... and so reminds me to remind you all that this week's competition has but two and a bit days to run. If you have a shot you like that plays to the theme 'wood', consider submitting it.

£1500 v £850 according to Camera Price Buster (usually reliable), for UK-sourced goods. So the 6D isn't twice the price but nor is it far off.

It's hard to dispute your first sentence, johnriley. But your last one in this extract is plain puzzling. I like to make decisions of the kind being debated here at least partly on the basis of trying to understand the motives for change and the degree to which the customer (all of us, potentially) is the beneficiary. You evidently have an expansive view of what comprises 'politics'.

If you feel only able to shrug your shoulders ('I'll just get on with it'), that's fine by me. No reason why we should all respond identically. Now, that might be a political statement...

Some people on this thread are happy with the subscription service, others are seriously discontented. There has been quite a bit of discussion about piracy. But what surfaces a bit less often than I'd have expected is the chief reason companies like Adobe are turning to subscription: it has the potential to make very good reading on their balance sheet. Benefits to the user, if any, are incidental. Subscription has for long underpinned the finances of magazines and journals, and it's now familiar in many spheres. It provides companies with a highly predictable cash flow, the ability over time to raise rates in real terms, and the always powerful force of customer inertia. Whether Adobe's move is welcomed or abhorred, let's not be misled by smokescreens to the most powerful motive for the proposed change: increased profit from essentially the same product.

The hood is certainly function before form! Camera itself looks the part.

If you take many photographs in near- or below-freezing temperatures, you could discover one real benefit in carbon fibre not present in any metal!

Also, ask for their print-run. A magazine with one of 3000 copies merits a lower fee than one at 30,000 copies. It gives you a sense of scale when agreeing a fee. If they do print and electronic versions, they should expect to pay a little more than for print only. Fees vary quite considerably according to usage, so I'd do as cabstar suggests and ask them what fee they have in mind. I should add that I've never been in your fortunate position of charging a fee, but I have been on the other side of the fence in the past.

I'm looking at these on an iPad so can't gauge the differences as well as those of you looking at larger screens. The first does appear slightly sharper and its colours are more pleasing (though I've an inkling that those in the second might be more 'realistic'). What aperture were these shot at? The DA15 is a little soft wide open and does improve on being stopped down... as would any lens, but I've found the 15 does buck up more than the others I'm familiar with.

It can be helpful to take simultaneous raw+jpeg shots, with the last giving some reference point when processing the raw image. The new versions are better, although no. 2 out of the 4 is a bit flat. And it looks as though you've been doing something to the clouds on the left-hand side of pic 2. It doesn't seem quite right.

... it was lithium batteries in the new Boeing 787 that grounded the aircraft for about four months this year. Slightly ironic that while freight has never been safer from spontaneous combustion, the aircraft's operating batteries undid all the good of the new regulations!