Some nice shots there David, seems to handle the different hues in the sunset well, that Teasel is really sharp but my favourite is the old boot...looks like it is waiting for a Monopoly board to just happen along...

karlo

When it comes to 'tactics' and individual shooting style, how many people would consider themselves 'machine gunners' and how many 'snipers'. I think my personal approach is to favour the 'sniper'...every shot counts, honed I suppose from decades of 35mm film...a bit like 'rationing' and 'post war excess'. Having said that, for certain subjects (fast sport, fast transport, paid work where you really don't want to miss the shot of the day i can see the attraction of letting go and hoping to find something of value in the digital net.

Is it going to be a forgone conclusion that most of the 'machine gunners' use Canons (excuse the pun) and that most Pentaxians are 'snipers'?

OK , thanks for responses to everyone on both subjects.I guessed it would be around 100-150k for shutter life. Not likely to become an issue for me (I hope) but nice to know there's plenty of leeway and excess statistical capacity available if my trigger finger starts twitching.

Congratulations Fletcher, sounds like you are doing a good job promoting the brand.

Harking back to a similar thread discussion with Gary (cabstar) a week or so ago i still think that Ricoh is missing an opportunity to maximise the brand benefit by not offering incentives/reward for people who get published and/or use their Pentax equipment professionally.

Cheers for that. My next spend needs to be a WR body, probably the K30 but after that I really need to invest in a better lens giving me a reach of more than 300. The 50-500 crops up regularly on here but would be out of my budget range. I might be able to stretch to something like the 120-400 which would be a major improvement for me. Can't believe that Pentax haven't brought their longer zoom out by now, they must be missing a fortune in lost sales to Sigma.

Look great here too Mike...absolutely spot on i'd say. Sharpness is impressive, which lens did you use?

Karlo

On a slight tangent, does anyone know what the shutter life is on the various ranges of DSLR? Can't see it being a problem for us on the KX /KR level of model but for you
heavies on the K5s it must be a factor in when you decide to change your particular machine? Is the life of the K30 shutter somewhere in between?

Karlo

Carl, 2000 a day...that is going some...at Sunderland as well! There were 34 different flying slots at Fairford not to mention dozens of aircraft on the static line as well.

Mike, 10% ratio of 'keepers'...that's probably close to what I found although in my case i've got a lot of the total...probably in excess of 25% that are spoilt by
dust spots and what looks like a hair. The annoying thing is many of these 'spots' aren't really apparent in ordinary day-day shooting but become really noticeable against sky and as for the 'hair', that seems to 'come and go' but always in the same place..I thought i'd got rid of it once but obviously not.

Gamka, Know what you mean about the bracketing, with hindsight I should have used that feature. Its always very difficult shooting pale or camouflaged aircraft against a changing sky to get the exposure just right.

Went to the airshow at Fairford over the weekend. I've been doing airshows on and off for over 35 years but this was the first time i've taken a DSLR. I usually would take a couple or perhaps 3 36exp 35mm films and then carefully ration my shots during the day. On this occasion though powered by a set of 4 Ansmann 2850MmAh AA batteries i took a record (for me) 484 shots before running out of memory card. The batteries were pretty tired as well i think although they might have just about lasted for 500 shots.

Got me thinking..all you day/ event shooters out there...what is your highest ever daily 'tally' regardless of whether or not they were 'keepers'?

I went to Fairford Air Show yesterday, tens of thousands of people there. Now admittedly I ended up spending most of the day at our selected spot near the front of the crowdline but i did end up walking about 4-5 miles in total as well before we got back to the car at end of day and thousands of DSLRs were in evidence...but I only had 2 confirmed sightings of another Pentax DSLR...there must have been loads really as these two were quite close to me...one guy had what looked like a K5 with a big Sigma attached.

What struck me most about the people taking photos were how many camera phones or IPODs or even more surprising 7 and 10" tablets, there were. Have to say the sight of someone holding up a 10" tablet with both hands aiming it a moving target in the sky was slightly amusing. My son took an IPOD and some of his photos were actually quite good as was some of the video he took. Sign of the times though.