J2Ski Forum Posts and Replies by ise

amanda n wrote:snowpack, did you look into this any further?, what does the qualification mean you can do?

Very little, it's part of a continuing syllabus. In itself you can teach in a "non mountain" environment which means dry slopes and indoor slopes in the UK once you've completed the course and the required shadowing with a ski school.

Tony_H wrote:

ise wrote:

Tony_H wrote:Dont underestimate yourselves guys.

I'd not appreciated you'd skied the North Face of the Bellecote.

Where did I say that?

I take it you've not then?

I'm going to post a version of this on my blog but it might help some people here at some future time.

I don't think I'm too immodest if I say I'm not a bad photographer :oops: I've won a few competitions and I've had my photo's used commercially and by some not-for-profits. And I take between 3000 and 4000 images a year mostly in the mountains. I have a bunch of cameras, point and shoots and digital SLR's pretty much all Canon. My day-to-day camera has been a Canon A95 point and shoot.

On a recent trip to Morocco I took some images at night and for various reasons it highlighed some dirt had possibly got into my A95. I'm not surprised, I take no care whatsoever with the camera and deliberately so as that's why I use a P&S. But, P&S digital cameras are disposable possibly and commodity items for certain. I have one absolute requirement for a new camera, that it must use AA batteries so I can buy them anywhere in world on trips. So, I picked the Canon A1000 which still has an optical viewfinder and takes AA batteries. By a series of technical details it's clearly a better specified camera than the A95.

The reality is different. The A1000 is a piece of junk. Without getting too jargoned there's a range of problems which stop it producing good images, the result is no depth of field and the images are soft. Part of the problem is it increases F-stop before shutter speed which stops it getting sharp images and the "auto white balance" doesn't work properly which is a particular issue in snow. The white balance is an import of a classic DSLR problem which you avoid there by shooting RAW and balancing later, you can't do that with a JPEG though.

In that situation you've got several options. First, you can blame user error but I'm reasonable with a camera and pretty good with technology so I can eliminate that. Second, it's a bad unit, i.e. the range is fine but this actual model is defective. This is where I realised something I should have done before.

If you go to flickr you can look at photo's grouped by camera type and look at groups of images tagged by camera type. So now I can see that no one gets good results with this camera, I'm sure some of the users are perfectly happy but it's perfectly clear (or not actually) these shots are soft and unfocussed as well.

What I can also see is that results from a lot of other big selling, well reviewed, digital cameras are also junk so I'm no closer to getting a new camera as I can't find a good one.

So, my advice is if you're going to buy a new camera, look at the Flickr sets rather than the reviews, it doesn't matter what some reviewer says and it does matter what other people are getting from the camera without being experts in any way.

I thought this was alpine wide & season long?

there's any number of English comedians that seem to turn up :lol:

it's snowing on and off right now actually.

Dave Mac wrote:
More seriously, N. closes on 29 March, not because of lack of snow, but because that is what the TOs and lift company elect to do. .

before Easter, that's utterly extraordinary. I would have expected there's not one single ski station in all of Europe that expects snow for this Easter, which is late this year, and is planning to close.

karen72 wrote:I hope you dont mind me asking a question on your thread but I am thinking about la plagne for next year for myself and family (all near enough beginners, just want to stick to green and blue). I have never been to France skiing before alway skied in Austria. The only thing that worries me is that the runs are going to be a bit "samey". from looking at pictures of the la plagne area there doesnt seem to be much in the way of scenery. just slopes for miles which is a good thing but I dont want it to get boring. Or if someone can tell me different. like I say we will be sticking mainly to blues and greens, might have the odd day over to les arcs (which on looking at a 6 day family ticket between the discovery and the unlimited pass was only a difference of about 80 euro for 4 of us).I am still looking at options but I do still keep coming back to la plagne mainly because of its vast area of blues and cruisy runs

You might prefer somewhere like St Gervais, it's got a more Austrian feel than most French ski stations. A lot of tree lined runs all around that blue standard. Also worth a look is the Grand Massif, there's slightly more challenging pistes there as well but the same amount of tree runs and the possibility to ski between small villages which is quite pleasant.

Tony_H wrote:Dont underestimate yourselves guys.

I'd not appreciated you'd skied the North Face of the Bellecote.