What do you count as an "earlier" 100mm f4 macro lens - they were around a long time before the M series?

Sure, it means that it's interesting for the person collecting the images to see what is coming in. Everybody else has no connection to it whatsoever, and hence no emotional investment in the process. If an image is sent, the sender is sending it into a black hole until it appears later, so there's no way of knowing whether or not it's a waste of time or not.

With anything that requires input, it's vitally important to stimulate interest so that people want to contribute. There's nothing worse that the silecnce that goes with no clue as to how things are going.

The point is that a RAW file is a RAW file and it makes no difference - it's the nearest thing to untouched by software that you can get. Whether it's DNG or PEF the end result is the same.

In camera special effects are applied to a JPEG and a duplicate made so that the original is untouched.

What you are really asking for is a RAW file that has modifications made to it by the camera, and that's called a JPEG...

Have fun and sorry to see you go. Of course you might yet be back!

That would work well if zooms were true zooms, but most these days are not. They are varifocal lenses, not parfocal zooms.

What this means is that they need refocusing at every focal length selected. You will only get away with this if it's a very small aperture and DOF covers the error created as you zoom.

No insult intended, but when looking for solutions I never assume any more than I already know. We can all learn things, including myself, and we can all have blank spots sometimes.

Using AF for aircraft in that way makes me wonder about the shutter delay though. Ideally we would release the shutter just before the ideal moment, to allow for maybe 100ms delay before the shutter actually fires.

With AF, the focus has locked and maybe 100ms later (plus our own reaction time) when the shutter releases, the plane is no longer in the same position.

I will try this as soon as the opportunity arises and see how it compares with the MF I would normally use for such situations. Until then, from my persepctive I am only musing on the possibilities.

An afterthought - you are using centre-point only focus? If not, then I suggest you do. Focus on your main subject, half press on shutter release to lock, recompose, fire shutter. Works every time.

Then something is clearly wrong. I was using the 12-24mm in all lighting conditions from darkest cellars to bright sunshine last week at Beamish, and there were no problems at all.

Back to be checked and repaired I think. If other lenses are OK, then your 12-24mm has the problem.

I really think the problem with this is the invisibility of the images all through the entrey period - the only person getting any fun out of that is whoever is collecting the images.

The other problem is the forum software doesn't allow adding a poll after the first post is made. The phpBB3 software I use for the ADAPS forum does allow for that, and whilst this was going on we did a quick test there for a similar competition by vote.

If you want a by vote competition, as things stand at the moment I would suggest posting into either the Gallery as a competition or into the forum as before, openly as in the fortnightly version, and then creating a poll and discussion thread after the closing date. Much simpler and it might encourage more contributions.

In the gallery version, after the poll the originator would just tick the "winner" box and the option to start a new competition would automaticaqlly be passed on.

I have heard one or two people say that this actually makes them feel "sea-sick", which is quite interesting. Nothings suits everyone I guess.