The BJP reviewed the LX over a year and published a book on it, which included tests on both the loudness of the shutter/mirror in combination along with the frequency of the noise. IIRC they commented that fitting a lens reduced the 'volume' somewhat.

I have a copy somewhere if I can find it.

Hi Howard,

Is that the mound behind the 'old' viewing park (which was the otherside of the runway tunnel)? I went looking for that about a year ago but thought they'd removed it when they built the second runway.

I used to go a lot, not so much recently but with the better weather might make it more frequently.

John.

One tip I would suggest if framing with little space around the edges of the frame: Make sure you check you have what you want in the frame.

It's really easy to miss wing-tips & tail-planes out of the edges of the frame (at least for me). You'll need to be panning quite quickly with long lenses, and airliners especially (thin wings & silver/grey colours) make it easy to loose them amongst a bright sky.

Also, wheels look OK either up or down, but rarely in between (watch out for the doors which look silly if the wheel has disappeared).

A rough break down of what I think ruins my shots:
30% - Framing errors, poles, fences, people in shot etc.
20% - Not sharp due to shake
20% - Exposure/flare problems
10% - Not sharp due to focus
10% - User error (fail to drive camera correctly)*
10% - Over ambitious attempts - sometimes you aren't going to get it but try anyway

* Don't drop the camera if you're trying to shoot quickly, the lens cap's on, your binoculars are tangled round your neck and you've got a hot dog in your hand...

EDIT - Deleted spurious 'the' in the second line.

Hi Howard.

Where did you get the top shot from (the opposite side to the viewing park)?

John.

Possibly not very helpful, but 'back in the day' you could get film leader retrievers...

Or you could try this link Note: I haven't!

MF sized sensors are viable at much higher cost (presumably partly/mostly why the 645D costs about £7K compared to a 645AF at around £2K). The rest of the additional electronics (processors/memory/LCDs) are fairly easy to fabricate or buy-in, but the sensors have to be effectively flawless over a much larger area. Obviously if the premium is high enough, the viability increases to compensate for the cost/risk.

36x24 becomes more viable on increased volume, the snag is whether this is a big enough jump compared to APS-C to persuade enough people to buy it? Canon were first, Nikon eventually had to join them (despite saying they wouldn't make a FF body) to compete, Sony are next (after buying Minolta).

Canon & Nikon were driven by pro sales, Sony presumably have lots of cash. The question is whether Pentax have enough users who are likely to buy an FF body when there are various other options or enough cash to build that user base? Or would they rather concentrate on the 645D?

The thing about FF sensors is that they run counter to the advantages of chip (read sensor) fabrication. Most of the improvements in silicon manufacture have been related to making a smaller chip by packing it more tightly. This has various advantages, making smaller, faster, more reliable chips easier to produce with better yield and reduced wastage and therefore lower cost.

It's Moore's law in action, you spend millions (tens, hundreds or maybe thousands of) making a better manufacturing process so that every chip you make costs 5 cents less than it otherwise would and then make millions more of them than you previously could. Smaller chips fit better on the wafer, are more resilient, run faster, use less power and help drive development to even smaller chips...

This makes FF sensors (about twice the area of APS-C) much less attractive to silicon manufacturers, much less cost effective and therefore much more expensive. They'd rather reduce the sensor size whilst increasing pixel count because they work in microns and not line pairs per millimeter.

If you have big buckets of cash you can get any silicon fabricated anyway you want, you just have to persuade the fabricator that it's better for their bottom line than churning out a million USB memory chips every month. Some have minimum order quantities in the millions, booked several months in advance with the next window six months later if your development slips.

Oh and if you mess it up you've invested a huge pile of cash in useless product, have to fix it and then wait for the next window to have another go (by which point your underlying technology is probably out of date) and you have to start again...

I've been there and it's very humbling when a manufacturer tells you they can't be arsed making your product (actually can't be arsed to discuss making it unless you want 100K every week)!

Quite definitely, I mentioned it because 80% of my shots that don't work out are down to me and not the gear. I used 'worrying' subconsciously but it allows lots of room to buy new gear that will help. I just don't see much advantage in switching systems in the hope that it will make a significant difference and the extra expense in doing so might be better spent on your existing system.

I find that single shot AF works better than servo AF (I use an old Sigma 70-300 APO Super from my film days). Even then there are times where manual focus has it's place (like when panning across the back of someone's head!).

As has been mentioned before, stationary props don't look good (helicoptor rotors are harder still). I prefer to use manual metering having taken a reading of a suitable mid-tone, a bright white cloudy sky needs a lot of exposure compensation otherwise and with digital it's easy to check you're in the right ball park.

If you're at an airshow, there will be other photographers with step ladders and monster lenses, shooting 'round' them can be problematic sometimes.

I have one of these lenses. I removed the pin as per this: link.

Once you get the hang of it, it takes about five minutes (but take your time the first time - and use a proper screwdriver). Make sure you keep the mount and lens oriented while you do it though.

EDIT: The flange on mine wasn't a problem.

John.