I love my D-FA (I got it at a good price in its Samsung disguise) and quickshift is a big part of the usability. Just have to remember that it doesn't quickshift if you have the camera set to AF-C to deal with the damn flowers being blown about by a breeze!

Some pretty good luck for both in not landing on the 2/3 of the world's surface which is ocean. Imagine filling out the insurance claim form on that

Nope, vox populi is correct - populi is the genitive (ie 'of the populace'). Sorry, doing Latin at the moment!

As regards the original topic, since a certain (low) number of 'reject' votes automatically ends the voting (ie if the first X people are macro haters, your macro image gets rejected even if the next 30 voting on the merits would have accepted it), PPG voting is more a matter of chance than the quality of the image. I still vote on occasion, but honestly can't be bothered submitting any more given the lottery-like nature of the selection process. If I'm going to post images I'd much rather do it here or The Other Forum and get the benefit of an actual measure of its quality, rather than a random assignation of a binary value

Things in your pockets don't count on any airline. Good for us Pentaxians with our small DA Limited and M42 primes

The first batch I submitted all got rejected, but so what? You don't lose anything by having an image rejected by PPG (the image is still as nice as when you submitted it), and like any lottery your chance of winning is zero if you don't enter.

Hmm there is an issue with foreign copyright law, but it is not that one. The copying of a work within the United Kingdom is covered by the copyright law of the United Kingdom - nothing which happens in the UK violates foreign copyright law because each country's copyright law only applies within that country.

HOWEVER there might potentially be some EU/WTO problems here, since in application these measures would be more detrimental to overseas copyright holders than to UK copyright holders - ie the rights of overseas authors under UK copyright law would be disproportionately affected.

As regards the original topic, whether we like it or not this is going to become law (the provisions regarding the internet are actually even more objectionable than those applying to photography). Big Content (who have close links with Mandelson - responsible for one of the yacht trips IIRC) and their chums in Parliament are desperate to have this forced through before the election because (ironically enough) this issue isn't a big priority for the Tories and thus this is likely their last chance.

Still, just because something is passed into law doesn't mean it stays there. Challenges under EU law in the ECJ (legally binding) or human rights grounds in the UK courts and ECtHR (technically legally binding, but without any binding enforcement) could well see the more offensive provisions dealt with after the fact.

Those look nice - expensive, but if they're as useful as they look possibly worth it (and probably not that much more expensive than my Timbukhack once the cost of inserts is taken into account). I've a couple of questions about the Billinghams though:

*Are they actually waterproof (through a treatment of the material or somesuch), or do they just protect gear from most rain by the canvas simply absorbing water for longer than most people will be out in rain?

*Do they come with camera/lens-holding dividers or is it basically a single 'cavern' for which dividers must be purchased separately?

Most (actually at the moment, all) of my photography is done in urban environments, so wouldn't be too comfortable in having that amount of gear out of sight on my back

Also a different menu layout and (probably a bigger deal if you use it) JPEG processing.

How are you travelling? If it's as part of an organised tour group, then you'll have less time to switch lenses about than if you're going on your own and can spend as long as you like in one spot.