Nah, just a natural talent. That, and modesty

If they changed the mount, not only would I never buy another Pentax product, I'd change brand now, not when my K-5 needed replacement.

If they changed the mount, an enormous number of Pentax users would jump ship, so there would be a huge glut of second hand lenses that would only get bigger.

I'd want to get as much back as soon as possible, to make the transition to another brand less painful.

It's not enough to have an emotional reaction to good pictures, and just leave it at that - unless all you want to do is look at other people's and enjoy them.

If you want to take good pictures yourself, you need to know why a good picture is good. If you don't know what it is about it that makes it good, you stand no chance of creating good pictures yourself, except by accident.

So start really thinking about why you like pictures that you think are good. Then try to create ones that have these characteristics.

Note that I'm not saying what is good and what isn't. For your pictures, that's up to you to decide.

And it's 'impeccable', not 'impecable'

Carlsberg. Although I only have one can left, which is a bit of a problem.

No need to call me 'captain' - I don't have a CPL.

Anyway, getting back to the topic of the photo...

For a grab shot like that, it's very good.

It would feel churlish to criticise it really - a longer exposure would blur the props nicely, but there's a limit to what you can do when you aren't expecting it.

Well ok. My experience is different from yours, I guess - I've never known 'flying condition' refer to the cosmetics.

The fact of the matter is that when the Canadian Lanc was 'being restored to flying condition', it had nothing at all to do with cosmetics - it was prop blade corrosion that would very much have *had* to be fixed before it could get a release to service.

Obviously, if someone wanted to ground their aeroplane because the carpets were worn and it needed a respray, that would be entirely up to them. It would be unlikely, though, if there was to be much of a delay before getting the paint and carpets done. Not flying an aeroplane for any length of time can cause all sorts of additional problems.

I'm sure you know by now, but always find it before you try to point the camera at it.

Even with piston-engined aircraft, which are usually a lot slower than jets, they don't have to be very far away for the sound that initially reaches you to come from behind where they now are.

So if you point the camera based on the sound, you're almost guaranteed to be pointing it in the wrong direction. And you don't get much of an angle of view at long focal lengths.

I didn't say that the eBay rules are the same as Christies.

The point is that however it's set, it's not unusual for the reserve to be unknown to the bidders.

Unlike Christies, there is no eBay process for deciding what the rough value of the item is. If a seller doesn't want to sell at all if the price doesn't reach what he wants for it, that's just tough on the buyers.

Don't bid on items with a reserve, if you don't like sellers expressing a view of what they want for it.

Incidentally, I don't think it's that uncommon for the reserve price not to be known to the bidders.

Here's the Christie's FAQ, for instance.

I don't see what the issue is here. Ebay has always operated on a 'bid your maximum' basis. If you bid below the reserve, hard luck. If you bid above it, your bid goes in at the reserve, and then increases automatically up to your maximum, if other people then bid more than the current bid, but less than your maximum.

People operate differently from this, for sure, which is why you can sometimes get a bidding frenzy.

But there's nothing unfair about it.