Thanks guys.
DBII, I use a Canon digital now for all my pics whether its planes, animals or my sons MX racing as it quite simply makes better pics with its inbuilt programming than I could ever hope to achieve with my old manual 'wet film' 35mm SLR (Pracktica MTL 3...yes I know its old !!!).
For the shots in the museum, I simply told my Canon....OK, I moved a dial !...that I didnt want to use flash, bolted it to my tripod and started snapping away. I left all the metering, aperature, and other techie bits to the camera to decide. I think the longest exposure was just short of 50 odd seconds and that was getting the nose art on the 'Spooky' C130 I was blown away with the results as I have never been able to take pics of that quality before.
Shinpachi...hope you didnt get into too much trouble at work !...teehee