Disqus - Latest Comments for julian67

Re: Best Lenses for Micro Four Thirds in 2024

Julian Hughes — Fri, 03 May 2024 16:35:26 -0000

I shoot still images and could manage with the M.Zuiko 9-18mm and any of the better, non-pro, kit lenses which has OIS and gives me Dual IS with modern Lumix cams with IBIS. And all this, plus extra batteries, cleaning pen, PL filter etc. can fit into a small bag designed to carry a single full frame DSLR with kit lens. I bought into MFT to get *away* from carrying heavy kit in big bags. So far it's working, thanks to IBIS and Dual IS.

Re: Best Lenses for Micro Four Thirds in 2024

Julian Hughes — Fri, 03 May 2024 16:27:35 -0000

Yes, a few of the older kit lenses and ultra compact power zoom lenses are not that great. But I can't think of any current lens which would disappoint. I have two 14-42 kit lenses. The older one (G3 kit lens) is OK but not great. The newer "HD" version is smaller, lighter and much better. My Panasonic 20mm F1.7 is excellent. Genuinely beyond criticism. My M.Zuiko 9-18mm is superb - I don't need F1.4 or 1.8 or 2 on a superwide zoom. It is sharp and contrasty and flare resistant. My Panasonic 45-150 HD is fine. The OIS combined with IBIS means I can make really sharp handheld shots with a 35mm/full frame equivalent of a 300mm. I *never* managed that when I used film cameras. Even using a 135mm or 200mm without monopod or tripod was an invitation to soft images. My most recent kit lens is the Panasonic 12-60. It is not *razor* sharp like the 20mm F1.7 but also it isn't bad at all. The massively more expensive Leica/Pro version offers one stop wider aperture but about the same performance otherwise. And even the budget kit lens is weather sealed! For me, living in UK where rain is hardly rare, this is sometimes the difference between being able to take a photo or not. I think MFT format is a little misunderstood and its budget and non-pro lenses hugely underrated.

Re: Best Lenses for Micro Four Thirds in 2024

Julian Hughes — Fri, 03 May 2024 10:31:33 -0000

The one thing all those lenses have in common? I can't afford any of them! I don't care though, most of the cheaper Panasonic and Olympus lenses are optically very good, some as good as the pro models, are much, much smaller and lighter, tiny and I don't care about gaining an extra f-stop.

Re: The rumored new Lumix camera might be a fixed lens Full Frame model

Julian Hughes — Wed, 01 May 2024 15:59:36 -0000

I'd rather see a small MFT compact with tolerable EVF and weather sealing. Something like the GX80 but a little smaller. No need to reimplement the GX8.

Re: Confirmed: New Panasonic announcement in May

Julian Hughes — Wed, 01 May 2024 09:21:20 -0000

No faux pentaprism required. See GX7, GX8, GX9, GX80 etc.

Re: Confirmed: New Panasonic announcement in May

Julian Hughes — Sat, 27 Apr 2024 19:11:19 -0000

I do like the rear displays but don't *need* them. To keep a device small I'd rather lose that and keep the EVF. I have a GX8, it's great but I'd prefer something pocketable, GF1 or GX1 size but with modern sensor, IBIS, no shutter shock. The GX8 is heavier & about as bulky as my G80!

Re: Confirmed: New Panasonic announcement in May

Julian Hughes — Sat, 27 Apr 2024 10:08:21 -0000

I'd like a genuinely small M43 camera with excellent EVF like on the GX8. I don't need built-in flash or two hundred settings. PASM, ISO, aperture and shutter speed dials like an old film SLR such as Minolta XD7 should be enough, and a button to toggle focus modes. Save size and space by omitting the rear display. Images can be passed to a phone or tablet for review. M43 cameras are now the size of APS-C or smaller DSLRs when they could be the size of the old GF1 or GX1, or even the genuinely tiny GM series.

Re: Show-off vicars are ruining the Church of England

Julian Hughes — Sun, 03 Mar 2024 01:21:26 -0000

I don't know why I suddenly feel able to pass judgement on sermons delivered by men and women who have gone through serious theological training. I blame Samuel Pepys for encouraging us to treat these extremely solemn declarations as a pastime or mere means of distraction. Also that any fool can pick apart their immensely gormless propositions as easily as farting.

Re: Could Iran shift to dynastic rule when Khamenei dies?

Julian Hughes — Sun, 03 Mar 2024 01:14:42 -0000

If you look at the fall of corrupt and unpopular regimes and at corrupt and unpopular regimes which survive, the difference seems to be the willingness to use uncompromising and deadly violence to suppress any opposition. In 1989 The CCP hesitated, looked like it might be forced into something like Perestroika, but then unleashed massive lethal force. It has been essentially unchallenged since then. In Czechoslovakia and Hungary and East Germany the dictatorial governments, or their masters, used massive lethal force when challenged and they survived for many more decades. When they lost the will or the confidence to command then they fell. It must surely go the same way in Iran. Huge parts of the urban populations hate the regime and can organise. Much of the rural population apparently feels no such animus. There has been bloody conflict on the streets already but the regime has held its nerve and the military and paramilitary forces have not wavered, so far as we know. A small hesitation and it could all fall down.

Re: Show-off vicars are ruining the Church of England

Julian Hughes — Sat, 02 Mar 2024 21:42:45 -0000

If you can hold your drink you can experience three or four fives in one session!

Re: Show-off vicars are ruining the Church of England

Julian Hughes — Sat, 02 Mar 2024 21:40:18 -0000

Ruining the C of E? The ruin of the C of E lies in people not believing, or not believing enough to attend a service, and that really happened over 100 years ago. I'm also a Brighton resident. There is a truly unusual abundance of massive parish churches throughout the city, genuinely vast edifices. They were mostly put up in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in the hope of saving the lost of a venal and wicked city. This was exactly the era when the "lost" realised that their suspicions about religion were right all along, thanks to Darwin, literacy, education and various other forms of enlightenment/wickedness (you choose). The only ones of these massive churches that look busy to me are those serving new evangelical communities, or those buildings which have been reconsecrated by Coptics from Egypt or the Middle East. Good luck to them, I wish them well. It must be a great relief and a joy to worship as one chooses, without disdain or threat. Sometimes this city shines. But trendy, narcissistic vicars are not the reason why the C of E is in decline. The church was always the refuge of the idiot son. Now it gets the dimmer women as well. I listen to Choral Evensong on R3 mostly because I love the Psalms and the excellent singing. But, my god, the sermons! Piffle, wiffle, waffle and prattle! Occasionally a good one by some eccentric who has read the Bible and digested it, or a well spoken rendering of some fabulous conflict such as Jericho's walls being breached, but mostly brainless and vacuous tripe, seemingly designed to either bore or annoy. A few exceptional drivel merchants manage both.

Re: Sunak pledges extremism crackdown

Julian Hughes — Fri, 01 Mar 2024 20:42:33 -0000

"Sunak pledges extremism crackdown"

He did nothing of the kind. Surely journalism involves listening as well as writing?

He described that he had begged our various useless and disliked and despised police forces to enforce the law. He pointed out the he, as a politician, has no real influence and cannot insist that they do anything which we expect them to do! But he hopes they might. They won't. We all know that. How do we know? Because those police forces were already aware that they can ignore the government, the law, and the public and had chosen to do so repeatedly and continuously. Their priority is always for their life to be simpler. Burglary? Awkward and best ignored. Robbery? Ignore it. Theft from shops. Is that even a crime? Calling for genocide? Well, it's all a matter of opinion. Sit on a bench during lockdown? This must not be allowed! Stop hiring maniacs and rapists? Recruitment crisis! They don't like going after criminals or dealing with crimes. It's so much easier to bully the innocent. So that is what they do.

Yes, I am bitter. In the last ten years I've experienced the communal area of my 6 apartment house being invaded by a huge, angry man wanting to kill and trying to break down the doors of the individual flats (police response? can you deal with it) and then that same man doing it again a few hours later (police response? we're quite busy actually). My drug dealing neighbours tried pushing me around, unsuccessfully, when I objected to them conducting their business on our shared access. Police response? Would I like a crime number? Recently while doing that extraordinary and provocative thing of walking home after visiting Sainsbury's two drug addicts attacked me and tried to grab my phone, broad daylight and middle of the afternoon on a busy street in a big city within 20 metres of a police "hut" (it's too sad and pathetic to elaborate, use google, it's in Brighton on London Road and yes, it has been vandalised and graffitied). I held onto the phone and managed to dial 999. Police response? An offer of a crime number. And the occasional utterly useless email over the 6 weeks since.

So why do I think the police are not going to deal with people expressing genocidal intent? Because they are not there for us. They stand by and watch while vicious, murderous propaganda is broadcast onto our parliament. They treat victims and complainants as the nuisance but they indulge and assist the offenders. They are ess aich eye tee. A disgrace. An embarrassment.

Re: Watch: Tory Alicia Kearns rebukes MP for removing ‘T’ in ‘LGBT’

Julian Hughes — Fri, 01 Mar 2024 19:10:49 -0000

GestapoLGBTQ+

Re: Watch: Tory Alicia Kearns rebukes MP for removing ‘T’ in ‘LGBT’

Julian Hughes — Fri, 01 Mar 2024 18:29:22 -0000

At some point in the near future the few remaining members of the parliamentary Conservative Party might reflect on how lonely they feel, how isolated and how despised, how *powerless*. They should revisit this article and then consider what it might mean to be conservative but also liberal and tolerant. Being conservative and also liberal and tolerant does not mean to harangue and demean people who don't go along with the latest social theory and ideology. It means to allow every person their voice, to concede that the person you disagree with may have good reasons for having arrived at a different conclusion. It does not mean that they are right and you are wrong, or that you are right and they are wrong. It means that you consider what they say, and why they say it. If you feel it must be opposed then oppose. Not that you impose your view on others and tell them what they can and cannot say or feel or understand.

Alicia Kearns you are finished. And all the others like you.

p.s. I use the word liberal (small l) in the old sense, from before modern US politics destroyed the use of that word to describe a very decent and kind sentiment and philosophy.

Re: Justin Webb has been wronged by the BBC

Julian Hughes — Fri, 01 Mar 2024 17:47:31 -0000

He has been publicly criticised by his employer, our state broadcaster (I know they hate that description but it's so true) for stating a verifiable fact. Not an opinion. Not a libel. Not some awful or sly inference. A plain fact, demonstrably true. It's open to any person to prove that it is false. They cannot.

Re: Why is a West End theatre putting on ‘black only’ performances?

Julian Hughes — Thu, 29 Feb 2024 14:57:18 -0000

My name is Whitey
Tremble under my Gaze, and despair!

Re: The sinister reality of trail hunting

Julian Hughes — Thu, 29 Feb 2024 14:38:24 -0000

I don't suggest they do, so your comment is empty of meaning.

Re: The sinister tactics of Hope Not Hate

Julian Hughes — Thu, 29 Feb 2024 14:36:31 -0000

Amazingly the BBC has now edited the report and removed that sentence. There is nothing to indicate that the page has been edited but it has been. Down the memory hole it goes, it never existed and the two journalists who published that poison never wrote it! Fortunately I'm not the only person who quoted it and noted the bias and dishonesty it communicated. Searching on Google reveals it can still be found on many foreign news sites who use the BBC as a source for their English language content.

Re: The sinister tactics of Hope Not Hate

Julian Hughes — Thu, 29 Feb 2024 14:28:42 -0000

I would hope that putting our own house in order includes not allowing hateful people, sometimes mobs of them, to terrorise, threaten and assault people for being Jewish/not being Muslim/disagreeing/not submitting.

Re: Jeremy Hunt is about to disappoint his party

Julian Hughes — Wed, 28 Feb 2024 23:53:52 -0000

Wouldn't it be good to have a GE tomorrow? Yes, we'll get that idiot Starmer for a while (not as long as he thinks as his party will do away with him) but we can kill the Conservative Party stone dead. It has turned into a machine for negating and opposing the voters, for taxing the hell out of everyone, and all the while being so feeble or in thrall to Marxist dogma that it can't even persuade the police to police or the border force to enforce borders. It's packed with idiots who think women have a willy and being in any way normal is a deficiency. No wonder they trawl for votes in retirement homes, dementia sufferers must be the only people left who forget how utterly useless they are.

Re: Jeremy Hunt is about to disappoint his party

Julian Hughes — Wed, 28 Feb 2024 23:42:13 -0000

Jeremy Hunt & Rishi Sunak! Anyone remember voting for these to lead our nation? I recall voting for a Conservative party and leadership utterly different to this. I guess we should congratulate Heseltine, Alan Duncan and all the other total wets who despise the voters, for their expertise in political backbiting and assassination and in rendering all Tories not in the safest seats utterly unelectable. I know Reform UK is a joke, that its website is less good than that of my local Deli, and that it is surely full of chancers. At this point that all looks much better and infinitely preferable to the self serving creeps in Conservative Party. I will be voting Reform.

Re: The sinister reality of trail hunting

Julian Hughes — Wed, 28 Feb 2024 23:32:25 -0000

No, we keep them crammed together in cages so tiny that they become aggressive with each other. That's why their beaks are cut off. They see no daylight, not even a glimmer of nature. They can do nothing but feed and excrete. They have an artificial life of pain and are slaughtered as soon as they meet weight. The slaughter does indeed include being ripped apart, although not by human teeth. This is more cruel than anything ever seen in a hunt. And it is inflicted upon billions of creatures, constantly, as a process. But isn't that supermarket packaging attractive? Healthy living chicken? Organic? It's all lies and nonsense yet people are incensed about that single activity most vital to human evolution and existence because they perceive a class difference?

Re: The sinister reality of trail hunting

Julian Hughes — Wed, 28 Feb 2024 21:16:35 -0000

You can record their trespasses. This can be a written record, ideally with witnesses, or a photographic or video record with timestamps, very easy to do these days. Hunts do not appear at random. They hunt on particular days with a well advertised calendar of locations and times. If they are ignoring the rights of property owners then gathering some evidence and seeking either restraint or penalty ought not be too hard.

Re: The sinister tactics of Hope Not Hate

Julian Hughes — Wed, 28 Feb 2024 21:03:34 -0000

Dear Mr. Murray, have you seen the report on the BBC entitled "Protests descending into mob rule"?

I'll quote:

"Mass and largely peaceful demonstrations have been taking place across the UK since the 7 October attacks on Israel by Hamas..."

Apparently calling for the destruction of a nation and, by implication, the
destruction of most of the people who live there, is considered "largely
peaceful" by our nation's supposedly impartial broadcaster. I'm
posting this here as I am one of the powerless. I have no column, no
public profile. But I see this and want to alert someone with a soul.
Make a noise! Embarrass them! Shame them!"

Re: AI just exploded. Again | The Spectator

Julian Hughes — Tue, 27 Feb 2024 07:03:45 -0000

".....if you put one grain of sand on a chess square then two on the next,
then four, you soon end up with more rice than exists in the universe"

This must be magic or miracle, not AI.