It does, but adds the risk of camera shake from the transmitted vibrations. Not too bad if the air is smooth and you're not flying, since you can hold the camera very close to the canopy.

Hard otherwise, and as the cockpit is fairly cramped, and you're strapped in, there's only a limited range of movement.

Despite the superb quality of AlienGrove's images, I'd suggest that my own experience is possibly more relevant than his - since he's working from the flight deck of a commercial jet at 30-odd thousand feet, whereas I, like you, am a couple of thousand feet up, VFR and doing the flying as well as taking the pictures!

Here are a few suggestions:

- First of all, you won't be going anywhere near fast enough to need to freeze the movement by using a fast shutter speed. As you know, from any kind of sensible altitude, there's not much sensation of speed at GA speeds. However, fast shutter speeds are handy for avoiding camera shake in the potentially turbulent environment you'll be working in.

- Take lots of photos - from different angles. Canopy reflections are quite difficult to eliminate.

- Make sure you don't touch the canopy with the camera, else the vibration is likely to cause camera shake.

- Be careful not to smack yourself in the face with the camera if the air is at all rough. Consciousness is always a benefit when flying.

- Don't use focal lengths that are too wide, otherwise everything will look very far away, and there'll be no close foreground to add interest as one normally looks for with extreme wide angle shots.

- Clean the canopy thoroughly, inside and out, before you take off. You'd be amazed how much crap it accumulates that can degrade the pictures, even if it's good enough to see through.

- And obviously, if you're flying as well, keep a bloody good lookout !!!!!

I use a 28-200 for all my air-to-ground stuff, and it seems to be all I need.

Here are a few of mine (not necessarily the whole frame) to give you an idea:

Didcot power station:
[IMG]http://i162.photobucket.com/albums/t244/chris5gd/Aviation/AirToGround/IMGP7617-1-smsh-1.jpg[/IMG]

Synchrotron at Harwell
[IMG]http://i162.photobucket.com/albums/t244/chris5gd/Aviation/AirToGround/IMGP7615-1-smsh.jpg[/IMG]

Cerne Abbas, in Dorset
[IMG]http://i162.photobucket.com/albums/t244/chris5gd/Aviation/AirToGround/IMGP5057-1smsh.jpg[/IMG]

I think we need to be careful about how 'unique' we expect them to be, based on that interview.

The guy himself stated that he expected dSLR to be around for a long time. He obviously didn't mean 'so unique that we abandon everything that other companies do'.

I think he meant 'unique' as in differentiating the brand within the segments we're used to, as well as with new products. So for instance, an ergonomically brilliant, small body, with SR and a great sensor, rather than a whacking great heavy beast that no one likes to hold.

I'm exaggerating a bit to make the point, but I hope the point is clear.

Possibly slightly unusually, I agree with John here, that the interview was very positive indeed. Especially in the light of the comparative garbage we've seen of late.

Beware of the well-known and much documented issue with stop-down metering on the K10D and K20D which will make anything other than manual use of M lenses quite annoying at times.

They're optically excellent and cheap, so may well suit, but getting the exposure right will be a lot more effort.

For that reason alone, the A-series equivalents may be well worth the extra if you want to take advantage of fully automated exposure modes.

Stranger things have happened.

Possibly not much stranger, though.

Seconded.

He came over as a pretty genuine guy, who knows his stuff, I thought.

Answered the questions he could, didn't bullshit when he couldn't, and even the couple of deliberately evasive answers didn't seem at all patronising to me.

Very refreshing, and pretty good news overall.

Excellent advice.

Always, of course, ensuring that one's word is clearly articulated, and unambiguously spelled.

Wouldn't want to be a modal, rather than a model student.

Yes I know, it's a bit weak. It's late.

It does happen occaionally. Even low probability events are to be expected from time to time.
It's very nice. I think if you're lucky enough for the lighting, the composition and the exposure to coincide to give you a histogram that drops naturally into the shape you'd aim for after all the messing about, it is possible to get a shot that doesn't need it.

It's very rare, though, for even the sharpest of out-of-the camera raw files not to benefit from a little output sharpening after resizing.

Actually, joking apart, IIRC, someone posted a thread of pictures a few months back, consisting only of images edited in the camera. Several of them had some quite impressive edits done to them.

To my mind it's a bit like having to lasso a cow through a window - an extraordinary achievement, but not a great plan when you need milk.

I thought I'd trademarked that one, especially when there's a website to comment on...