Hand Of God,
originally uploaded by Balakov.

If you don’t find this amusing, you’ve got no sense of humour. Or you’re still smarting at England losing the game.

Breathe deep outside Ford’s new engine plant at Dagenham in east London and you are likely to choke on a mix of pollutants. Minute flecks of soot and ash from the clogged traffic on the nearby A13 get up your nose and down into your lungs; acrid whiffs of burning sulphur and nitrogen

Nitrogen is really rather un-reactive and can’t really be described as flammable; it also comprises about 80% of the atmosphere at ground level….

drift in from ships on the Thames and planes flying into City airport; and nearby sewage works and power stations all pitch in to make a foul atmospheric soup. Postcode RM9 6SA stinks.

But it is another world inside the factory. While Ford Dagenham makes Jeremy Clarkson-approved, gas-guzzling, V8 turbo-powered petrol engines for Land Rover and Jaguar cars in the traditional dirty way,

No petrol engines are made in Dagenham; the last was several years ago, and this was an inline 4 cylinder 2.3 litre. The last “large” petrol engine with a turbo was probably built there as part of the WWII war-effort and ended up in an armoured vehicle (link).

a separate area of the factory, about the size of six football pitches, is quite spotless. Here, breathing only filtered air, 500 people wearing gloves, masks and special shoes turn out vast numbers of low-emission car engines for all Europe. “It’s like a hospital, but without the MRSA,” says one of the men on the factory floor. “We don’t even have to start the engines. We simulate running them without any fuel.”

….

Europe’s cleanest, and one of its largest, diesel engine factory can barely keep up with new orders. Ford, which sells one in six of all the vehicles in Britain, last year built 150,000 low-emission diesel engines for the European market. This year, it will be over 450,000, and in 2009 it expects to ship 575,000 of these sub-130 gram per kilometre (g/km) engines out of Dagenham to assembly works in Spain and Germany. Nearly one in four of the engines will come back to Britain as Ford Fiestas, Fusions and Focuses. Some already do 65 miles per gallon (mpg), but later this year there will be models that return 70-plus mpg. All will qualify for London’s new low-emission zone, and an attractive government tax break.

Not being incorrect here, but certainly not imparting useful info as none of the above-mentioned cars are even affected by the Low Emission Zone (LEZ) [link].

…Britain expects diesel emissions to grow by about 50% between 2002 and 2020, but the relentless drive away from petrol has one major downside, overlooked by the government, ignored by many environment groups and barely known by the public. A written answer last year by then transport minister Stephen Ladyman showed that diesel engines for passenger cars produce 16.9 times more particulate matter and over 83% more nitrogen oxides than the petrol equivalents, albeit with 4.3% less carbon dioxide.

Indeed, the rise of diesel engines is the principal reason why London and possibly other UK cities have breached legal air quality legislation every year since 2005. Air pollution near many of London’s busiest roads averages well over twice the World Health Organisation’s maximum recommended levels.

Concern centres on particulate pollution - the tiny specks of dust, ash or soot spewed out by vehicles, homes and industry. There are, says the government, more than 1,000 premature deaths a year in London from air pollution, and there is considerable evidence that particulate pollution from diesel engines is associated with death, and admissions to hospital for the treatment of respiratory and cardiovascular diseases and asthma. Transport for London’s consultation for the the capital’s low-emission zone showed that 1,392,000 people were affected by breaches of EU legal limits for particulate matter in 2005.

“Diesel emissions from road transport are by far the biggest single cause of air quality legal breaches,” says Simon Birkett, chair of the cross-party Campaign for Clean Air in London. He urges mayor Johnson and the government to take radical action to meet the demands of the new EU air quality directive, which is due to come into force very shortly and will require the UK to achieve much higher air quality standards for emissions of particulates by 2011.

“Unless the government sets, belatedly and soon, national standards for the abatement of emissions of oxides of nitrogen from older diesel vehicles of all main types, these vehicles must be banned from the most polluted parts of London if the UK is to comply with air quality laws,” Birkett says. He wants to see all car advertisements show, in grams per kilometre, the emissions of the hazardous oxides of nitrogen and particulate matter, as well as carbon dioxide emissions.

Inevitable trade-offs

There is a real danger, he says, that in the rush to achieve carbon dioxide targets, other forms of pollution that can be highly injurious to health may be ignored or compromised. “Air pollution needs to be tackled holistically, with sensible judgments being made in the inevitable trade-offs between air quality and climate change,” Birkett says.

“A classic example is the latest Department for Transport’s CO2 calculator, which is likely to encourage people to choose cars with diesel engines because of their small climate change advantage, even though they generate substantially more of the hazardous particulate matter and nitrogen oxides. We should question whether there is still a place for diesel engines in large cities while there is such a serious public health problem.”

Back in Dagenham, Ford keeps a collection of its finest old models. Pride of place goes to a pristine Model T Ford, circa 1908. It still does 25 miles to the diesel gallon, more than many of the gas guzzling engines that Ford makes.

Errrm, a diesel Model T? That’s quite rare. Very rare in fact. Try searching with google for a mention of one and you won’t find one. (What’s a diesel gallon? Is it different from a petrol one?)

Ironically, its diesel engine was designed to be driven on vegetable oil, and, 100 years on, its particulate emissions would have been significantly less than almost any engine the factory now makes.

What utter shit. Mr Vidal is living in a dream-world if he thinks a diesel engine built in 1908 has a cleaner exhaust than one of the engines being currently being shelled out of the factory by the Thames. Look at wikipedia for how much tighter the car emission regulations have been getting of late!

That a pseudo-scientific article can be so badly informed is dismaying. That many readers will believe its inaccuracies is inevitable. Be careful out there kids!

I thought the colour combination of the incandescently-lit alcove and its icon and blue sky were rather spiffing.  Sadly the religious aspect leaves me azure-cold and not orangey-warm. 

Baños, Ecaudor.  Canon G7.

During a burst of semi-constructive surfing on an Internet shop, I came across this old photographic reference book from the fifties: Ilford Manual of Photography, edited by Alan Horder.

The copy I have in front of me is the second reprint of the 5th edition. Whilst the dated style of language may be of curiosity, the clear descriptions of photographic lenses and black and white photography are necessary knowledge for anyone interested in the science of chemical light capture. For that matter, a lens is a lens whether it’s in front of a slice of silver salt embedded in gelatin or a slice of semi-conductor.

The book kicks off with the broadest discussion of photography and other methods of capturing a pictorial image. It then moves on the the nature of light. You can hopefully get a sense of how comprehensive this manual is.

It is amusing to read about 35mm film being described as “microfilm”. No doubt a photographer from the period would be very pleasantly surprised at the resolution and colour rendition of today’s film (….and tomorrow’s, what of them?). Wonder what they would have thought about digital photography?

No matter how well presented in-depth information is on the web, I find that printed documents are far more easy to comprehend when trying to take in “new” ideas. Clear diagrams on a page are always more easily ingested.

Descriptions of old products and chemical composition of developers, fixers and toners are illuminative, almost entertaining at times….a veritable fifties cookbook no less. There appear to be quite a few available cheaply on auction sites; why not see for yourself?

Previously the Goldfrapp duo have used electronica extensively but their latest album has shifted their tunes to an almost folk song like acoustic nature. Though some tracks have still got a definite electric component, the electro-disco tracks of Supernature and Black Cherry aren’t re-visited.
I was lucky enough to get tickets for the gig at the Union Chapel in North London where Ms Goldfrapp and the newly-enlarged band ran through some of their new stuff, plus some older tracks - though nothing of Black Cherry. Fantastic venue, and a fantastic gig! The Chapel is supported largely by a band of volunteers.

Is stop bath necessary when developing 35mm film? Yes. And no.

Yes if you’re using some homebrew concoction of a developer and intend to re-use the fixer bath over and over.
No, if you’re using mainstream (i.e. all of Ilford’s) products on a one-shot basis.

I hope that clarifies matters! The acidic nature of fixer will stop development of the mainstream developers dead their tracks, as well as doing its main job of fixing. Obviously the fixer will become contaminated with a any residual developer that is left in the tub. Hence the logic of using the fixer as one-shot.

What about the cost of doing this the one-shot way? From my sums, it costs about 55 pence to develop a single 35mm film to do it this way. In relation to the total cost of cameras, lenses, scanners, endless lists of accessories and the film itself, this really isn’t very much….is it? Add to that the time and faff saved from not having to measure out stop bath and store the working solutions of fixer and stop. Why worry about if the fixer or stop is depleted?

Now perhaps if I were running tens of films per day it might be wasteful but on the smaller number I’m actually doing there’s no problem, IMHO.

Wouldn’t it be handy if the the film companies printed Depth of Field or Hyperfocal tables or charts on the cardboard boxes and cartons used for films?

Few zoom lenses have DoF info on them and hyperfocal tables don’t get seen much either, but both are useful.

There’s a good Wikipedia entry on hyperfocal calculations, and in an idle moment, I made the table below in Excel with the formula:

H = f^2 / Nc

H is hyperfocal distance
f is focal length
N is f-number
c is the circle of confusion limit; I used 0.033 for 35mm film

There’s a very good online tool to create the tables at johnhendry.com. Anyone out there think it’s a missed opportunity by manufacturers…?  Pay a tiny bit more for some more information?  Altruistic reasons for educating the masses…?

Always wondered but never found out?….what’s with the squares? Wonder no more! Thanks to www.Laiblin.de.

If, like me, you frequently rate HP5+ at ISO800 you can scrape off the square “2″ on the coding so the camera automatically rates it 800 and not 400. This will work for any native ISO400 film of course. It gives you some extra freedom with cameras that don’t have a manual film speed setting.

Maybe you can start wondering why it stops at ISO5000: wouldn’t a jump to 6400 have been more useful?

11th hour, 11th day, 11th month.

Barnsley v Brentford,
originally uploaded by Greenwich Photography.

It’s just like watching Brazil, apparently.  I’m not sure if that’s the country, their football team or brazil nut.