I have a confession to make. I have been bitten by the full frame (FF) bug. But that is hardly news to you huh? So what makes a full frame different from my own 40D? The most enticing reward of going FF is the amazing bokeh that you get. Some purist are against bokeh, but bokeh is a great way of producing very pleasing portraits, a very good way to isolate your subject from the background.

I had a chance to play with a Canon EOS 5D before, the original version, not the Mark II version. You might have noticed this in my previous post; the picture was taken with a 5D. The first thing I immediately notice is the built of the buttons and dials. It’s kinda hard to explain, but the sound of the shutter press is very soft, yet very solid and assuring. And the sound of the shutter flapping against the camera body exudes class and confidence. Sure, it’s not exactly fast. At only about 3 fps, it is the same as my previous 350D. A machine gun shooter will likely avoid this camera. But a 5D is designed for a different class of photographer. The slow thinking photographer, the landscape artist, or the macro freak. It will have a slight disadvantage when shooting weddings and sports.

Canon EOS 5D, with the EF 50 mm f1.8 II attached

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I’ll be frank, I was being a real dickhead when my wife asked me to teman her watch this movie. “Come on, it’s a Malaysian-chinese made movie, it has sure got to have some really corny lines and stupid slapsticks”. She has asked me to go watch it since last week when it has just been shown in cinemas nationwide. But I have been dragging my feet, delaying the inevitable. But being my wife, she kept nagging reminding me about it. I told her sarcastically that you don’t need to book it first, by the first week, I’m sure that nobody will wanna watch it and that we can simply walk in the cinema and buy the tickets. But reluctantly I bought the tickets online anyway. And dragged my ass to the cinema to watch it last Sunday night, expecting to be bored to tears.

Let me set my expectation first. I DO NOT want to see another “look, I can speak perfect Cantonese like the Hongkies!” movie, nor do I need to see another “look, I can speak perfect Mandarin like the Taiwanese / Chinese” movie. I think we can safely put that aside, because to be fair, modern day Malaysian Chinese movies / serials uses a lot of local Malaysian elements in their production. Just look at Iron Lady, a thoroughly engaging and sensational Malaysian serial that got me hooked to the TV set for a while. And that’s saying a lot, because I do not watch TV, other than the occasional Spongebob Squarepants cartoons.

Even then, Iron Lady looks too Korean drama-like to my liking. And the accent still sounded, well, like a Singaporean. So when I watched Tiger Woohoo, I was expecting at least a similar kind of acting and directing, if not worse. I’m glad to say that not only was I terribly wrong by a mile, I came out of the cinema highly entertained!

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Okay, owning the 40D after the 350D was the worst kept secret among my friends. But what you didn’t know was that there was actually a plan to pull a prank on you guys!

In May last year I have made the decision to sell off my trusty old 350D. Lots of people were surprised, many even made the prediction that I will buy another DSLR in no time. Initially that was the plan. And initially there was a plan to go to Bangkok in August 2009. With an impending holiday like that, it would make sense to get myself another camera as soon as possible.

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I am going to write about a machine that eats the order out of a car…….

…….. or about a funny japanese translation that went haywire:

I'm so hungry, I could eat a car ....... order

Bought this thing from Daiso, inside IOI Mall Puchong. It’s only RM5, but the main reason I bought it is because of the misinterpretation.

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This, a digital camera, worth almost RM1,500 a pop! In reality I owe her this since her birthday last year, so it’s well overdue actually!

This is the camera, the new Canon Powershot S90.

Canon Powershot S90

Remember when I mentioned that I wanted to buy a PnS? I wasn’t kidding!

Why did I choose this camera? Well there is a lot of reasons actually. For one thing, I must confess, that I am a huge Canon fanboy. And another thing, being a techie that I am, I know for sure that I am getting top quality pictures with this baby. On papers the camera boasts some incredible numbers:

• 10 megapixel sensors (and not just any sensors. It’s the sensor used in its much larger brother the G11. The size of the sensor is the biggest among point-and-shooters among its class, which should translate to lower noise)
• 28 mm – 105 mm equivalent IS (image stabilized) lens
• Fast f2.0 – 4.9 aperture. (Faster than my EF-S 17-55 f2.8 IS at 28 mm!)
• RAW shooting! (Yay~!)
• 3.0 inch LCD screen, 461,000 pixels. Not exactly the high resolution screen found in newer DSLR’s, but good enough.

The rest of the advertised features (dual-noise removal, DIGIC IV smile detection, scene detection etc) are merely marketing gimmicks.

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….. and I gladly accepted the offer! =D

Hairy fella ain't he?

Picture taken by wifey today, more than 2 weeks after my last shave. I get a lot of weird looks and comments from people, as if they are saying that a chinese guy should not keep a long beard like that. Rather stereotypical aren’t they? *sigh* looks like I will have to shave my face lar today before I go to work tomorrow. I hate shaving, especially when you need to do it everyday!

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I have been keeping a very close eye on the Sandisk compact flash cards and its price fluctuations. Reason being I am seriously considering getting myself a new card for my camera. My current 2 x 2 GB cards are insufficient for my workflow. I take mostly RAW files, especially when I am on a holiday. Near the end of November I watched with earnest as the prices of the Sandisk CF Extreme III 8GB, the card that I was aiming for, plummeted to about RM200 per piece, the lowest I have seen in months. I thought that the time was right to purchase it.

Boy was I glad that I was wrong! The Extreme III 8GB vanished completely from stores by mid-December! I thought that it was just a temporary stock clearance, and that I would be seeing it again a few weeks later. I waited and waited, but the Extreme III never appeared again. Panic came over me, what if the card really has been discontinued? Does that mean that I will have to buy the more expensive but unnecessarily bigger cards, or the slower cards?

After more excruciating weeks of waiting, I decided to test the market and I asked a few sellers. They told me that the Extreme III 8 GB are really not in production any more, and that I should buy the cheaper Ultra 8GB. Then I noticed something that wasn’t there before, the Ultra cards are now rated at 30 MB/s!! WTF??

Upon further searching, I realized that the entire line of the Sandisk CF cards has been revamped! The changes include changes in names and rated speed. The changes can be summarized with the following:

• Ultra II 15 MB/s (100x) → Ultra 30 MB/s (200x)
• Extreme III 30 MB/s (200x) → Extreme 60 MB/s (400x) (UDMA)
• Extreme IV 45 MB/s (300x) (UDMA) → Extreme Pro 90 MB/s (600x) (UDMA 6)

As you can see, this is a clear double increase in speed to quench the insatiable thirst for more speed in today’s super fast and high resolution cameras. Add to the fact that cameras nowadays are equipped with HD video! The icing on the cake is even sweeter; the price stays at or around the same as the old price!

Does this mean that I am going to get me the new faster Extreme cards? Absolutely NOT! My camera is already at its fastest at 30 MB/s. Any faster is a waste of technology. Besides, my old camera does not support UDMA. So now I am targeting the Ultra 8GB instead. Which is great news; I just came back from Low Yat Plaza this evening, the price of an Ultra 8GB is about only RM150!

All hail technology!

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How many of you remember taking a photo, only to find out that the photo turned out bad due to incorrect exposure? (It could be due to underexpose (picture turning out too dark) or overexpose (picture turning too bright).) Even though in the world of digital photography where the camera decides everything for you, things can still get very wrong. And most of the times you have no choice but to press that delete button.

Things gets worse when you find out that the photo is a very important photo that you absolutely must keep. So how can you save it? I have personally seen a lot of people successfully saving their bad pictures digitally, but they were damn fucking stingy. They did not want to share their techniques to the world. Hate these fuckers.

Luckily a bit of Uncle Google and some photoshop experience helped me to figure it out. Take a look at this picture below:

Incorrect exposure, making the foreground dark and the background bright

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Went for a walkabout in October with Yan Yan and my wife, with plenty of photo opportunities. Only able to process the photos today, due to amazingly full schedule.

Anyway the title is a bit confusing, ’cause technically speaking the places we went to were not only confined to KL. We also went to Sunway and Putrajaya.

It was during Deepavali. Obviously.

This round of post processing involves some newly learnt workflow. This is the first time I utilized LucisArt for that Dave Hill look. Tell me if that works.

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Happy DongZhi, or in chinese, 冬至快乐! It’s amazing now that you think about it, the ancient chinese calculated this annual path of the sun which coincides with the winter solstice. The winter solstice is when the sun has gone as far south (if you live in the northern atmosphere of the earth) as it can through the winter, and is now on its way back to warm your icy cold butts. The chinese calendar is actually a combination of the lunar and the solar path, which is far more useful in predicting the occurrence of the full moon, the seasons and maybe even the eclipses (not sure).

Anyways enough of the technical details. Go ahead and enjoy your “tang yuan” 汤圆 with your family!

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