a world beating shot when in reality you are just like the rest of us and praying you got something LOL One last thing is tell people to look at the lens and repeat yourself over and over, you only need one person looking at a plane flying over etc. to mess a great shot up. This is my fave shot i took at a wedding and it is about as far from a wedding as you can get LOL it is one of the bridesmaids about 10 minutes before she got ready. It is a candid BTW, once the flash went off i got called all sorts of names LOL

Presuming you know your lenses sweet spot and you have a speedlight shoot on manual at the f number you know is sharpest and 1/100ths, ISO 200 outside and ISO 400 inside, use the speedlight on every single shot and bounce it inside with a stofen or even a white freezer bag will do if you do not have a stofen. If you shoot at manual the camera will alter the flash power to maintain correct exposure without giving you bright subjects and dark backgrounds and it will look more naturally lit. Do not shoot with the sun over your shoulder, the people on the shot will be squinting, get them to stand at 90 degrees to the sun and use the flash. Do not get people to stand up against a wall, they are not waiting to be shot and that is what they will look like if you do it. Tell people to come towards you away from the wall. Don't let people stand square on to you, they are not gangsters, get them to twist their shoulders. On group shots take many cos some one will blink, at least if you don't get one with everyones eyes open you can shop them in from another shot. look for shots. look for shots and look for shots. Talk, talk and talk some more "this is a wedding not a funeral" type stuff, get people chatting and smiling and they will cooperate much more. Beg, borrow or steal a nifty 50. Candids can be worth their weight in gold because people are natural on them Last but not least and this is an absolute must, shoot raw, it will save your life giving you total white balance control and a 2 stop margin of error.

the original HDR image works really really well, no obvious halos like you sometimes get with HDR, thats how HDR should be, HDR without looking obviously HDR.

Ready boost will only offer any kind of performance hike to a PC with less than a gig of RAM and then the increase is pretty small. More physical RAM is the answer but then only if you are actually going to use it. In times gone by the reason why adding RAM gave huge speed ups was because there was lass RAM in the PC that what even Windows needed to run and you was constantly in to the swap file where the PC uses a bit of the hard drive as RAM, of course hard drives are much slower than RAM so your PC felt like it was crawling, if you have a GB of RAM and you add another GB of RAM but never go over 1GB of then you wont notice a difference because you will never get the swap file hammering it.

Entry No: 3 ------------ Typhoon ---------- Date Taken: 06/07/08 Camera Used: Canon 40D with Canon 100-400mm f5.6 L Camera Settings : TV ISO (ASA): 200 Shutter Speed: 1/800th Aperture: f5.6 + 0.3 of a stop

Comodo is a good alternative http://www.personalfirewall.comodo.com/

There is also PC inspector http://www.pcinspector.de/default.htm?Language=1

Been using it since RC1 and i have not encoundered a problem after around 4 or 5 installs on various PCs.

Well done mate.

Another BIF from me

Entry No: 2 ----------- Kez ----- Date Taken: 17/07/08 Camera Used: Canon 40D with Canon 100-400mm f5.6 L Camera Settings : TV ISO (ASA): 320 Shutter Speed: 1/800th Aperture: f8

Here are a few more (i hope this is ok with the admin)

Tar, it is just a shame the Vulcan broke

I went for the vulcan but it failed in a blaze of water spay glory LOL

It banged it down and the vulcan packed in, what a day LOL

Not as sunny today that is for sure, my 40D is just coming back to life after getting a right drowning

Kevin Nash - In Persuit, genius and not full of korda laughing boy jumping around like he has a rocket up his arse. (APFA is still the daddy though)

It would not withstand my pot blockers.

I use 15lb Krystonite all the time and (like when i fished the waggler) alter my hooklink to suit the day. Many carpers use a 10lb line and a 25lb braided hooklink, i cant get my head around that if i am honest. A 15lb line gives me a right beefy hook and hold line but also means i can use a 1lb (if i so wished) hooklength to present the bait. As a carper a different type of finesse is required to the days of match fishing with an 8oz bottom on but the same principals apply, the bit that is nearer the fish, worry about, if it is 2 foot from the hook, it matters not a jot.

Polaroid coating on your lenses is 30 quid at asda (at the time of getting new lenses) but i prefer and would recommend if you can hack it getting contact lenses.