Xavier

Sold

Sorry for the late update. Roof bars, front grille and bushes gone. OEM clutch and pressure plate added

The tracking was only turned on at Portsmouth, but you can see the route one of us took :)

Well, after the success of Monte Carlo or Bust, we did a little more this year - went to Gibraltar! Some of our group were particularly brave coming from Aberdeen and clocked up nearly 4,000 miles in a couple of weeks. A few photos Charging at Montserrat monastery before ANOTHER hailstorm scared the hell out of me again. Arriving at Gibraltar Sunborn luxury yacht-hotel was stunning

I might be going to Basingstoke later this week, so happy to drop off / meet up / take you out for a spin 😛

I'll take some when back home later today. I'm in Reading.

err, pass. I think I bought it from generic motor factors so it's a "generic" part, but it does work on mk1 vrs Fabia rear brakes as I have used it on my old Fabia.

Continuing the clearout of old Fabia vRS parts Front vRS grille for Mk1 Fabia vRS. In black. Complete with chrome black surround. Good condition. £10 ono - SOLD Pair of front A-pillar trims in light grey. Bought ages ago from Jason for an ICE rebuild, never got round to it. £free / donation of your choice. Pair of official Skoda roof bars. Complete with locks, torquing allen key, etc. £15 ono- SOLD Rear brake caliper wind back tool. I realise I need to find the back plate for this. £5 ono Powerflex poly bushes for rear axle on Fabia Mk1. Brand new. Never got round to installing them. They're a pair of PFR85-206. £30- SOLD OEM PD130 clutch and pressure plate. Came off my Fabia vRS when I upgraded to the Sachs motorsport stuff. No idea how much it's worth. Still fine and will suit any standard PD engine which isn't remapped with a load of torque. £30 I guess is fair?

As we all know, the 312mm setup is quite an improvement on the standard 288mm. But I distinctly remember the further improvement the larger 323 discs provided. Not only more stopping power, but less brake fade when doing track days. :)

Right, last bump as I forgot I had these. £200 is really a decent price I think. Open to offers as well

Not ordered a replacement. I think I'll hang on to mine. It's taken the worst of the depreciation and is running beautifully. I'd probably be more interested in the Model Y than the 3. Maybe wait a couple of years to see how it really materialises then think about the options

Backtracked or rather clarified the store closing stuff. For pricing, we'll see on Monday where there's talk of hen going back up again, but no idea how much. Oh and the Model Y was also revealed yesterday :-D

Well, I knew Tesla opted for disruption, but the latest announcement has sent the Tesla Facebook groups into meltdown! In other news, I'm now over 60k miles, still loving it. However, the massively dropped cost of the ludicrous Model S is becoming tempting, not because of the extra performance (small lie, possibly!), but also the overall updated package and especially the extra comfort and range offered by the larger pack. And Model 3 soon being available at the lower price. LHD Model 3 vehicles now available to order and collection within a few weeks! It's all becoming rather exciting again!

I'll be arriving around 11. Just stopped for a quick top-up at the Portsmouth supercharger which is just 5 minutes away. Anyone wanting a demo?

Oh and whilst on the subject technicalities such as crop / not crop / what is a crop, I also only ever shoot in RAW format. It just allows you to recover so much information which is otherwise lost in JPEG. Not just over/under-exposed photos, but also far finer control on white balance, etc. Yes, with large pixel count, you end up with large files - around 50MB is frequent from my D800. But I can always bin the stuff I don't want to keep and even once I'm happy, output to a high quality JPEG and ditch the NEF file as I know I won't want to retouch it again. Storage nowadays is cheap

Slightly larger beast, keeping our garden lawn in check (and eating all the flowers too!) D3s, 200mm f/2.0, 1/1600, f/2.0

Butterfly from a few years back. D3s, 105mm Macro, 1/400, f/7.1

I wasn't suggesting crop is bad, and my use of the term "crop sensor" was in respect to full frame 24x36mm film cameras (which yes, are a crop on 8x10"). With the advances in technology, some smaller M43 is arguably as good as pro gear from 15 years ago that cost a fortune. Pros and cons for everything And yes, WTD is funny and worth a look

I moved over to full frame quite a few years ago, here's a brief summary of my journey: After having an old point and shoot stolen from my 5* hotel room, early 2000s, I decided to go down the dSLR route and bought a Nikon D60. Compact sensor, 6MP, it came with the kit lens (18-70 DX / crop sensor). I also bought a cheap 70-300mm zoom lens, not knowing much about aperture / speed, etc. For motorsport, it was fine as it gave me the reach and I was never after a super fast shutter speed so light wasn't an issue. Then, a year or two later, I bought a D200. First prosumer body. I also bought a nice Sigma 30mm f/1.4 DC (crop only). A few years after that, I had to choose: do I upgrade and get a D300 or do I go the whole hog and go for the D700 (first prosumer full-frame body that was starting to be affordable). As I only had the 18-70 kit lens and the Sigma that were crop-only lenses, I decided to start my full-frame journey and picked up the D700. The step-up for me at that time was immense. As reach was becoming less of a priority, I didn't mind losing out the 1.5x magnification the crop sensor brought, and started to appreciate the extra light the larger sensor benefited from. I sold the D200 with the 18-70 kit lens and Sigma 30mm f/1.4 to a friend. Then, I bought a D3s as I wanted something sturdier. And more recently, I bought a D800 (about 4-5 years ago). That's the last body I bought. Since then, it's been just lenses. I have: Nikkor AF-S 24mm f/1.4G ED N RF Nikkor AF-S 24-70mm f/2.8G ED FX Nikkor AF-S 70-200mm f/2.8 VR1 Nikkor AF 70-300mm f/4-5.6G Nikkor AF-S 200mm f/2.0 VR1 (my favourite!) Nikkor AF 85mm f/1.4D (my second favourite. Great for portraits in natural light. Signature chromatic abberations on OoF / edges, but I love it!) Nikkor AF-S 105mm f/2.8G IF-ED VR Macro Nikkor TC2.0 III (turns the 200 f/2.0 into a 400mm f/4) Sigma 12-24mm f/4-5.6 Sigma 50mm f/1.4 EX DG Sigma 120-300mm f/2.8 EX DG HSM. I hardly use this nowadays and prefer the 200mm f/2.0 as focussing is lighteningly quick. I'm rarely at the wider end, so with the 200mm, that's enough and I can always crop for more "reach". IME, jumping to full frame can be expensive, especially if you already have several crop-only lenses, but unless you need silly reach, the extra light and control you get is worth it.

Body was my old Nikon D3s. Just because I have a RRS L bracket for it so quick and easy to fit on my tripod with arcaswiss jaws. Great fun shooting sunset to night time where there is something like 15+ stops of light change. This is by no means perfect, but gives an idea:

I've found that up to 15 seconds, it's fine. From 30s onwards, you start to see trails when pixel peeping. Lens is one of my favourites: 24mm f/1.4. cost me a small fortune but shallow DoF for journo style shooting or night scenes is brilliant. I've also started to do some serious timelapse work with LRtimelapse. Awesome software and excellent usage of xmp sidecar files for transferring changes in and out of lightroom.

a 15s exposure is fine with a fast lens. And the photo above is pretty much SOOC, no real retouching. I could work on it a bit like you've done to improve it

I wish I had spent a little more time perfecting this, as this was just a "quick snap", but playing around with a long exposure (15s) and high ISO (1600) as it's pitch black - only the full moon in the background which you can see with the light peeking through the trees on the right. The trees were then mainly exposed with a torch for a few seconds. My aim was to get the trees lit up a bit whilst still seeing the starry sky above. The full moon doesn't help with the stars as you lose out on contrast, but for a quick attempt, I'll take it

If I'm around, I might come and spectate and offer visceral acceleration test drives for those that want to subject their bodies to some organ displacement

Yeah, I haven't really checked pricing in France yet, but I'd say €6k tops providing cambelt has been done - which is unlikely due to the current owner having had it a few years and not done that many miles. I guess the 85ps petrol engine has a belt and not a chain? I'm so rusty on this stuff now. Will do some more reading.