Graeme P

I am looking for a quality DSLR with dependable autofocus performance for capturing moving subjects, where the distance to the subject may change, for example, a vehicle moving towards the camera.

I have been using a Pentax K5, but find it unreliable in this respect, despite very smooth images and nice colour otherwise.

I have a decent budget for a good camera that will perform well on these subjects (likely Canon / Nikon).

I want to capture subjects within their landscape / backdrop looking reasonably natural, so don't especially want to get a very shallow depth of field as you sometimes see.

I am considering going to the doctors about poor sleep patterns, in which I have little trouble getting to sleep, but wake up anything from around 2:30am and then seem to have less restful / poorer / intermittent sleep thereafter.

I suspect I may be prescribed Amitriptyline (I think I'm a bit depressed too, making this more likely).

Will this drug affect body building gains? I am already concerned my gains are being affected by my poor sleep / recovery, so it's a question of which is worst.

I need to have more satisfying sleep as rarely start the day refreshed.

Any constructive advice welcome, especially if from experience.

I am after some advice on which of these two cameras might be best for me.

Currently have a Pentax K5, which is a pleasure to use in terms of its controls and handling, with great low noise image textrure, but I find it is let down by AFC on subjects, such as vehicles, that move towards / away, resulting in soft subjects (I don't believe this is motion blur). I have read other comments about this, so don't believe it's just me...

I have been borrowing a friend's Canon EOS 60D, to test it under the same circumstances - again, AFC with a single focus point (of the nine) selected - and had much more consistent resultts (although I don't think the image quality is quite as good as the Pentax K5).

So, Canon may be the way to go, given that reliable AFC on subjects that move towards / away is an important feature to me.

Would the Canon EOS 7D be of any advantage to me, to justify the extra cost?

I know its AF system has more focus points than the 60D, but is its AF system actually any better otherwise, that would make it more reliable at acquiring and keeping AFC sharp focus on a subject moving towards / away?

Is the image quality any better? I believe these have the same sensor.

I tend to shoot in RAW, and generally only correct rotation by a couple of degrees before saving as JPEG, as I prefer the natural look of RAW images.

Finally, are there any particular lenses I should get for either 60D or 7D that will help with quick and reliable AFC? My current lenses are 18-55 / 50-200, but I'm open to different sizes.

Thanks

I have recently purchased a Pentax K-5 DSLR.

I want to do bursts of continuous shooting (with focus priority) of moving objects (vehicles), using continuous auto-focus (AF-C)... so far, so good.

Images taken so far have been unacceptably soft in detail on close inspection, and I’m not sure if this is down to Sharpness setting (was at factory default, but I’ve increased) or due to me not using the AF properly. It doesn’t appear to be a case of motion blur.

The moving subjects (vehicles) typically enter the final composed shot from the edge of the frame several seconds before I want to start the burst of continuous shooting… burst shooting is when the vehicles have got closer.

I can think of three possible ways to focus on them… which, if any is correct?

(1) Compose final shot view, wait for subject to move into AF area in viewfinder, whereupon camera acknowledges the moving subject, then press and hold shutter half way to activate AF on subject, finally pressing shutter fully when ready to start burst

(2) With subject at / near centre of viewfinder, press and hold shutter half way to activate AF on it, then, whilst keeping the subject in view – to enable the camera to track the subject – compose the final shot view, pressing shutter fully when ready to start burst

(3) Compose final shot view, press and hold shutter half way to activate AF before the subject has moved into AF area in viewfinder, during which camera eventually detects and tracks subject as it enters the AF area in viewfinder… would this work?

Any advice greatly received… this is surely something that many others will have wanted to do.

Thanks

My washed clothing is coming out of the washed with a smell of dirty water.

This is obviously because of a problem within the washer, such as a build up of scum.

I have tried a few things with little or no success…

(1) Used Dr Beckham’s Washing Machine Service

(2) the worst affected wash load is my good clothes, washed at 40 degrees with ‘colour’ formula powder / tablets

(3) however, on turning up the temperature on the ‘colour’ formula to 60 degrees, the smell was more noticeable

(4) use of fabric conditioner has little effect and just seems to combine with the dirty water smell

The next thing I am going to try is to wash the good clothes at 60 degrees with ‘normal’ formula powder / tablets (rather than ‘colour’ formula).

Do you have any further advice on how to cure this problem – other than what I have already tried – other than getting an engineer out to service the machine?

I recently bought a new PC, a decent HP 6GB RAM model, and the internet is generally much slower, especially to load pictures, on sites like flickr, etc.

My previous PC was nearly eight years old, generally slow with just 512MB RAM, yet rather quicker at displaying pictures on the internet.

When I got this new PC, I connected the same USB dongle (yes, not the quickest internet) and the difference was immediately apparent. I since upgraded to the latest dongle model, but this has only improved uploading speeds (dramatically) but no improvement on displaying pages.

I recently uninstalled the Norton 360 software that came with the PC and got Microsoft Security Essentials instead (which was on my old PC) but this has made no difference either.

Any suggestions??

Thanks

I have recently been enhancing some digital scans I've had done, using Photoshop Elements 2.0.

The finished jpegs have so far been anything between around 3.5 - 7.5 MB (well below Flickr's limits) when saved at maximum quality (10) in image options.

Using the new uploadr in Flickr, the thumbnails look OK while they are uploading and the timer symbol is displayed.

However, shortly after they have finished uploading, the thumbnails are seen to suddenly darker, and this is how they remain in Photostream.

Why is this happening? Is it anything to do with how I'm saving?

I have had to re-lighten the images in Flickr's Aviary App, and whilst this is easy to use and the results look good at first sight, I think it adversely affects the quality of the image on closer inspection... there are sharp changes in colour hues / saturation within the same colour area (such as how the light has caught a curved object, etc), so I'd prefer not to resort to this.

The question is why do the images go darker? If this didn't happen then I wouldn't need to use Aviary, having done all the work in Photoshop.

Thanks

Having had very mixed (poor) results from getting my slides scanned by photographic bureaux, I am considering doing it myself.

I want a high quality copier that I can attach to my digital camera, on which I can hopefully adjust the focus to get crisp results that are as sharp as the original slide... focussing is important, as I don't want fuzziness around fine detail.

(I expect to be able to adjust the light of the picture, dependent upon the illumination behind).

Can someone please tell me the vehicle number sequence of the 11-car Class 390s.

I am aware that the four new units are to be numbered 390154-390157... what is the actual order of the vehicles, end to end?

I know the 9-car sets are numbered as 691xx+694xx+695xx+696xx+688xx+697xx+698xx+699xx+692xx, for example.

Also, which 31 of the original 53 9-car sets are to receive additional two cars?

What will be the new car numbers?

And where will they be inserted within the existing formation above, i.e. between which two original vehicles?

Is there a form of stamp collecting in which you retain stamps on the piece of (envelope) paper they were posted on? If so, is there any method of storage other than stock books?

My phone is up for renewal soon, and I am considering another touchscreen, but would prefer one that has a stylus tucked into it (like my existing Nokia 5800), rather than trying to use finger nails.

I'm after a moderately priced touchscreen that I may be able to get free or up to £60 on contract... Are there any like this available?

I'm not finding them with a stylus (or the information doesn't mention it).

Thanks

I want to record some sound clips from my web browser (Google Chrome).

I have tried, and failed to do this using Audacity... does anyone know what Preferences or other setting have to be changed to? The recording I made had no sound to it.

OR, is there another freely available recorder program I can download, and what setting(s) do I have to adjust?

It seems remarkably difficult to achieve what seems simple, i.e. to record what sound is being played by the computer.

Thanks

I have uploaded pictures to Flickr, but don't really like the order they appear in, which starts with the last group of pictures I uploaded, and ending with the first group.

Without creating sets or collections, is there any way I can sort them differently?

I already have all the titles starting with the date as yyyy-mm-dd, as I imagined I would be able to sort by title, or they might have been automatically sorted by it.

I'm trying to make a pivot table that has Date field down the left hand side (in months), and have the summed data going across (items sold), but as soon as I drag and drop the 'items sold' into the 'main' area of the table, it makes extra rows per month, one for each item description from the data. I would rather the table grew horizontally, keeping just one row per month, and additional columns for the item descriptions.

What am I doing wrong?

Dragging the data item to the column fields doesn't seem to work.

I am using Excel 2000/2003.

We've recently noticed that our 'cleaned' washing is smelling like the dirty water.

I have cleaned the powder / conditioner drawer, and also scrubbed the water jets above the drawer (all of which had some gunk / mold).

I have also opened the drainage plug and cleaned out, not that there was anything much to clean out of it.

The washer drum still smells foul inside, but it is spotlessly clean.

Any suggestions of what else we could try, short of getting an engineer out to start dismantling it further?

We have always used fabric conditioner, but this is being overpowered by the rotten smell.

I want a simple-to-use video editor so I can effectively 'crop' / delete chunks out of video files, so that I am only left with a selection having discarded the rest.

The files I have are .avi, but they don't load with Windows Media Player as need a codec, so I need a player that's flexible to open a few common formats.

Can you recommend a program I can download that will do what I describe?

I'm going to a fancy dress party in a couple of weeks, and wanted suggestions on what I could hire. For example, I know some have hired telly-tubbies costumes, so maybe a children's character or well-known cartoon character / super-hero...

Would like it to be a character that's reasonably obvious and well-known, so I'm not forever being asked who I'm supposed to be...

I am going to lay some ceramic floor tiles in my kitchen.

The kitchen floor is floorboards… what thickness of plywood base do I need, and how do I secure this to the floorboards (nails or a certain adhesive – what type)?

I have previously fitted wall tiles successfully, but I imagine floor tiles will be more heavy duty to work with.

Is there any particular way to cut tiles (straight cuts across) short of buying an expensive cutter? (with the wall tiles, I scored then, placed the score line over a pencil and applied pressure either side to snap straight across).

Finally, I have four awkward areas where the tiles will need shaping around the base of doorframes… I have a nibbler from the wall tiles, but do I need / can I get a more substantial one for these floor tiles?

Feel free to offer any other useful comments…

Thanks

My Acer tree has only a few leaves so far, with little sign that there are going to be many more - there are some buds but nothing like past seasons.

Anything I can do? Has been suggested it's due to dry weather we've had, and I have started watering it lately.

It's about 6ft tall, and I've had it nearly three years in the same location.

I am considering buying some of this insecticide for my lawn, which was in superb condition for the first couple of years but is being progressively ruined with worm casts every Spring and Autumn… I seem to spend more time trying to repair it than enjoying it, but increasingly feel I am losing this battle.

This is just my own garden lawn, about 85sqyd.

What is the best way for me to apply the Carbendazim solution?

I am prepared to purchase some kind of simple wheeled sprayer to ensure even coverage… can you recommend one under £100?

Would any overspray onto adjacent plants cause any harm to them?

Any other advice about the use of this insecticide / worm casts in general?

I also use weed, feed and mosskiller (Evergreen Complete)… can I continue to use this between applications of Carbendazim? I need to use something to keep weeds down, as a few have started to appear due to the damage from worm casts.