Some of these CEOs wouldn't know how to make money on a car boot stall never mind a national retail outlet.

Next inline to go will be DSG, they made all their staff salaried & knocked the commission on the head. Now the minimum wage has caught up their wage structure all the good staff have left leaving uninterested students, just turning up for the coin with their managers tood behind them doing the same thing.

Going into Jessops is always good for a laugh though. Ask them for a 70-200mm 2.8 lens for any brand, last time I did this the asisstant offered me a Tamron 70-300mm lens for £79.99

They should have shut down a good 18 months ago. As for feeling sorry for their staff, most are only on minimum wage anyhow, as are most retail staff & this is the biggest cause of downhill in the retail sector, no one really cares anymore.

Have had mixed results at Asda, have to say their 6 x 4 photos are regurlarly famed for head chopping, they zoom in a little by default, guess this makes their not so good photography customers pics a little better.

There 9 x 6 photos are excellent, printed on fuji paper. Unfortunately their new Fuji printer won't print over 9 x 6 due to a fsault which Fuji cannot fix are not bothering too. Guess I will have to go to Boots now

I have 2 of these for sale due to upgrading to 8 gig cards

£5 each including 1st class delivery

Mine arrived on Friday, the tweezers supplied work a treat, I have used the chinese screen before & found them well fiddly to fit.

Well pleased with the screen too...

Was in the london Camera Exchange in Lincoln yesterday, they had reduced their prices by the VAT element & also had 10% of all Pentax lenses & bodies. making the DA*50-135mm £440 before the cashback sum, now that has to be a bargain

I ordered mine last night, never even thought about doing a group buy.

Will let you know when it arrives, wanted the LL60 for a whilst now, I miss the rule of 3rd marks.

At Pixmania

http://www.pixmania.co.uk/uk/uk/s_action/search/index.html

Postage is £4.80 so maybe order something else too

It is so difficult to break into, I am still doing my day job

You need to get a portfolio of band shots, these can be anyone signed or unsigned. This gets you experience of shooting in dingy clubs & theatres, this is also an excellent learning curve.

Once you have a portfolio of live shots you can approach magazines or ezines, then depending upon where you are located & if no one is shooting in your area, someone may give you a chance. Then either your editor or yourself approach band PR for press passes.

I arrange all my own passes, when I first started I used to get very few replies, but once you start getting published a few times it gets easier.

Sometimes you don't find out until the same day as the concert, this happened to me recently for Pigeon Detectives, but as it was just around the corner from me that wasn't a problem.

Its hard work, some shoots you get very little time, Courteeners a few weeks back we got 2 songs approx 6 mins & lighting was dreadful.

If you do a festival, like the one I did last weekend in Skegness, festival start time was Friday 11.00pm & finished at Saturday 6.00am then started again at Saturday 2.00pm until Sunday 6.00am then we had to be off site by 10.30 get home, edit over a 1000 images, upload them & then go back to work on Monday morning. It's certainly not as glamourous as it looks, but when you get to hang out backstage at Glastonbury & see some of your heroes hanging out & get to chat with them it makes it all worthwhilst.

But it is fun & its what I have wanted to do since I saw all those cameras at Live Aid around Bono when he did his dance bit

The Simple Minds shoot has been the highlight of my year, my favourite band & wanted to shoot them for as long as I can remember.

Hopefully I am living proof you don't need a D3 or 5D and lots of white tubes to succeed in this line

I purchased my GX20 when Great Universal had the misprice on, I think it was £639 less the 10% commission, then the £100 cash back. I don't think you can go wrong with either Pentax or the Samsung. I do love the strange looks I get from the otehr photographers in the press pits at gigs with their expensive white tubes. I catch them looking at me out of the corner of my eye

Here are some more of my pics of Simple Minds from the same show using the Tamron 17-50mm 2.8

http://www.egigs.co.uk/index.php?p=1807&d=2008-12-01

Here is a link to the same gig shot by a 'pro' using Canon for Sheffield Star

http://www.thestar.co.uk/EditorialGallery.aspx?ArticleID=4750847&SectionID=5108

The difference is incredible to say the least

I have only had this lens a month a so & already want to replace my Tamron 17-50 with the DA*

I love the way the focus locks straight on, it very rarely hunts.