New lens, wide options.

After months of reading reviews and researching, I finally got my first lens besides the kit lens plus a flash gun.(Thanks to my awesome dad) With a budget of only RM3,500++, I decided to go for the Canon 55-250mm which cost only Rm1,000 and has good image quality in my opinion for its price. The other lens, which i'm in love with is the Tamron 90mm f/2.8 macro. At RM1,300 its image quality rivals that of Canon's 100mm L range lens which cost more than double its price. The only difference I guess is that Canon's 100mm has IS and has a bit more working range, though the price of the Tamron's 90mm definitely makes up for it. It's a great pair of lens and I love its beautiful bokeh. Anyway, I finally found time last week end to test out the lens during the hectic week. With the 55-250mm I shot photos of birds in my aviary and I am very satisfied with them. In fact, its probably one of my best animal shots I have taken so far, if I dare say.


Tamron 90mm f/2.8 Macro



I used the 90mm macro lens to take macro shots of course. Macro photography really opens up a whole new world. I bought this lens mainly because of two things. Its image quality is great, and second because it had a wide aperture of f/2.8 which makes it ideal for portraiture as well, not to mention that it has a focal length 90mm which makes it great for portraiture too. Oh and also of course for its macro ability, which is great, because macro shots are always fun. So if you're stuck at home or just feeling too tired to go out to shoot something, why not take a photo of something in your garden? The 90mm is a very versatile lens with great image quality, and with a price tag like that, its a definite buy for those who want great image quality but aren't willing to fork out RM3,000+++ for Canon's L range. Of course the down side of it is that it has no IS(image stabilizer), but for such an attractive price tag, I wouldn't mind using the tripod whenever I use the 90mm.




This photo of a colourful green in colour bug I took of it while it crawled all over a flower in my garden while drinking its nectar is now my desktop wall paper.


Nissin Di866 Professional

As for the flash gun, I got the Nissin Di866 which costs around RM1,300++. After reading a review on Digital Camera magazine who picked it as the overall best flashgun to get compared to the 580ex and nikon's other flashguns, I decided to research up on it more. For a reasonable price tag and with the great reviews it got I decided to get it. I have yet to taken any great portrait shots with it yet, so for now I have no photos to show with it being used.

I did test it out on my mom and maid though for their privacy I won't post it up.




Also, last Friday the moon was up and shining really bright. I took the opportunity to test out the 55-250mm image quality limits by trying my first moon shot ever. I started first by setting my camera up on the tripod and got it in position. I had to wait for at least two and a half hours outside adjusting the camera's angle as the moon's position changed due to the fact that the earth was rotating. I just stood outside my house for two hours just chilling and listening to music while I waited for it become dark enough. I guess I wasn't bored of waiting mainly because the process of taking a type of shot I never tried before was so fun in itself. Finally it was dark enough and I took the first shot of it. Little did I know that the moon ended up being over exposed although I was using partial metering due to the fact that the moon it self was so far from earth that the camera was apparently metering for the darkness as well. I thought taking a photo of the moon should be simple enough, but have I ever been more wrong. I decided to check up on the net about taking shots of the moon and got a quick guide on it. Preferably, if you have a tripod, you should set the ISO to as low as possible which is 100. And, since the camera can't meter for the moon properly, you'll have to compensate for it yourself and bracket if you must. Finally after taking quite a few shots of the moon, I decided to call it a day. Now for the next step which is post processing, is fairly complicated as well. Since the moon was so small in the photo(because it is far from earth) you have to crop it, affecting the image quality as well. This raises up a couple of problems. First, it makes the digital noise a lot worse, though it shouldn't be a problem if you used a low ISO like 100. Second, any camera shake or mild vibrations itself would be made a whole lot obvious. And that's where I fell prey to. I took the shots using a 10 second exposure setting but since I was using a slow shutter speed of 1/6 sec, the vibration of the mirror in the camera must have affected it. Thanks for the tip by Horngh Yih from Click! for bringing to light that I should have switched on the 'mirror-lock' mode which allows the mirror in the camera to flip up first before the shutter is opened, letting the vibration die off before the exposure starts on the sensor. So unfortunately motion blur could be seen in my photo of the moon, but i'm still happy with it nonetheless. But cropping was only the first half of the story, I then had to shape the tone curve into an S shape, increase the detail by a bit as well and also drag the histogram apart to give it as much detail as possible. All in all, it was a great first experience of taking a photo of the moon. Though it wasn't perfect, but it certainly felt great and this definitely won't be last time I am taking a photo of the moon, I just gotta wait for the moon to be up and bright on a clear night. Hmm... i'll be right back.

The moon

Has the line between photography and digital designing been blurred?

Golden fall

Now in the digital age, many people are now using the 'digital dark room' to process their photos. In fact, the digital age could have been the best thing that could have happened to photography. I myself use the digital dark room for processing. But, what is photography? "Photography is the process, activity and art of creating still or moving pictures by recording radiation on a radiation-sensitive medium, such as a photographic film, or an electronic sensor. Light patterns reflected or emitted from objects activate a sensitive chemical or electronic sensor during a timed exposure, usually through a photographic lens in a device known as a camera that also stores the resulting information chemically or electronically. Photography has many uses for business, science, art, and recreational purposes." That is the definition in Wikipedia. So with that said, should digital manipulation be kept to a limit, or should it be used fully to create great 'pictures' even though the process of taking the shot itself wasn't so great? What do I mean by this? I mean, there was a recent article I read on Digital Camera Magazine about 'adding' a rainbow to your landscape shots. To be honest I was actually disappointed to see the article. In my honest opinion, photography is the art of taking a photo and capturing that moment in time forever let it be for business, art or recreational purposes with a camera. To actually be able to add an important element into your photo that wasn't there at first just distorts the meaning of a photography. It isn't photography anymore, its digital designing.

However, some could still argue though, what if the photo is used for publishing? What if its just to do business instead for artistic or recreational purposes? After all, money makes the world go round and makes the most honest man stray from his principles. So what if you want to manipulate your photo in such a way that you're practically creating your own scene that never existed in the first place? As long as you manage to sell the picture isn't that all that matters? This is from a business point of view of course. Well, then I have to admit, by all means do do it if its going to make you rich, but do not call it photography, let alone a photograph. Because it has actually become a digitally designed picture, instead of a photograph captured by a camera alone. There should be a fine line between the two, and that line should never be blurred. One of the few who actually still sticks to uncropped images is National Geographic, believing in showing only what was there and the truth.(I crop my photos by the way) My point is that digital imaging should never be confused photography, and the fine line between the two should always be acknowledged so as not to distort what photography is in the first place, 'Photography is the process, activity and art of creating still or moving pictures by recording radiation on a radiation-sensitive medium, such as a photographic film, or an electronic sensor.'

Photographer of the Year 2010

I recently bought June's issue of Digital Camera Magazine and I came across an ad about the Photographer of the Year competition. I only just started reading Digital Camera's magazine so it came as a pleasant surprise to me. I've decided to participate in the Young photographer of the Year competition since i'm only 16 and still below 18(dammit). I think if you're interested in photography as a hobby, or you're an amateur or even a professional, it would be to your advantage to join the competition.

Of course, the competition would be stiff as there will thousands of entries from all over the world, but its not about winning, its about putting up your best shots and showing it to the rest of the world among thousands of others. I can't help but wonder if my photos will stand out among the thousands. What are the odds? Slim, maybe, but not impossible. Either way I still love the photos I have uploaded and I think its a great experience as well to join the competition. So what are you waiting for? Go pick your best shots and send them in!

http://www.photoradar.com/photographer-of-the-year

http://www.youngphotographeroftheyear.com/

Arch shots

Today was kinda cool. We were told a bunch of korean dudes were gonna visit us and Pn. Catherine even said that one of them was a pelakon. It turned out they were all old and wrinkly, probably smelly too but I didn't bother to find out. The translator who was kinda hot from what I heard from everyone. We then spent almost the whole morning cleaning the library and also discussing what to do for this 'campaign' thing organized by the seniors to earn more money for the library since library week didn't really earn as much as they expected. Hopefully we'll be able to earn quite a lot during this campaign. :)


Okay now back to photography. When it comes to architectural shots which i'm still not very familiar with, one of my favourite way to shoot a building or the interior of a building is with an arch shot. Its fairly simple with some basic framing and composition it would make a good photo in my opinion. Shooting it from such an angle gives the photo a more dynamic angle and makes it a lot more interesting. As one of the instructors at the Click! photography work shop I attended too a few months ago said, 'Its as if the picture is jumping out'. Here's an example of an arch shot I took. Its one of my favourites. I took it in a shop lot in Melaka with Uncle Cheah.
Let light through

Seeing new potential photos when you re-look at old images

I don't know if this has happened to anyone else, every time I browse through my old un processed images, I always tend to find new potential pictures that I didn't see when I first took that photo. For example when I re-look at a photo I took a couple weeks or days ago I see a potential image that I didn't see when I took it. Don't get me wrong though, I don't just take snap shots without even visualizing, but some times when I get back home and go through the processing of the photos I took that day, when I first look at it, it sometimes doesn't feel right to me or just didn't come out the way I want it to. I'll then probably just chuck it aside and move on to process another photo. Then, probably a couple days or weeks later when I go through the photos again, to my surprise I can suddenly see a potential image if I crop that same photo that I didn't use or edit it a bit. I guess this is probably because our brain is trained to look at things from a certain perspective and tend be naturally stubborn at times. So the lesson of the day is that we should always train ourselves to look at things from different perspectives because its important not just from a photographic point of view, but generally in our life as well. And here's a couple of photos I took at the KTMB station with uncle Cheah. The train arriving

Nuts

Is this the only way out of misery

Cameron Highlands

-The villa

It's been quite some time since i've updated my blog, but since the last update i've taken a whole lot of photos just waiting to be processed and also uploaded. I'll start this post off with the Cameron Highlands trip I went to organized by my school's librarian board. I arrived in school where we were suppose to meet and I was one of the early birds with Hui Wen and Janice there too. Not long after everyone else arrived and we were soon on our way to Cameron Highlands on the bus. The bus ride was probably around 3 hours long and it was boring. I wasn't feeling great that morning and I just slept instead of talking for the most of the ride. We finally arrived at our 'villa' and I was actually a bit disappointed because I expected it to be colder than that. Haha oh well, guess global warming isn't a hoax after all eh? We then checked in and I shared rooms with Aziz, Aiman, Amin, Adrie and these other two form 3 kids. The room was fairly big and we had a small little tv with HBO and some other crappy channels. Haha and the girl's room(hor mun, hor qian, hui wen, janice, farah, lu kim, poh choo) opposite mine had no tv at all. They honestly weren't missing out on much though. ;)

After chilling out for a while lunch soon was ready. Rice packed with some chicken and vegetables and we were given a box drink, I took chrysanthemum. Sat with with hui wen, janice, hor mun, hor qian and a couple others. I didn't really feel like eating at that time and I barely finished finished my lunch. Just ate it for the sake of not getting gastric, hahas. =P After our lunch we then got the bus and went to the Rose Farm. The tickets were kinda expensive so we didn't bother to go except for the teachers, Pn. Hamizawati, En. Ishak En. Rashid I think? Along with the new afternoon session teacher whose name i'm not sure. So we all just kinda hang around the shops near the rose farm and before I forget to mention, at this point of time I realized EVERYTHING Cameron Highlands is all based around strawberries. That's right, strawberries. I'm guessing its because Cameron Highlands is one of the few places with a suitable climate to grow strawberries. Too bad I don't really like strawberries. Anyway there was a stall at the Rose Farm selling herbal boiled eggs. Hor mun and her sister and everyone was buying it. I was kind of tempted to buy it too, but at that time I didn't really have an appetite to eat anything at all. We just kinda walked around and chill until it started raining and we all gathered on the bus again. Next stop, Strawberry farm, where a dramatic event occured.

We reached the strawberry farm after a 30 min ride or so. My legs were hurting like crap because it was bruised by paintball shots I got a couple days before when I went to play paintball with my friends. Walking up the hill to reach the plantation itself was a battle itself and it certainly wasn't helping my dislike towards strawberries. At the top there were some shops selling all kinds of strawberry food and drinks, from strawberry pan cakes to fruit drinks and milk shakes. I got myself a pure strawberry drink for the heck of it since everyone else was getting a strawberry drink as well. Hey, how often do I go to Cameron Highlands? Anyway after walking around checking out the place we saw a commotion outside one of the shops. Rushing there to see what was happening, it turned out this girl was stung by a bee. She was in tears and looked like it really hurt though I couldn't even see the sting. Haha and guess what? I'm a St.John member(an inactive one at that, mind you), so I decided to hand the job Hui Ying. Hui Ying answered the call of duty as a St.John member and rushed to the girls aid. Forgive me, but I could barely refrain myself from laughing when she just told the victim's mom to take out the sting and apply pressure. And then immediately take her to the clinic. Looking back, I know it wasn't good to laugh, but hey, at least I resisted it right? Oh, and Mei Xuan was also subtly recording the whole dramatic event as it unfold. We then walked back to the bus and visited a butterfly/cactus/animals and insects farm.

After a 20mins ride we arrived there and bought the tickets. We went inside the butterfly farm that was filled with butterflies. It was cool. Saw a couple of butterflies going at it. Haha I decided to try to capture a butterfly landing on a flower while showing movement of its wings. After a few tries this is what I got. The picture is barely satisfactory technically wise because the eyes of the butterfly wasn't sharp, i'm guessing its probably due to the fact that I was using a slow shutter speed, hand holding the camera and the butterfly was moving. I liked the moment though, so I guess it scores a point in that. We then left the butterfly farm and walked past some giant cactus to a section where they displayed snakes and tarantulas. Seen them before and I tried to get some shots but non were satisfactory as I only had my 18-55mm with me so getting up close was hard and the glass of the container was very, very dirty. Not to mention the lighting was bad as well. We after that went back to the bus and went to out next destination.

We arrived at the market and it was already hitting 5 p.m. The first half of the trip was almost over and I haven't gotten a satisfactory shot. We were to meet at the police station opposite the market and I decided to split up from the group to be able to concentrate better on what's going on. I wanted to capture some candid shots and also the emotions and atmosphere of the busy evening market. I got some shots but they weren't really satisfactory. After 30 mins of walking and not getting the shot I wanted, I decided to take a break and get myself something to eat. Bought a pan cake for a mere RM1.50 if I remembered correctly. I soon met up with Hor Mun and Hor Qian and we walked together. While chatting we stopped at a 'kuih kak' stall and decided to share a packet. While Hor mun and her sister was ordering a packet. I looked around and saw a nearby hotel lit by the sun as it sets. I quickly took a few exposures of it and I got what I visualized. Using the crowd as a foreground interest, I exposed for the hotel and took the shot. Satisfied we decided to walk back to where we were supposed to meet as it was getting late already. We hopped on the bus and went back to the villa.

That night after eating our dinner which consisted of rice and chicken with some mixed vegetables again, hor mun, her sister, hui wen, janice, adrie and me decided to go for a walk. By night it was getting abit chilly we just relaxed and chatted. After that I went to the girls room with Jun Xiang also known as fat donald, hahas and Joshua and we told ghost stories. It was fun until we made too much noise and one of the teacher came in and told us all to go back to our rooms as we weren't even suppose to be in the girls room past 11 o'clock and it was 1 something in the morning at that time. C'mon we weren't doing anything but telling ghost stories. =P So we did go back and I went to sleep.

A bucket on a fence at the villa
.

I woke up around 6.20 the next morning and quickly took a shower with the pail and water. You must think I would be crazy to shower in the chilly morning of Cameron Highlands, but surprisingly the villa provided really hot water so it wasn't really a problem. I then went down with Aziz and Adrie to try to capture the sun rise. I got some shots of the sun rise but they weren't good though. I also got some protrait shots of Joshua and Jun Xiang who soon joined us. and also some shots of the pond and the small farm at the villa. After our breakfast we packed our bags and checked out from the hotel.




The first stop of the day was the morning market. We arrived there too late and it was already close so we all decided to just hang around there and chat. Our next stop was the BOH tea plantation. It was chilly up there. And while we were walking down the hill to the nearby small stream at the tea plantation I hear belched really loud. Thinking it was Jun Xiang or something I turned around and said 'Hey!'. Little did I realize that it was actually a stranger. The man just stared at me not looking too happy. I quickly tried to cover it up by asking Jun Xiang to take off the jacket he was wearing because it was a for a girl. Poor dude, sorry for that Jun Xiang! xD Hor Mun and Hor Qian were laughing hysterically over the situation I got myself in. == Anyway the man soon walked off and I continued following the rest down to the stream embarassed.

After reaching the steam we walked back up and had lunch at the cafe near the tea plantation. I had a packet of nasi lemak and a 'teh tarik' float. After that we hopped on the bus and started the trip back to KL. We had one more stop though, on the way back we stopped at a nearby waterfall and decided to just take a dip in wetting our pants. Too bad it started drizzling quite heavily soon and we had to get back on the bus.

We arrived back at school around 6 p.m. It's a pity the trip was so short, but I certainly had fun with all my friends though. Till we meet again, Cameron.