Dust had become an issue I could no longer ignore - the blower didn't shift it any more (it used to), and something had to be done, as you can see from this.

I bought an Arctic Butterfly 724 on the strength of comments from people here, but it was intensely disappointing; it didn't shift anything.

Clearly, a wet clean was needed, and after a bit of reading, I bought some Eclipse E2 fluid and some swabs from CameraClean.co.uk.

The result of the first go was this, and the second go improved things a bit more, resulting in this, although that obviously introduced a huge lump of something - this disappeared after a go with the Arctic Butterfly, giving this as the final result.

All the above pictures have had the contrast cranked right up to make the dust more obvious - the originals don't look anywhere near as bad, but believe me, the amount of cloning needed had gone beyond a joke.

It's not perfect yet, and I'll have another go at some point, but at least the camera's usable again.

It says in the instructions, 'press firmly' as you wipe the fluid-moistened swab across the sensor. I did (and mostly the swab just bends as a result), and the camera still works fine. It's not a process to be in the least scared of - just be careful.

My conclusions are that the Butterfly is only any good at all for loose dust. Crap that sticks will never shift without a proper wet clean.

Choose wisely - all this cleaning equipment is expensive. With the Butterfly, the swabs and the fluid, I'm about £100 down.

Hope this helps someone, anyway.

If you're shooting through the canopy, you certainly don't want to worry about ultimate sharpness, since it's not achievable. 60mm as a minimum is a restriction I would not want, so I see no advantage in using the 60-250. You probably won't be very high at all if you're over London, so you may well not need the extreme long end either.

Shake reduction is just as useful shooting from an aircraft as it is anywhere else, since the apparent movement is not great, and camera shake is just as present as ever. This is especially true, since holding the camera and pointing it in the direction you want is often quite awkward, given the restrictions of the safety belt.

Personally I'd go for the 18-250. It's likely to be a half-way decent day if you're flying at all, so there'll probably be enough light for such a relatively slow lens.

The most serious problem you'll have to contend with is reflections from the canopy. In practice, a polariser is quite difficult to manage from inside a small aircraft, since even without it, you'll have very little time to frame and shoot as you go past whatever catches your interest. If you're not accustomed to it, faffing with the polariser will simply take too much time, and in any case I don't find it as effective at eliminating reflections from the canopy as I might think it should be. Unless it's an extremely bright day, the two stops you lose, coupled with the slowness of the 18-250, are not worth the additional effort.

One thing you must avoid at all costs is bracing the end of the lens against the canopy, since the high-frequency vibration through the aircraft structure will vibrate the camera beyond the SR's ability to correct.

In my experience, the wider the angle, the more likely you are to catch unwanted reflections, or include unwanted bits of the aircraft, so it may be that you don't need as wide as 18mm.

I don't have an 18-250, but I do have the FA 28-200, and it does quite well...

I took this, this, and this with the K10D and 28-200. You'll probably do better with both hands on the camera.

Edit: and this, which was from a heli, that I wasn't flying.

Edit2: I'd be interested in Dirk's views on this one, since he also has quite a bit of experience taking pictures from an aeroplane.

Thank you for at least acknowledging this.
It must be very tiring, being so angry all the time.

What I should or shouldn't have an emotional investment in, is quite simply, none of your business.

If you don't like the way the police disrespect your freedoms, then you should, at the very least, respect my freedom to not be interested in turning a photographic forum into an anti-police campaign.

You obviously have photographic talent, and I do like a lot of your pictures.

You also feel strongly, which is fine.

I think the combination would be better served by writing, and publishing online perhaps, a proper report, with words and pictures, that give proper account of what you saw and experienced.

Getting angry here with people that disagree with you is rather pointless. I won't respond any more to this, since I have better things to do. So feel free to have a last word if you like.

I think it's better with it in, and I like it very much.

With the sky, it's a picture of part of a very interesting building.

Without the sky, it's an abstract pattern.

Nothing wrong with abstract patterns, but I think the picture has merit as the former.

I'm certainly doing neither of these things. I don't know what more I can say - if the truth is as it appears on the video, then it's inexcusable. How is that fence-sitting?

Nor am I playing devil's advocate. I'm simply not interested in getting into police-bashing here.

On this thread, I've been arguing a very specific point, which is that without descriptive narrative, photographic interpretation is subjective.

Well of course this is true - I'd have an enormous emotional investment in it all, and I'd be writing letters to the IPCC, my MP, and anyone else that would listen, if I thought it would get justice.

Photographic subjectivity would be the last thing on my mind.

However, this is a photographic forum, where I'm interested in the photography.

I've seen this video too, and I would agree, in isolation it does look completely unprovoked.

If so, then of course it is inexcusable by any civilised measure.

Not for a moment denying your right to have any opinion you choose, but I don't think this is clear from the footage alone. It may be true, of course, and in retrospect it's easy to interpret it thus, since he clearly had a pre-existing heart condition.

But just out of curiosity - does any normal person just amble along, in a highly charged situation like this? I sure as heck wouldn't intentionally go anywhere near something like this.

Well, if what we see in the video is as clear as it seems, then certainly that specific policeman's actions appear to be much more than was required. But I sense an undertone in the generalisation.

Be clear though... normally healthy people do not die of a heart attack as a consequence of being pushed over, even roughly as in this case.

Still, it's unfortunate; tragic, even - and the aggression of that policeman should be investigated, and punished if it turns out that it was as it looked. We don't want a police service in this country that's allowed to do the things you've alleged.

Coming back to the photographic topic, though, I still think it is the duty of any photographer taking pictures of this kind of thing, to either report what they see, as well as publishing the pictures, or alternatively to understand that without such supporting narrative, the interpretation of the pictures is not necessarily as obvious as their memory would lead them to believe.

There are three things that move during a shot.

1. The mirror flips up.
2. The shutter passes across the sensor plane
3. The mirror flips down.

And if you use your finger to press the button, that's a fourth - you can't avoid moving the camera when you physically press the button, so remote release is a must.

If you use one of the delayed releases (I prefer the 3s one with the K10D), the vibration induced by the mirror banging up will have died down by the time the shutter opens, unless the tripod is too flimsy.

You can't see anything through the viewfinder during the exposure itself, so it's impossible to see what, if any, movement is caused by the vibration of the shutter itself. However, you can be sure that it is negligible compared with 'Mirror slap', as it's called, which is by far the worst culprit.

Then after the exposure, the mirror bangs down again, and vibrates the camera again. This is the vibration you see in the viewfinder immediately after the exposure, but it's irrelevant, since the exposure is all over by the time the mirror bangs down.

I've had a bit of a go at moon photography, though not for a while. Using an SMC-A 400mm F5.6 on the K10D, I found that it was focusing, far more than shake, that was problematic. Even if focus confirmation was evident, only one shot out of four or five would be crisp enough to use.

Clear air is a must, too. The slightest trace of haze ruins moon shots very satisfactorily.

You’re misunderstanding me… I’m not intending to troll at all, nor am I accusing anyone of intentionally misrepresenting anything.

A series of photographs within a news report is one thing – it’s clear what the reporter/photographer saw and is intending to convey. This may or may not contain an intention to sway the reader towards a particular agenda, but that’s a separate issue that I’m not concerned with.

Without narrative reporting, though, the same series of pictures is intrinsically interpretable in a variety of ways, and all I was pointing out is that from the individual shots, it’s only the imagination that can fill in the gaps.

Monochrome photographs in particular tend to have a ‘darker’ look about them, and often look more dramatic than reality. Therefore without the reporting to go with them, it’s not possible to know whether that, and the tilt/blur effects are genuinely reflecting the reality of the moment, or are just photographic techniques.

This is why I said ‘they may or may not reflect reality’ - it’s impossible to tell just by looking at the pictures.

If you say they represent the reality you saw, and now describe, I have no reason to question it at all.

What is this carefully contrived and punctuated street-speak?

No, I'm not a copper. I'm a resident. And given the choice, I'd rather have a few uniformed blokes faking an aggressiveness to control several hundred times as many pissed people that could turn into a thuggish crowd of yobbos in a heartbeat, given the right sort of provocation.

How would you go about organising the keeping of the peace, Mr Street-Speakin' Apostrophe-usin' photog-dude, when outnumbered hundreds to one?

Of course, everyone has a right to their view.

I'm merely offering another.