I haven’t used them yet, but have had a brief chat with them about a job I need done. Their advice was 1% shrinkage for my alu alloy bellhousing.

http://www.fbullettandco.co.uk/services/

Dogged persistence finally paid off and I saw one about ten days ago as I passed to the North of the airfield. Marvellous, but still none over Hamble or where I race the boat!

And I’ll be passing the airfield at about 15:00 on Saturday for a prize-giving at 16:00 at Hamble River Sailing Club. Just one will be fine.

bazv, do you know anything else about that picture of Bader climbing in? The young airman looks very like my Father…

I don’t think anyone has addressed your new camera/same file number problem.

Some cameras will let you change the prefix e.g change IMG to IMH, and I think I’ve got one that’ll let me start the numbering from a place of my choice.

Another tip is ‘Bulk Rename Utility’ (http://www.bulkrenameutility.co.uk/Main_Intro.php) which is free and helps a non-gifted pc operator do what clever kids do with scripts.

To explain part of what I’ve been doing – scanning batches of slides and negative strips I’ve taken a packet of negs from one film, scanned it saving each image as the same number as the negative that it came from and then putting that packet into a sequentially numbered envelope. All images from that film go into a folder with the same number as the one I’ve just written on the envelope.

Now I have a load of sequentially numbered folders, all with and IMG01.jpg etc. in them. Firing up Bulk Rename lets me select all of the images in one of those folders and tell it to replace IMG with something, but to leave the 01.jpg part alone.

As an example I use:-

1991 as the year

03 as the month

07 as the day

10 to tell me that it was the first film I’ve found that covers that date, and means that if I find a later one I’ll call it 20, or an earlier one can be 05, in each case leaving me room to slot a few more around it.

204 is the number that I gave the envelope so that I can easily find the neg for a given image number.

I then tell Bulk Rename to turn IMG into 1991-03-07-10-204- Because I left the original image number and extension alone, Bulk Rename puts the two parts together and I get 1991-03-07-10-204-01.jpg It’ll do this for all the files you select by highlighting in the top pane, preserving those vital digits at the back end.

One attraction of BR is that it shows me what all the file names will look like before I press the big rename button. When you do you do get prompted to make sure that you really want to.

Having done that, I can take all the renamed images and drop them into one enormous folder and delete the one that they came from.

The OP could use it to quickly rename all his new pictures from IMG***********.jpg to NewIxus***********.jpg or do something like I do.

Anyway, it’s a very handy tool, its help is simple enough for me and don’t be intimidated by all the other stuff it can do – just work with the prefixes in the box marked ‘Replace (3)’ until you’re feeling more brave.

My attempts at video with a lesser 650D won’t inspire you. At airshows it has been pretty hopeless when used hand held for the reasons that you’ve given (I’m afflicted with varifocals too). I also have a compact camera without a viewfinder and have the same problem – I don’t seem to be able to take photography seriously without one.

Using it on a decent tripod to record a friend walking and talking, and using AF, I was truly impressed by the capability and results. I felt like a real film maker! The noise from the AF was nothing compared to the wildlife, which was so bad that we had to record the sound separately and edit it together later. If I were to do it again I’d buy external microphones.