Long Shot – central Bristol from Troopers Hill – 3-4 miles distant with a 560mm (840mm) focal length with the Fujinon 100-400mm + 1.4x Converter
In This Post
1st
Mistyclips
2nd
Telephoto Lens Infrared Capture
3rd
An Alternative to Amazon
Mistyclips
Some of you who read my last post may have raised a wry smile at the suggestion of trying No Fog Anti-Condensation Wipes in May. The problem of glasses steaming up is usually a winter issue. However, it also occurs at any time of the year when wearing a face-covering, particularly in a supermarket.
So, here is another option to try to stop your glasses from steaming up when wearing a mask. The Mistyclip aims to make a better seal between the mask and the bridge of the nose, hopefully preventing the breath from escaping upwards. This cottage industry was featured on the BBC News App on June 7th and was how I came to be aware of them.
This start-up company is run from a kitchen table in southern England by a young man who had a dream of becoming an airline pilot. As redundant airline pilots are ten a penny at the moment, he had to find something else to do before he started his training to be a pilot. He stumbled on the idea of the Mistyclip and went into production to make a bob or two before he can take up pilot training.
No Plastic Pollution
At the start of the manufacturing process, the Mistyclips are made from sustainably produced polylactic acid. The key ingredient in each MistyClip is produced by fermenting a renewable carbohydrate source such as corn starch, sugar cane or sugar beet pulp. The finished clip is 3D printed. The clips are dispatched in environmentally friendly 100% recyclable and biodegradable materials packaging.
I am waiting for mine to arrive to see if they work and if it was worth the £2.50 per clip?
Long shot – a church in South Bristol from Troopers Hill in East Bristol. IR Capture with a Fujinon 100-400mm lens + 1.4x Converter.
Telephoto Lens Infrared Capture
In years gone by (you can tell I’m an old git because I know the context from experience), most IR pictures were taken with a wide-angle lens. IR light focuses slightly behind daylight on film or a sensor. Pre-digital, most lenses had a red dot to help make that distance adjustment. Digital SLRs ideally need the focus to be recalibrated for IR shooting. Also, in the old day’s Depth of Field and a small aperture was used to help cover up estimating distance errors.
In the mirrorless CSC world, that many of us now live in, fortunately, converted cameras do not require focus calibration. Therefore, what are the advantages for the photographer? It means that a converted mirrorless camera can be used with lenses of any focal length and aperture. Provided of course hot spots are not created.
The telephoto shots shown here were taken at 850mm in 35mm terms. I found it easier to get no Hot Spots when using the telephoto zoom without the 1.4x converter attached. Also the 8-16mm wide-angle did not produce Hot Spots from f2.8 to f 5.6.
Troopers Hill Chimney Converted XH-1, Fujinon 8-16mm lens the more usual lens choice
An Alternative to Amazon
Those who read my last post will know I cancelled my Amazon account a few years ago for the reason of tax justice. Amazon paid £293m in tax in the UK last year, while its sales surged 26% to £13.73bn. See https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-54082273
The G7 (the world’s seven largest economies) met in Cornwall last weekend. One of the things on the agenda was Rishi Sunak’s plan to fairly tax international companies. The aim is to get them to pay the tax in the country where the profit is generated.
Nothing is New
International tax harmonisation was also Gordon Brown’s plan before the lunatics got control of the asylum and caused the 2008 global credit crisis. If you want to understand how the lunatics got control of the asylum, see the 2015 film “The Big Short” on Netflix. I have seen it but was too deficient in the brain department to fully understand it. The take-home message for me was, when and not if a global financial crash happens again, just like another global health pandemic!
Higher Corporate Tax Bills?
Back to the plot, a new analysis suggests that the UK would raise an extra £13.5 billion a year from a global minimum corporate tax rate set at 20%. This would rise to over £22 billion a year if the rate was set at 25%. Companies like Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google could face significantly higher tax bills or not.
Unfortunately, the current international corporation tax threshold has been proposed at 15% rather than 20%. Many think the bar is being set too low. In fact, under these proposals, some experts predict banks and the oil industry profits will not be included. Read The Guardian article that explains why the whole deal might remind you of the inability to organise festivities in a brewery!
Hopefully, by the time you read this, the G7 will have sorted it’s self out with a watertight plan and not created a knitting pattern full of loopholes for Amazon et al to drive their tax-free Rolls Royce’s through!
If you are interested in tax justice where the corporate rich pay their fair share and help us all benefit.
See https://www.taxjustice.uk/
The Alternative
I am increasingly turning to ebay.co.uk to buy anything from tin tacks to tractors! as an alternative to Amazon. Unfortunately, they are tarred with the same corporation tax brush as Amazon, Facebook and Google. For me, the attraction of eBay is they provide sources that are not only Amazon. This takes the work and time out of finding what you want to buy.
