Brilliant Ray.  Right through the photoblog, I love the focusing.  Your photo feature post (brilliant it is too) comes to fruition in this.  Great examples of what good use of DOF can do.  An interesting blog Ray, to read and to look at.  The photography to me, is brilliant.  I must read that photo feature again and try this sort of stuff myself.

Cheers Ray, educational in more ways than one.

Interesting blog Ray.  From what I have seen in the blog forum, these  '40's' events seem to be very popular.  Hope I get to see one when I get back next month!

Brilliant Ray and thanks for jogging my memory.

Must go this year along with War & Peace and Headcorn.

Dave.

A really good blog Ray. Great images of folk having a great time, particularly the singing nurses for me Ray, though I'm not entirely sure that's down to photographic merit!.

Great blog Ray, used to be stationed at gordon barracks Gillingham, dont remember anything like this going on, is it a new idea

Eddie

Hi Ray Gordon barracks is just of the watling st in Gillingham, I left there in 1978, so I dont know if it is still there, Gillingham football team used to use  our camp as a training ground, might take a trip down memory lane one day.

cheers for the blog

Eddie

Brilliant blog Ray and well worth waiting for, smashing shots and great narrative - so good to see so many people get into the spirit. Thanks for sharing xx

The quality of these (given that I am seeing them at a small size), is fantastic.   Make me happy and tell me they were taken with a FujiFilm Finepix HS10!   

They are also really fine in terms of just being darn good photographs, you've got a great eye.

Interesting blog,my elder brother(rip) was in the RN and was stationed at Chatham many moons ago,so this brought back happy memories of him for me.

by the way if you like Lindi hop,as i do then perhaps you might like to check this out....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAAAV7BB1HU

Can I thank everyone for the wonderful responses.

I just got in and didn't expect this.

Thank you all.

It does make a person feel that it's worth doing more in future but this one was in part because I said I would do this one and never got round to it.

It's also in part because I give so much advice it's nice to put something up to try to show people I'm not all talk and they can can make there own mind up how full of it I am for themselves

The kick that got it going though was the question about 'Is the quality of jpgs good enough?' which I hope I've proved for some applications is more than adequate.

In reply to specific replies so far then.

Hi John.

The focus on that Lindy Hop photo was deliberate, I wasn't that close Thanks for the thumbs up.

To Steve.

You are doing OK on your own. You are getting there. Scarily so, but thanks for the compliment.

Hi Kev.

I wouldn't know as I've never had time in hospital but I feel I've missed something

Hi Eddie.

Ah, I know where you mean now and can tell you it's housing. Sorry. We still have the Royal Engineers and Gurkha regiments and a few others close by but not in the numbers there once was. The last of the naval presence I think moved out sometime in the last two years though that's difficult to tell completely.

Hi Angie.

I understand your concerns.

You must have been very young and coming from London would have been a bit more of a burden than some other areas, but for my mother and father it was their glory years, with my father really enjoying the north Atlantic, ( really  despite being sunk off of Iceland ) and my mother being able to leave home to go to work, which being the youngest in the family probably would never have happened if it had not been for the war.

As my parents got older and my mother giving way to alzheimer'stoward the end one of the few things that lifted her spirits where the old songs which I scoured the land for making tapes for her to play. I bet I have one of the largest collections of recordings from 1929 through to 1950. ( I now tha war wasn't through that but those years where  the ones my mother cherished.

Hi Glynis and Chris.

Thank you both and it is really teaming with people who come down from Newcastle and beyond for this event.

I keep saying this but despite where I live having so many people living here the up side is there is a LOT to do close by. Often I have to choose one event over another.

End of this month £150,000 is being spent on an outdoor dance festival which is free to everyone. (If you don't count local council tax). We have international sports at less than £8 a day next month and a series of outdoor concerts both classical and pop in the Castle gardens. I am spoilt for choice.

Hi Caroline.

Sorry to disappoint but they were not shot on an HS10 but one was shot with the S100fs and if you click on that one you will find a whole gallery of shots with that bridge camera but if you want to know what I managed to do with an HS10 that I had for review for ten days then look at this gallery of mine here http://www.flickr.com/photos/cubeace/sets/72157624290083578/ and feel free to look up the exif data on shots that pique your interest.

Hi Micheal.

Visit http://www.whatsonmedway.co.uk/   No excuses

Hi Nick.

Glad it brought back good times for you. It certainly does the same for me.

Hi Viv.

You are very welcome but I spoilt it by putting another shot after my intended last B&W.

The first B&W did get me one of my highest scoring photos in our camera club competitions.

Now re-ordered the last two photos to end on a B&W.

I just can't leave well enough alone

Hi Ray. Thoroughly, thoroughly enjoyed your 1940's photoblog. All fantastic images, love the candid shots and scenes capturing the time and events of the 1940's. The re-enactments are brilliant and the atmosphere is something else in these events. I enjoyed The Churnet Valley's Railway 1940's weekend and loved taking photos for my photoblog in April. Thanks for compiling and sharing. I have always admired your photography and appreciate your valuable input in forums, comments etc. Thank you Ray so much for all your comments and support to me. Best Wishes Alison

What a Marvelous Blog thanks for taking the time and sharing

I suppose the biggest compliment I can give is that while reading it, and enjoying it, I forgot it was a photoblog on Fuji.  My attention was held, right through to the end. That is not easy of late.

The photographs are professional and the many techniques used are splendid.  I cannot comment on the technicalities, and maybe that's right and proper, just what I see.  What I see, pleases the eye. 

Well done then Ray.  Entertaining and very enjoyable. 

You forgot your glasses! well maybe you don't need them because you did a fantastic job. I would be very hard pressed even with glasses. Fantastic, Thanks. 

Hi Ray,

Please accept my apologies, I'm obviously wrong. Maybe I'm thinking of one of your forum responses or maybe one of your previous blogs was so realistic that I thought of it as being in B & W, which is how I think of war time.

Either way please take it as a compliment because that was my intent.

Best Regards