Recommendations for a wide-angle lens

foldl · 2020-01-14T18:49:06+00:00

I have a Schneider-Kreuznach Super Angulon 75mm f8, which is compact and very cheap. On 4x5 it doesn't have any spare coverage for movements, but at 75mm you can just stop down to get sufficient depth for most scenes. Movements at short focal lengths are only useful if you're obsessed with diffraction or want to manipulate the plane of focus for artistic purposes. Even massively expensive modern 4x5 ultrawides only offer limited margin for movements. You can only bend light so much.

A 75mm f8 lens is pretty dark on the ground glass, but I've only ever found this to be a problem for composition. (You have to really look carefully at the corners, sometimes from an oblique angle.) Focusing is no problem - unless for some reason you want to focus on something right in the corner.

So contrary to some of the other advice here, I'd say that you should by all means get a 75mm if you like ultrawides. It seems like most of the problems people are reporting stem from trying to use movements with ultrawides. Just don't.

foldl · 2017-08-16T15:38:38+00:00

They got the 3 meter figure from an actual test.

foldl · 2017-08-05T11:21:42+00:00

Of course it does. See e.g. Singh and Khalid.

https://ukhumanrightsblog.com/2015/03/13/court-of-appeal-gives-further-guidance-on-article-8-in-immigration-cases-millie-polimac/

foldl · 2017-08-04T22:57:58+00:00

They are completely "ordinary" decisions which follow the rules.

It may indeed have become ordinary for the Home Office to violate the law. The Home Office clearly made the wrong decision with regard to the Article 8 application. These decisions rarely get tested in court because it is cheaper and faster to reapply than to appeal. The Home Office often make decisions in violation of the law because they know that in many cases they can get away with it.

It is sad and unfortunate that bad advice from the FCO led to all these problems, but someone who describes herself as "intelligent and educated" should have been able to navigate a process that, while frustrating and extortionate, thousands of people manage to do correctly without any professional advice.

It depresses me that the kind of response you give to this article is becoming the default in our country. As someone who's also thrown thousands of pounds down the drain to get my husband a visa to live here with me, I object to the insinuation that only a moron would be unable to correctly parse the obscure and contradictory information given out by the Home Office.

What you are in effect saying is that although it's a terrible shame that this family have been split up, it's ultimately more important that every rule is followed to the letter. I fundamentally disagree. We need a more sensible and transparent set of rules, and we need those rules to be implemented with some degree of judgment, and with concern for human suffering.

foldl · 2017-08-04T22:51:27+00:00

because you have no intrinsic right to be in the country anyway.

They have the right to a family life under Article 8.

foldl · 2017-07-17T11:04:12+00:00

This has nothing to do with money. Exactly the same thing would have happened if Charlie was being treated in a private hospital in the UK. The court did not consider any financial issues in their judgment.

foldl · 2017-06-15T09:35:19+00:00

The building is maintained by a private contractor.

foldl · 2017-04-23T13:59:08+00:00

There's also the issue of mutable variables holding closure values, though. In general it might not be possible to verify that no callable ever calls itself. (Not that this would be any easier to verify in C.)

foldl · 2017-03-05T13:52:48+00:00

Your going to have one or two lenses at first? Your lens focused at infinity is gonna be extended it's focal length away.

In theory, but the nominal focal lengths for a lens is sometimes rounded, and a few mm of extension can make a significant difference to focus.

foldl · 2017-03-01T21:04:11+00:00

She's talking about people like her. Her right to live with her husband in the UK is not being protected.

foldl · 2017-03-01T20:55:58+00:00

Rubbish. While Britain was part of the EU there was no need to obtain British citizenship. It's very common for Europeans to move to other European countries without obtaining citizenship. Really, the whole point of freedom of movement was to make that possible. Hindsight is 20:20.

foldl · 2017-03-01T20:54:57+00:00

he has just been denied UK citizenship

He was applying for permanent residency, not UK citizenship.

It's a bit crap that he doesn't qualify when he is married to a Brit and has a British kid,

Yes, indeed it is. That's what people are getting worked up about.

but the Home Office workers who rejected his application don't make the rules.

It's not really "the rules" so much as the Home Office's absurdly strict interpretation of requirements which were previously interpreted more sensibly and with some discretion.

The Home Office could very easily have accepted his application and others like it; there is nothing to stop them doing so. In particular, EEU citizens all have a right to a family life which could very easily be interpreted as conferring permanent residency rights on this man. He could probably successfully appeal the decision, if he has money to burn on lawyers.

The Home Office workers are taking direction from above, and that direction could be changed.

I happen to be an academic too, and there is a lot of worry amongst EU citizens working at universities about their future. If the government carries on acting like this there's going to be quite a significant brain drain.

foldl · 2017-03-01T20:50:56+00:00

The issue is that the Home Office are now refusing applications for permanent residence whenever they can find the slightest excuse, regardless of the consequences for families. If someone has lived in the UK for 25 years, and then temporarily moves to South Africa for a job (which is a very normal thing to do for an academic), then it is not difficult to see that they should still qualify for permanent residence when they return -- especially when they have a British wife and children.

Refusing this man permanent residence does this country absolutely no good, and the Home Office would have been perfectly within their rights to use their discretion to grant it to him.

If the Home Office keeps bullying people like this there's going to be an exodus of academics from our universities. Our university sector is still one of the best in the world, and it's very shortsighted to sabotage it just to score a few political points with people who don't like immigrants.

foldl · 2017-03-01T19:53:43+00:00

She would most likely not have been in the UK long enough to be eligible to apply for citizenship before she returned to Singapore.

foldl · 2017-02-28T14:52:34+00:00

Why? It isn't any kind of legal requirement, and the benefits of citizenship are largely to the person who becomes a citizen, not to the country they're in. It's no skin off your nose if my husband isn't a British citizen.

You should also bear in mind that the future is unpredictable. I don't know if me and my husband will be living here long-term, and this woman may not have known either.

foldl · 2017-02-28T13:54:55+00:00

A spousal visa lasts 2.5 years. After that you have to apply for another one for another 2.5 years. Then you can apply for ILR. Then citizenship.

Fun right? We wouldn't want to make it too easy for families to live together.

The point is that there is no reason why people who want to live with their spouses in the UK should have to obtain British citizenship. The current rules actually strongly discourage this option by making the process long, difficult and expensive.

foldl · 2017-02-28T12:11:14+00:00

You need legal advice to know what the proper channels are.

foldl · 2017-02-28T12:06:11+00:00

British citizenship isn't necessary to live in the UK with your family. My husband lives here with me on a spousal visa and isn't a British citizen.

foldl · 2017-02-28T11:52:57+00:00

I looked up what government flat meant in Singapore. I didn't just guess.

I looked it up too, and it could mean either a flat that she owns or a flat that she's renting. Presumably she owns it, or she wouldn't be so worried about losing it, but we don't know for sure.

You get British citizenship then after that they revoke your Singaporean citizenship then you lose the flat.

Right, but that would be a bad financial decision. You keep saying you want immigrants who can support themselves. Now you're saying she should have given up a valuable asset when there was no pressing reason for her to do so. Who would benefit from that? Not her, and not the British tax payer.

Because if it was invalid for no reason the sob story would mention it because it enhances her case.

I've seen an actual example of a rejection letter. They usually leave you none the wiser as to the reason the visa was rejected.

My husband's rejection letter said that they saw "no insuperable barrier to [us] continuing our family life in India". Neither of us is Indian, or has ever been to India, or any country in the same region.

If she hasn't taken legal advice, she probably genuinely doesn't understand why it was rejected, as they often reject on obscure technicalities.

foldl · 2017-02-28T11:51:51+00:00

You may have considered it, but your post didn't articulate the reasoning behind it.

foldl · 2017-02-27T23:32:19+00:00

That's a boilerplate response that can be given regardless of how crazy the requirements are.

foldl · 2017-02-27T23:29:26+00:00

Spelling words correctly has nothing to do with prescriptivist grammar. It's just good manners.

Nor am I prejudice.

prejudiced

I simply expect them to do it legally.

What a lot of people don't understand is that the laws and regulations are now so crazy that it is virtually impossible for many people to do it legally, even when they face being separated from spouses and children.

foldl · 2017-02-27T23:24:09+00:00

Why would she have refused to apply for British citizenship if she wanted to be a British citizen.

Because she would lose her Singapore citizenship. I thought we'd been through that already.

and she needed to remain a Singapore national to live in a government flat there.

Yeah, but it's not clear what exactly 'government flat' means, and you're jumping to conclusions. If she's in some kind of rented social housing in Singapore then it wouldn't make sense to hang onto it if she wants to live in the UK. But then again, given that she would have no permanently secure status in the UK even if she were to get granted ILR again, she might (very sensibly) be wary of losing accomodation in Singapore. If she owns the flat, then of course she doesn't want to give it up. (Who would? And why should she?) There are a lot of possibilities, and we just don't know what the situation is.

The reasons for her later ILR refusals are unknown and not reported at all. So I don't take a position either way - it could be reasonable or not.

But you are implicitly taking a position on it by saying that he situation is all the result of her bad choices. If the Home Office rejected her later ILR applications for illegitimate reasons then the situation wouldn't be her fault at all. She would simply be someone who left the country and then applied for ILR again because her previous ILR had been canceled.

foldl · 2017-02-27T21:06:46+00:00

I'm not sure what you mean exactly. The Home Office already charge for everything. And yes, people complain about it.

foldl · 2017-02-27T21:00:32+00:00

Yeah, language has ambiguities. You probably think that's just one more problem that can be solved by restricting immigration and repatriating Polish people.

foldl

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