It is the absence of a tripod I once took some shots
of some swans and there was a very handy 1.2M high wall
that I could rest the camera on very rigidly.... even
more rigid than a tripod. I could see afterwards which
shots were off the wall and which were handheld.... the
difference was enormous at 420mm

Great shot and it confirms what I have said before that TC's
work well with the 55-300mm. Mine is the Pentax 1.4x-S

The 55-300mm +TC combination is also very light and allows
semi-macro shots.

Ha! Ha! A picture never lies but it seems that reporters do

"By the time he stopped the vehicle, about seven miles west of Castle Douglas, the load was well alight."

The road sign on the picture says Four Miles!

I'd check the speed of ANY cheap card reader... most of them
only run at 2-4 mb/s. It can be 10x faster with a better reader.

With CF cards now running at very high speeds I now use a Sandisk
Extreme SDHC/CF reader and leave a Kingston 16Gb 266x
CF card (£16) in all the time for transfers and backups.
I have a similar reader on the other PC with an 8GB
card in it. I keep meaning to buy a Lexar twin slot
reader to see how it compares with the Sandisk.

I now only use SDHC Cards for camera to PC transfers only.

SRB are always expensive

Jessops tubes are fine. They are re-badged and sold under
various other names such as Aico.

With most of these PKA tubes you have to scrape a bit of
paint off the camera side (of the tube) to form another
contact for use with a digital camera. They work OK with
the Super-A that has an extra contact.

Refer to previous posts on this or the US sites to see
where to scrape off.

All excellent, but the first is just so unusual and
sharp it has to be my favourite

Have you watched the DVD Comedy Series "Dear Green Place"?..... Working for a council you should find it very funny, if you haven't already seen it
Set in Glascow (I think? )

Widely available on ebay such as link

I wonder which channel will be the first to show more
adverts than programs?

Some are already showing up to 6.5 mins. four times an
hour that's getting on for 26min/hr

Thanks Steven...... we've been ripped off again dropping imports to £15 My card was from Amazon so the £16 would have included VAT