Are you sure that shouldn’t say “SleasyJet” 🙂

Andy

Good news! Its about time we got a government aeroplane, rather than have our PM and head of state fly around in a converted BA 777 or a clapped out BAe146 that needs about ten hops to make it anywhere further away than near Europe. Not sure whether we need a widebody – I’d have thought a A319CJ would do nicely – but I hope the government supports our aerospace workers by buying an aircraft that at least in part is made in the UK and has British (i.e. Rolls Royce) engines – I guess that means Airbus then! We also need to buy new, something that will last, not some ex-airline plane that’s already been round the block a few times and despite being refurbished will be knackered, outdated and difficult to obtain spares for after a few years.

Andy

Well at least it wasn’t O’Leary (thank God!)… In that case, he’d have turned up at the palace, found that ceremony had been cancelled, and that he’d have to arrange his own honour and wouldn’t get any refund for the money he’d spent getting there.

Anyway, the honour is good news – recognises a true pioneer of reasonable low cost travel in this country.

Andy

It seems to really pain you and that gives me great pleasure (kind of sadistic I know). 🙂

Doesn’t pain me at all… I will not fly Ryanair even if it is the only choice, and I never will even if it is the last airline on this planet – which it won’t be. Therefore, Ryanair is largely irrelevent to me, although I believe that the guy who runs it is the biggest mennace to commercial aviation in Europe in the long term and I’ll not hesitate to represent that view when I have the chance. Even though it doesn’t pain me, it doesn’t stop me from having an opinion:

I’m sure the billions of £€$ people have saved is a terrible thing

Like I say, you’ve been sucked in by the Ryanair manta. At who’s expense do people travel for next to nothing? If you’re happy with the terms and conditions that now exist for employees in the industry, which have been immeasurably worsten since Ryanair came along, then that’s up to you. If you’re happy that the passenger experience is more miserable – long queues, being dumped at airports they don’t want to be at, having to get themselves home when the wheels fall off – then that’s fine. I’d gladly pay a few more pounds for fair service, but Ryanair don’t provide that. And don’t get me wrong – I’m not against low-fares/no-frills, but you need to take a look at what Southwest offers to realise that fair and reasonable service can still be combined with relatively low fares. Ryanair is in the gutter, easyJet comes close, and Southwest have got it pretty right.

Ryanair will come a cropper – they’ll either bend a plane or two and write off a few passengers, or one too many people will get pissed off with what they offer, or something else will happen. But the airline industry is cyclical, and sooner or later some semblance of service will bounce back. Despite the pain that will be caused by that, it’ll be a good day for air travel.

I do not care if this is a decision from Ryanair, ENAC or the Pope. If they seriously believe I am going to put over a 1000 euros worth of camera equipment into the hold, they are smoking some serious ****. No way a bagsmasher comes even close to my camera.

As one who travels with somewhat more camera equipment than that, may I say – damned right they wouldn’t! Well said. Havind said that, I’m pleased to hear that the issue has been resolved, even if it took Ryanair several weeks to do so.

Andy

Just a few thoughts:

Top dollar (sorry, pound) kit doesn’t necessarily win the day, but it makes achieving the results slightly more straightforward – faster apertures, quicker focusing, fewer chromatic aberations all make the final result slightly easier to achieve.

Newsworthy pictures sell to magazines (as long as you’re quick – results to editors today or tomorrow at the latest) but don’t ALWAYS make the biggest bucks. Airshows aren’t the best places for newsworthy pics because there’s too many people there – more on that later – and the real newsworthy pics that sell for big bucks (national news, etc) in part come from the luck of being in the right place at the right time. Having said that, the consistant big bucks come from commercial photography, and part of that is getting known and getting commissioned – as discussed above – and the other part is stock photography. Don’t dismiss the fairly run-of-the-mill Southwest 737-300 “stock” shot that sold for $750 (maybe should have asked for more as the quote was accepted without question) or the Continental 777 taking off at Manchester that I gather is to be used as a billboard.

One of the biggest challenges to making money today is the plethora of kids who are toting 350Ds (and I say that with absolutely no disrespect to the original poster), probably bought by mom and dad. Some of them achieve half decent results and are prepared to give their work away the for “glory” of seeing their name in print. Many of them don’t have a clue about ISOs, or the relationship between shutter speed, aperture and prop-freeze, or exposure compensation, but as has already been intimiated modern DSLRs often take an element of skill out of this. They don’t always hit the mark, but there’s enough of them around to make an impact.

But they CAN damage the market for the serious photographer – the way out, as already suggested, is to (a) develop a good and consistant reputation with editors and commercial buyers alike, and (b) getting those newsworthy pics, through access and relationships, that the rest do not get. Marketing is important too, but don’t underestimate the “buyers”, particularly from magazines and lower-end commercial operators, who just go fishing on the likes of airliners.net and hope to catch something for free – that market simply didn’t exist before the advent of the internet.

I have tens of thousands of Kodachromes, and a few of them sell well from time to time. But the immediacy of digital means that its a declining market and with a few exceptions the big money doesn’t come from film now whether we like it or not – even most of the high quality publications will take (and even prefer) digital now.

I think that the answer is to keep trying… Keep trying at airshows, but look out for the out-of-the-ordinary. Learn the basics – they are a fundamental back up having a good eye. Kit isn’t everything, but buy better and change infrequently rather than buy cheap and change regularly. Sell yourself, and don’t expect to break into the market big time, quickly. Over time it will come. Whether you can make a living… Who knows?

Andy

Its usually one of the following 321s, OOAE, OOAH or OOAF.

Go on Daz, push the boat out at mention G-OOAV as well – that way, you’ve listed ALL of the First Choice A321s!!! 😉 :p

Andy

Depends what you want to achieve. If all you want to do is get your slides onto a digital format – say for exhibiting on the web – then a slide duplicator attached to a DSLR will be cheap and will do the job, or try a flat bed scanner maybe one with a film/slide adapter. If on the other hand you want to come close to archival quality/high-resolution scans and/or have a desire to print from the scans to A4/A3 size, then a dedicated film scanner is probably going to be necessary. Dedicated scanners take either film strips or mounted slides.

As has been said, film scanners do not come cheap AND getting a good quality high-res scan takes time because the slide has to be meticulously clean and/or a lot of post processing might be necessary in Photoshop to clean up the image – I usually plan on 5-10 minutes for each slide to get a reasonable final high-resolution digital file via my slide scanner.

Dedicated slide scanners are usually in the £200+ range, Minolta being a good brand at that sort of price point, whilst I now use a Nikon Coolscan which I believe produces somewhat better results but which cost £500. A simple slide duplicator that you can attach to a DSLR using a T2 mount will probably not set you back more than £50 total.

Andy