I always use a monopod whether doing macro with the Sigma 180mm or wildlife using the 300mm DA* and I always have SR on with no side-effects. Indeed, I wouldn't be able to take a lot of the low-light shots without it.

It's a mayfly.

Interesting flash setup. Using the same lens I just use a hotshoe mounted AF360 with a lumiquest softbox that works very well. That said, I don't use the lens hood.

Thanks everyone

Well, it looks like I've been an ass. I'm sorry about the strength of my vitriolic attacks, but I was not impressed to find one of my favourite places on the web demolished by poor software. It does appear that it's starting to resemble a forum now and hopefully the remaining bugs and usage issues will still be resolved.

Oh, and I guess I'll be hanging around here again

At the moment, the only way to view the current forum activity is to click "Latest Topics". Those listed there are:

1. Not sorted as it should be, by the date/time of the last post

2. As it is - not sorted by the date that the thread was started. They're all jumbled up

It's impossible to see the difference between sticky and current threads with the tiny indistinct graphics.

When you click on an email notification link (which arrive randomly and often not at all for the threads you are participating in) then link doesn't take you to your last read post.

"Recent Forum Comments" and "Hot Forum Topic" appear to provide no visible benefit.

It's just beyond me that a working forum has been replaced by something that isn't and it hasn't already been backed off. All that was needed was an update to a modern established forum with a tiny minor modification to include PU membership changes.

Huh? That's simply not the case. The third-party forums are designed from the bottom up for easy integration. You're re-inventing something that has been developed over the last ten years and we're currently those 10 years behind. The fundamentals don't work.

How on earth could you go live with a forum where the threading is completely broken?

It would be better if you could concentrate on the basics:

Can you please fix the threading. It's hopelessly broken and is one of the main things that make this unnavigable.

Can you please fix the random email notifications.

Can you please fix this horrible post editor.

Can you please fix the lack of posts/threads since the last visit.

I moderate several forums and am a member of dozens. They all use mainstream software that works, is reliable and is secure - especially some of the largest forums on the web, so scalability is no issue at all. Since they're all MySQL back-ends it's trivial to integrate into any website/shopping system/gallery/etc.

Some more:

Comment posting doesn't reflect the web standard.
There's no "posts/threads" since last visit
There's no "posts/threads" today
There's no Country/Location field
None of the Topic/Comment buttons at the top work correctly - i.e. spurious results displayed incomprehensible (see broken threads comment)

All this simple basic stuff should have been in before this went live.

OK, here are some of the simple basic broken "features" of this software:

All threading aspects are completely, totally and utterly broken.
Email notifications are random.
Logins expire randomly.
Cannot edit old posts.
Cannot change the table width.
The Post editor is about 10 years out of date and doesn't reflect the web standard.
The layout doesn't reflect the web standard.
The templates make it almost impossible to read.
The thread icons don't reflect the web standard.
There's no real search facility.
There are pointless image size restrictions.
Email links are broken - i.e. don't go to the last read post.