Saturday, February 28, 2009

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Lesson learned.

I did the Yashica shots some days ago, and I posted these photos on some forums for critics and comments. I wrote about this in my blog here, but never really discussed on the technical thingy and so forth.

So, the comments I got: "Nice lighting, but picture not sharp. Due to big aperture." Which I totally agree. Bad on me, that I totally forget about this so basic principal of photography. No wonder I lost in DE. :p

Very basic principal: bigger aperture, shallower DOF and vice-versa smaller aperture, deeper DOF.

So, after being commented, I did a reshoot and can see the comparison below:

1st try on the left, 2nd try on the right.


The first try was shot with aperture f/8, and focused on Yashica word. Though the Yashica word is sharp, but the words on the lens is just blurred out. At 2nd try, the aperture is f/16, and focused at the Yashica word as well. In this photo, everything is sharp. Even the words on lens is sharp too.

My 2nd pic:

1st try


2nd try


Again, 2nd try is sharper than the 1st try.

For lighting, is quite straight forward. As shown in my previous post, one F42 set at level 1/2 into DIY soft box on camera left, one F42 at level 1/4 into DIY soft box on camera right, one F58 blue gelled zoomed at 105mm at level 1/4 shot onto the background and one F36 snooted at camera left controlled by dialing -2EV in camera. All flashes fired via Sony WL system.

What I used for the blue and red gels ? Tang long paper ! LOL. Cheap and got variety type of colours ! I have red, blue, yellow and green. Stack two layers and I got a nice colour gel I want. :D

So, lesson learned: never forget any basic law of photography. :D

Sunday, February 22, 2009

I was bored, again....

Angel was feeding our little monster, and I had nothing to do.

While browsing through flickr, I saw one photographer did a shot of his new gear and he shared his set up with us as well. I think I could do that too. Since I'm bored, so, why not re-shoot my good old Yashica film camera instead?

This is how my set up is :
Yashica FX-3 Super Setup

And these are what I got :





Although it's an old film camera, but no doubt it's a full frame camera ! LOL

So, which one is better? The first one? Or the second one ?

Pay to stuck !



A highway was built to ease the already terrible traffic in the city. That's what I read from my Highway Engineering 101 course.

Tolls are introduced to the highway as part of traffic control system. That's what I was thought from my Highway Engineering 201 course.

And our highways were built not to ease the traffic of our city, but to bring the traffic problem from point A, which is under Local Authority A's juridiction, to point B, which is under Local Authority B's jurisdiction.

And our tolls were introduced on highways not to control traffic, but to ask the road users to pay for a terribly jammed highways.

*sigh*

Friday, February 20, 2009

Untitled, again

When I saw this...

I went into this place.

It's the Penang Khoo Kongsi.

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

His first CNY



This little fella celebrated his first ever CNY at his age as young as 3 months, and he started to enjoy the joyful atmosphere surrounded him. New cloth for him, happy faces all around him, and to our surprise, he didn't get shocked when a fire cricket exploded.


Not only me and my wife is happy, my parent is happy too. Ee Young was so enjoying himself looking at everyone while we were having our re-union dinner.

He was too young to have his own space around the table. Next year, I believe, he will be old enough to have his own space in the table.

Time do fly. I still feel that the moment when Ee Young was born was just happened last week, and now he is almost 4 months old already.

Indeed I am getting older as well....

Thursday, February 12, 2009

It's Valentine's Day

The highly commercially polluted Valentine's Day is around the corner. It's a day of love, and because of the commercial pollution, everything is so expensive on that day!

I had never celebrate Valentine's Day before. Not even I was young and was at the age of "dare to do anything" teenager. Sure lah, because I am not a handsome boy in school, not popular in school, and I am a shy boy that too shy to talk to girls. So, even I met one girl that really took my heart away, I was so scared and never had a gut to approach her even to say hi. Then I graduated from highschool alone. Sad story.

Then come to the time where I get into an University. People always say, I will spend my best time during my uni life. So, I was so excited when I got to know I had been accepted into USM. Not bad right, USM ? The most beautiful Uni in South East Asia, and so near to my house. I should be happy, right ? But no. The Engineering Campus is not located in Penang, but it's in an ex-tin mining town of Tronoh, a small town that is so small that it has only 2 streets and 6 rows of pre-war shops. The campus was solely for engineering courses, and you know lar, how many girls study engineering course ? Very few, right ? So, wanna find girlfriend there ? I better be a very very popular guy in the campus for me to be get notice, or I would just spend my whole uni life alone again.

The "competition" in the campus was tough ! Too many demands, but too few supplies. And I did not made myself popular enough, so, alone again for the whole uni life. So, no Valentine's day celebrations.

Until I left Uni, and came out to work, then I met my girl friend who is my pen-pal for many many years, and we started dating, doing heart-to-heart talk, got electicized and get married, and now as a result of "getting together", we have this young fella who has become our biggest "spot light", reminding us not to nauthy at night ! LOL

Well, it's a Valentine's Day. Love is in the air, and we should glorify love. Love brings us all toghether, and love bring us harmony and love keep us happy all the time.

Rose in Dark

So, Happy Valentine's Day lar.

How I am gonna celebrate it? First thing to do of course I need to find a baby sitter. LOL

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

A life time project.



This is the "by-product" of the minute second of organism. He took 9 months to travel along the production line. What a miracle to see a life that can be created in such a way. Nature is really something that I can not imagine how it works. All those biological thing is always makes me come out in goose flesh. I tried to explain all this scientifically, but I couldn't resist myself to avoid the great work from the God. He who create this world must be a great architect of life, a great scientist, and of course a great engineer.

And now, here he is, the finest product from both me and my wife, a none-stop hand and leg moving little fella, doing nothing but sleep eat and demand for attention all time long.

It is so amazing that he has his own thinking and his own behaviour. This is again something that is kinda difficult to be understandable for someone like me who study too many equations and work with logical thinking. How unlogic that he uses one cell from me, and merge with another cell from his mother, but he is a totally different individual from both of us.



Looking at him exploring his surrounding with his total curious eye is so enjoyable. Getting his respond to my calling is the best thing of the whole hard day work. And looking at him sleeping soundly in his bed making me want to protect him and to teach him to become a useful man.

And this will be my life time project. Will he become someone useful or not is now a burden to myself. Educating him will be our main priority now, and nothing will be more important than this.

So, how? I pose better than he did in his Paris post, right? LOL

Sunday, February 8, 2009

I was bored.....

And I don't have super hot babe friend as he does to do shooting, so, I dig into my store room and found some filters. No hot babe, so I shoot filters lor! LOL

I am not a fan of filters. I don't understand what a filter can do since the lenses are coated already? The only one thing that filters are useful is to protect the lenses from knocking by others. So, when one day on a shooting day, so no luck someone knock onto the lens, and the first thing to break is the filter, but not the lens.

And then, raised one question: how low quality the filter has to be so when the knocking incident happen and I will not be heart breaking? Once I got one super cheap Taiwan made UV filter which came free when I bought my first ever DSLR, the legendary Sony A100. The filter is so thick that it creates a noticeable vignetting effect to all my photos, and thin filters are not cheap though. Breaking a RM 100++ filters are as heart broken as breaking a RM 1,000++ lens.

Another question raised: I was told by others in order not to get fungus to for the lens, the lens need to be exposed to UV light from the Sun so to kill all the fungus. So, with a UV filter on, will the UV light from the sun kill the fungus?

So, how?

My suggestion is: don't bring the expensive DSLR to the place where pack crowd is expected. By this, I have no worry my lens kena knock, no worry someone will curi my camera and no need to carry that huge and heavy camera just for some candid shots. Right ?

So, this round, I declare lost in the battle, because I don't have hot babes to shoot. LOL

1st By the way, these filters are for sale. Reason of selling: no lens for these filters mar. LOL

2nd By the way, what does a skylight filter do ?

Friday, February 6, 2009

Must Eat when in Penang !



My favourite food so far. It's the Hokkien prawn mee! To be frank, this is the food that able to "pull" me back to Penang. I should never leave Penang without having one of this delicious local food.

I am proud to be "spoiled" by Penang food. :P