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and many spring fl owers.
Adrian Johnson
Lucky shot
With the current
restrictions I have been
doing more walking than
usual around where I live,
and have taken lots of
photos including this one of
a mink. I was lucky that it
got up on a low wall beside
the River Liffey near where
I was walking. I was also
lucky in that while I was
using a manual M42-
mount Soviet Jupiter 11
lens on my Sony A230, I
managed to grab a couple
of shots and hoped focus
and exposure would be
acceptable. In the
circumstances I think it was
a success. Joe O’Rourke
On the border
I had the same problem
regarding aspect ratios on
Instagram that Malcolm
referred to (Inbox, 30 May)
until I found an app called
Whitagram which basically
does what AP suggests, i.e.
adds white borders. It is
both quick and effective at
allowing any aspect ratio
photo to be shown
correctly on Instagram.
Graham Bolton
Vampires don’t exist
On page 17 in your 6 June
issue, among your tips on
‘How to be an eco-friendly
photographer’ is a
statement I could not
believe. In a paragraph
headed ‘Keep vampires at
bay’ your contributor
states that ‘When you
leave a plug in a socket,
even if it is not switched on,
it draws electricity.....’
How you allowed such
a statement to be
published is beyond my
comprehension and may
well worry some of your
readers. If this was true,
the world of science would
be turned upside down.
There is no ‘magic’ source
of energy wasting away just
because a plug is inserted
but with the wall switch in
the off position.
I am not in any way a
professor but do have a
degree in physics, maths
and electronics, a
chartered engineer and
have also been a full
member of the IET for
many, many years.
Tony JohnsApologies to our readers
for this misleading
paragraph, which we
had several emails about.
The writer was referring
to devices that have a
stand-by mode such as
television sets which
draw power even if they
are not in use. The
words had been cut to
fi t the space but in doing
so the original meaning
was lost.More errors
Thank you for continuing to
produce AP despite, what
must be, considerablediffi culty. However, I must
take issue with the
following points:
1) In your letters page, in
‘Digitising fi lm’ reference is
made to ‘fi ring a fl ash
through a piece of opaque
white plastic’. Opaque
materials do not transmit
light. I suspect that the
writer meant translucent;
allowing light to pass
partially or diffusely.
2) Also in the letters page
a correspondent refers to
‘Pouring chemicals down
the drain’. Various emotive
phrases such as ‘toxic
rubbish’ and ‘vile chemicals’
are used. However, no
facts are stated with
regard to the actual
hazard posed, in either the
letter or the reply. The
reader is left with nothing
more than baseless
scaremongering.
Peter CushnaghanYou are entirely correct
on the fi rst point, Peter,
and we should have
spotted this error,
though of course we
knew what he meant.
I don’t agree on your
second point, however.
Clearly some of the
chemistry used in the
past was indeed quite
unpleasant, and the
letter writer was entitled
to point this out without
being obliged to provide
a list of them all, along
with their relative
toxicity. My reply merely
referenced a personal
anecdote about the
Cibachrome process that
supported his point.Joe O’Rourke says he was lucky to take this photo of a mink on a wall beside the River Liffey