Another pointless thread

Well, another alternative might be that your garage stitched you up by supplying cheap non-OEM pads.

G

That makes good sense, especially if the car is serviced as it should be.

Here it depends on the type of vehicle. Petrol/hybrid/electric cars are tested at 4 years, 6 years, 8 years and then annually.
For diesel and LPG cars it is after 3 years then annually.


Curiously for vehicle older than 30 years it is once every two years, and for those registered before 1 Jan 1960 they don't need to be tested at all.

I'm not quite sure if you're right there, Gwyn, or maybe I'm misunderstanding the info. We have a car on petrol and one on diesel. They both need to go in yearly for MOT.

I reckon this is one of the few rules of the road they have about right. The number of wrecks on the road has been cut right back.

The only problem is with dodgy garages who use it as an invitation to print money. A former work colleague of mine had his car fail on its shock absorbers. Unperturbed he pointed out that the garage had installed them the previous year and they had a three year warranty. They were immediately retested and of course passed.

Gwyn I didn't get you either at first but now I see, how it's explained differently maybe that helps.

car after 1 jan 2005
petrol and/or electric = 1x 4 years, 2x 2 years, every year
Diesel, LPG or different = 1x 3 year and then every year

car before 1 jan 2005
all cars = 1x 3 year and then every year

30 year old car = once every 2 years

before 1 jan 1960 = no MOT

Have you tried photography, that gives you something to do.

Well, you have to buy all this stuff, then go tramping round the streets and countryside taking pictures of everything you see. Then you come home put them on a computer and then you delete loads of them because they don't look anything like what you saw. I think that about sums it up, it's great fun!!!

You also didn't mention the bit where you smile and nod while being told some very strange ideas by Sony owners, then get on with taking photos as you always have done!

Today's one: apparently I should be using shutter priority, not aperture priority. See, call me odd but I generally find that you want to control the aperture in order to control your depth of field, and the shutter speed generally follows to get the correct exposure? Obviously for some situations you do want to set a specific shutter speed (such as photographing aircraft where you want to avoid frozen props, or in low light where you have to sacrifice depth of field to avoid shake) but for general photography controlling the aperture is the important part.

Am I completely wrong or are they? I also got disapproving looks when I pointed out that a Lensbaby might be a great toy, but it's the same price as two or three nice old primes which will give you far better results and will still be useful when you get bored with the funny effects.

We don't even need Shutter Priority. If we want a fast shutter speed, we can open up the aperture and there it is. If the shutter speed still isn't fast enough, then increase the ISO.

There are no other variables to exposure (for a given lighting situation) than aperture, shutter speed and ISO.

Exactly - I would only use shutter priority if I don't want it to wander from a set speed (such as with the aircraft example where dropping would cause blur but rising would cause frozen props, and the light will change as you pan across).

Looking back at the early semi-automatic Pentax SLRs they all offered aperture priority, but very few (even after the A series lenses came in and made it possible) offered shutter priority. Possibly a hint as to what people actually use?

The other auto SLRs such as Canon and Konica all offered shutter priority, usually a crude trap-needle system that was quite a complex solution.

The idea of aperture priority was a revelation made possible by electronic shutters and pioneered by Pentax. The beauty is that anything can be put in front of the camera - bellows, tubes, whatever - and still retain auto exposure. Really simple and efficient.

The only obstacle was the reactionary shutter priority world, but that was overcome.

although the User Gallery on here seems to be a fan of SP, it keeps saying every shot is "Exposure Program: Shutter priority" in its EXIF DATA link, even though they were Aperture Priority

A few people have noticed that glitch in the gallery software and it will be sorted when IT have the opportunity to do so.

Priorities I guess, be they shutter or otherwise....

Could one of the moderators move this discussion out of the pointless thread.