Tuesday, October 31, 2006

Melbourne at Dusk


I have been trying to load photos using blogger but it always return with errors. Too tired to continue after half hour hence loaded a smaller version to Flickr. This picture was taken at Flinders Street Station at around 8.30 pm. This is right after watching the fire spitting “show” at Crown Entertainment. I will try to load some of the better photos once I regain my strength after a long and wonderful 8 days in Melbourne….

Friday, October 20, 2006

DSLR Final Part

FYI, I owned a canon Film SLR in which I used only auto mode and others such as landscape, portrait, night scene only, I have not branch out to the creative zone. So I am still a casual photographer, in other words the green box user. So when I first get my 400D, the first mode I tried is the green box. The result is not as good as I want it to be. Subsequent reads on some forum, it looks like there is some underexposure issue and majority of it, was raised by green box photographer like me.

Due to this I have been comparing the 400D with my Casio Z750 and I find that it could be due to the way the ETTL II of 400D works. Z750 photos was overexpose as compare the slightly under expose of 400D. So that’s where I finally branch out to other modes where I could set the Flash and also exposure compensation. I have took over thousand of pictures, ranging from toys, fruits, haze, my sister, my cupboard, my toilet, flowers and all of this is within the house. I am still not sure if its up to my expectation yet, I guess my Melbourne trip is going to be a testing ground.

I even bought a book on travel photography. I have also been hanging at the 2nd floor of Kinokuniya at KLCC for the past 2 weekends reading up on some photography books. The more I read the more confuse I become. I guess I am not the type of guys that could switch to photography as a career or I am too old. Anyway I still went out and bought myself an Rm2K plus lens, the EF-S 17-85mm f/4-5.6 IS USM Lens. Some might ask why EF-S lens, as Full Frame could be the future. I guess price of full frame camera will not drop so drastically. I even bought myself a CLR polarizer filter. I have not taken any photo with it hence I am not sure how good will it be wrapping around my lens and the picture quality.

Actually after struggling and spending time reading up sites after sites, finding ways to take good photos, I felt that the most important point is we should enjoyed it and not worry about the quality of the photos. Just take the camera out, look at the viewfinder and press the button……………

Thursday, October 19, 2006

DSLR Part 1

I am in holiday mood, preparing myself to go to Melbourne during this coming DepaRaya Celebration. I have even promoted myself from a Point and Shoot (P&S) Camera user to a Digital SLR hoping to capture some good photos. I have been to some nice places and having good photos to remember of it makes a hell difference. Some might argue that its does not matter as its all in the memory. I would like to share my experience in the process of deciding

As we grow older our memory start to fade away. One day you might think that someone left hand is your wife left hand or even better some 6-foot tall, 40-26-36 blonde in the poster near your bedroom is your wife rather than the lady that sleep beside you with her facial mask on. So the best way to remind us is with a good set of photos. Although some might say as long as the photo is viewable is enough. Maybe my expectation is higher as I do not want to be reminded of a place in which I have been and enjoyed tremendously with the same quality I seen from our daily newspaper or the quality of what you see when we open our window everyday since early of this month, hazy…

Who do not like to open up your photo album or your digital image in your computer and saw a National Geographic photo popping up? Raise your hand or legs or some other thing else that can be raised (For guys only, hahaha)? However sometimes expectation and reality is a total different thing. We are just mere day-to-day nerds who sit and face the idiot screen for hours daily, what do we know about camera? When I decided to jump over, that’s where the headache and nightmare starts. There are 3 brands of Digital SLR Sony, Canon and Nikon to choose from and tons of technical camera jargon that comes my way. The 3 brands I mention falls into the category that I aim for which are at least 10-mega pixels. I am the type who likes resolutions.

Words like spot metering, partial metering, evaluative metering, flash filled, exposure compensation, flash compensation, mirror locked, sharpness, contrast, RGB, SRGB, E TTL II, depth of field and tons more. I guess the problem is we are not rich hence we need to ensure that we buy a good one. Actually I have an after thought, will talk about it at the end.

So after weeks of crawling the net, I have finally decided Canon 400D is the camera to go for. Lets put the $$$ issue aside as I believe although I am not rich but I am the type who is doing quite ok and do not mind to splurge out some blood money to buy something in which I think could enhance or increase my happiness level. So I finally brought it a week ago and I have been playing around with it. Actually if I decide to buy Nikon D80, I do not think I could buy it even I have the money as it seems it has been an elusive camera, most of the stores that I went to say that they do not have any stock.

To be continue....

U Khao Yai Resort at Khao Yai, Thailand

Room and surrounding view of the resort #travel #khaoyai #Thailand #asia