George,

Don't start me on Special Delivery

I'm still waiting for some recovered images from Fuji which were sent by Special Delivery last Wednesday. The Royal Mail know they've got it but have no idea where in the delivery stage the package is (ignoring the week they took to get the card to Fuji in the first place).

There's also the issue that some people are not around to recieve signed for packages.

I always use first class letter as the stated postage - but I'll send by any method that a winning bidder requests.

Why am I selling - because I don't need two AF360FGZs, I can't see a circumstance where I would need the clever wireless functionality. I aslo need to use my "windfall" to part fund a new shock absorber for my bike

Fair point, and I think that may be why we like film - there's more craft involved.

What's more it explains the love of older manual cameras - I always took better pictures with my Rollei than any other camera (film or digital). Although the obvious quality of the camera helped, it was the slow and careful process rather than just snampping away that lead to images which are not only technically better, they are more personally satisfying.

The "proof of the pudding" is that the only pictures that I have hanging on the walls of my house are large black and white images taken with the Rollei and professionally printed.

Steve (with tongue in cheek).

Can't argue with your logic - if every picture you take is technically and compositionally perfect.

If it's not, you won't know at the point of exposure - so if it's the only day that Concord lands on your high street with David Beckham on board with Kylie you'll have missed the opportunity and even if you have an image you'llbe less likely to be able to save it.

I however am far from perfect and I make erors - I can either retake on the spot or rescue the image later.

Like all the others, I like film (especially that 120 rollfilm) but I no longer have access to a darkroom (who said that kids were a good idea, they need bedrooms) digital gives the control back to me.

Early stuff is dead cheap on eBay - what's more the short battery life on old NiMhs is overcome by modern 2500Mah batteries and even with a 128Mb you get hundreds of images from a smallish camera.

I bought a pair of Kodak DC240s for my kids - 436 images on 128Mb so my daughter can snap away to her hearts content. A bit of messing in PSP and we get more accpetable 6x4s from my Canon S820 printer on good paper than we would ever get out of a cheap film camera.

Judging by the number of impacts, those old Kodak DCs are built like brick outhouses.

We really are drifting form the original point here but, been there, done that. SWMBO insists the TV/audio equipment is selected on the basis of colour rather than competance.

We do at least have our TV/DVD sound out of two speakers (Mission) but Dolby 5.1 is out on the grounds that we only have two ears so we don't need any more than 2 speakers (and we have friends in production at the beeb who've tried to expain it to her).

I know we've hijacked the thread but.

Those three are good examples of the iffy ones which are easy to spot with a bit of experience. I note that one of them "always" gets proof of posting but has a rating of 0 - others are unfeasibly high - traders. You need sellers who are "people like us" (my 248 is genuinely earned)

Communication with the seller usually spots the real ones - as I said, I've often had long e-mail trails with buyers/sellers.

One long rambling thread about Voigtlanders and the guy didn't even bid let alone win the camera.

What is particularly good about eBay in my experience is that despite all the scams/shysters and downright crooks out there buyers and sellers of photographic tend to be nice people.

Based on agreements with my wife, all new camera gear I have bought in the last few years has been financed buy the sale of other stuff (unfortunately I've run out now !).

I have often had extended e-mail discussions with buyers, bidders and sellers and I have acquired bargains, and buyers have acquired bargains from me.

A (long) example. I bought a Sigma 70-300 Apo which would not autofocus on my iST DS. The seller immediately offered a full refund although we agreed on a partial refund as the lens was optically perfect. I subsequently found that the lens would autofocus on other camera bodies and when a teleconverter was used. I contact the seller and agreed to refund part of his refund but then "sniped" a brand new Tamron lens also on eBay. In the meantime the Sigma started to focus correctly in all circumstances on my iST DS .

I sold the Sigma (describing its focus issue with scrupulous honesty) and refunded the original seller half of the difference between the net cost to me and the selling price (phew).

At any point I could have simply kept his partial refund to increase my profit but the thought never crossed my mind.

I think that the biggest contributing factor in the acceleration of the switch to digital is the fact that you can now treat your memory card like a reusable film and drop it in to Boots (et al). You no longer need the computer.

I'm not so sure about the current push on dye sub printers though - too expensive to run and limited in print size.

From my perspective, the major push to make me fully digital was that I got control back (once we reached 5mp and quality was acceptable) - My darkroom went when I bought my first flat many years ago, apart from the lack of space, I needed every penny for the deposit.

Film will remain for niche enthusiast and high art markets - but it won't be long before anything else professional is digital. image libraries are, the press has been for some time and all our product and brochure stuff here at work is digital.

In the spirit of genuine good humoured debate

Go on then Steve - go and buy a record on any high street

I think "much smaller" is something of an understatement. Highly specialised is probably closer.

The end has accelerated recently - it wasn't that long ago that it was announced that digital cameras were outselling film - now it's 15 -1.

I have been pretty much fully digital for some time although I had kept my Rolleiflex 2.8f for "special" pictures.

The end came when I sold that to part fund my iST DS.

6 or 7 years ago it would have bought three iSt DS (at today's price) but of course then a 6MP DSLR would have been 10's of thousands of pounds - if it had existed.

ho hum - progress eh.

I take more image snow than I have at any time in the past - as far as I'm concerned digital is a good thing. And with the DS I no longer need to chase technology.