Thanks... no iphone

These are great, thank you!

Stanovich, that's a great site

Simon, this is precisely the reason I'm trying to find some books on the subject - so that I can understand and make my own predictions rather than relying on everyone else.

I just wish though that there was a site somewhere that'd give you a vertical map of cloud levels across the UK. Ie what height they all were. And wouldn't it be great if there was a site that you could use to generate your own custom alerts. Ie if wind from south and only high cloud cover look out for a spectacular sunset ==> email alert!

Your call I suppose - remember they're not ornaments or trophies, they're tools. Very useful tools that are meant to be used

Has anyone come across any good books on this subject? In particular, I'm trying to understand how the British weather works, what the recurring patterns are in our months, what to look out for for fog in the morning, great sunsets, lightning, how to read those darned weather maps, where to find data about the height of clouds over the UK at any point... etc

When I was a little boy living in Cairo, I once mailed an especially gullible aunt of mine that we'd bought a baby camel which was being transported on an aircraft and could she collect it please. She went as far as having the airport call up the captain in mid-flight to check if there was a camel on the flight before she got wind of the wind up

The main thing I find annoying about PPG is when I see submitted images that have obviously been taken within a fraction of a second of each other. Agreed about the selection process it's a bit random. Also I think their rules are a bit unhelpful because I find that I do have to PP a fair bit.

Bottom line is linear polarisers don't allow light metering to work correctly. With CPL, the more you pay the better you get basically. Better in terms of colour rendition / lack of colour cast.

Yeah - using startrails.exe - see here

That petition in my signature is a request petition to Pentax to make it optional above 30s as well

K-7: For exposures under 30 seconds you can turn it off. That's what I use on my star trails. Above 30s, you can't.