sucker!

Suck suck suck

Excuse me, are u a fish?

Third post today! See how nice I am.
Went off to labrador Park again!
Serious photographers should skip this post, seriously.

Nope. This is not a macro shot. i just went real close

Ya this one also.

Love this! Truly Fisheye

Almost knocked against the fruit. If only the leaves are greener.

Look at the lamppost!

others are thinking why i am knocking against the pillar.

I got a confession, my 10-24 is not my newest toy. The youngest member is my fisheye.

It is the fun lens which I have been enjoying for the past few days. Had lots of fun, esp when i spent the whole of last night disturbing my nephew by going real close and gave him a distorted facial expression to piss him off.

Maybe i should join a fisheye club or what

More UWA @ Chinatown and Orchard Road

Little words and more Photos with the 10-24mm.

Chinatown!

Along streets in Chinatown @ 10mm. kneel on the floor to take this shot.

Supposed to be the best bak kua in Singapore. Eh? Wheres the queue?

Next Stop, Orchard Central

At the junction of Centrepoint and OC

Still the outside of OC

Balcony View at Level 6. quite nice.

This fellow is interesting, think 4 storeys high.
Maybe waited for the OC's completion until neck long

Finally Orchard Ion, the new big thing in orchard.

fat ion.

I am having more fun with wide angles than normal photos recently.

Meet Meiji

Meet Meiji, Polar's girlfriend.

in love with a 10mm.

My new weapon
- Shoots right on spot
- Covers a big angle of fire with 1 single shot
- small
- and ultra deadly.

wahaha.. not this la..

It has a long name too.
It called the

"Dun play play it is really very very much wider than you think, NIKON DX 10-24mm ULTRA WIDE ANGLE lens".

any wider you can shoot your own toes and forehead at the same time

bought it last week over at sam and can't wait to bring it out

a little red amongst the green.
minimal focal at 0.24m. i was already hitting the leaves

there is some distortion at 10mm, i call it beautifully distorted.

Proud owner of a gorilla pod and polar

Woohoo.. these are my birthday presents!
The gorillapod from Os and the bear from my wife.

This gorilla kicks ass. it wraps itself around practically everything and yet it can hold the weight of my big SLR. just imagine a real gorilla with a body of a SLR.

The bear is small and made from japanese kimono material. Sweeeeeet! It will become the model of my shots in future. It shall be called polar (well. it is a bear and it is freezing blue in color) before i think of a good name

Gorilla and polar will be in my camera bag from now on.

Flowers not included. i bought them myself.

Thanks everyone!

Uncle. Teh-o jit puay.

I always ponder over lunch.
Ponder how come my diluted teh-o is worth a whopping $1.

lets do some maths to calculate the price of teh-o vs a good puerh.

Teh-0
500ml cup = $1
so 1 ml = $0.002

Puerh.
5 grams of tea can make 7 infusions of 150ml of tea
(assuming teapot is 200ml and 50ml was the space taken for the leaves)

so 5 grams can make 1050ml of tea
a typical cake is 357 grams. So it can make 74970ml of tea
therefore 357 grams of tea in coffeeshop = S$149.94
Therefore the price i pay at coffeeshop is equivalent to buying a puerh of value up to S$149.94

For S$149.94 i can easily buy a nice aged puerh, probably yr 2000?
Why do I have to put up with the expensive teh-o when I can buy a delicious aged puerh?

OOi. Uncle. Serve me something better please.

I will protect you

Took this with my friend's 105mm, macro.

New Toys

New toys for the 2nd half 2009. Yippie!

Bought a 18-200mm lens to replace my 18-105mm.
Bought a new UV filter for the lens.
Bought a battery pack to use as a vertical grip.

Now my cam looks like an expensive obese D3X. haha.

I cant possibiliy take the photo of my own cam right? Thanks to http://www.dcresource.com

With a SB900 it will look like a monster.

The grip has motivated me to take more portrait shots. And I love the option of using AA batteries for the cam. No more disappointments cos of low battery power.

Now that I have adjusted to the weight, I got to learn to control my flash which fires from the left now. My trial shots didn't look too balanced.

Considering to buy a shutter release cable next. Whoohooo.

Nuts about Tea

Walnut made from Zisha Clay. Looks like the real thing.

Tea Tea Tea.
Walked into my usual teashop on Sat and was welcomed by the manager and all other regulars there.

The manager was serving some hk customers, so naturally she pushed a cup to me.

tea looks clean and clear.

I took hold of the tea cake and carefully inspected it. It had the traditional Zhong Cha wrapping and the label says yr 2004, 7542. Whooo.. the famous 7542 recipe which has a whole bunch of followers. Well, this tea cake can be yours at $120.

Looks decently stored.

even the spent leaves look complete, fat and juicy.

I will go home and ask my piggy bank. ROAR!

From An Ant's Point Of View

This is part 2 of the package! The reversal ring.

its supposed to be a cheap way of doing macro without paying the price of a macro lens. Isn't that just invented for people like us.

The trick is to reverse mount a lens, which I used my 50mm f1.8, together with the twin ikea lights I got earlier.

As the article says. "You Lose the Camera’s Brain so Use Your Own"
I reversed the lens, locked the thing in and set the cam in orang-matic* mode and then mounted the thing on the tripod.

It is not easy because I depended heavily on the autofocus. I moved forward and backward numerous times, and sticking my eye at the viewfinder to get the focus. Got real tired and took a rest, wanting to give up.
Suddenly I remembered that my camera allows me to shoot via lcd screen. Long Live D90! It was much easier later. i took the photos using my lcd live view while holding a light in my left hand to adjust the lightings.

Finally i got this! The earphones in macro!

WA. BIG

and a really small keychain!

this image not that sharp.

So happy with the previous successful shots that I quickly bring a piece of tea to test. Was wondering how to squeeze the subject into the tiny frame.

For once I think compact cameras are real good. They are cute, tiny, fits into your pocket, and they can do macro at no cost. They can take shots like this easily.
Macro lens for DSLRs are not cheap. You can try this trick using the reverse macro too.



Wanted to celebrate by making a brew. But it was past midnight and my eyes are getting crossed.

I think i better save up to buy a autofocus nikkor 105mm VR at S$1360. Might be able to save my eyes.

*orang-matic - full manual.

A Date with the Sun

I always had a love-hate relatonship with the sun. I prefer a bright sunny day to a gloomy rainy day anytime. I was eager to try out my polarised filter, and I thought of Labrador park immediately. There is some math involved.

Simple equation.
if A = Labrador Park = in the West
if B = Sunset = in the West (Sun rises in the east and sets in the west)
Since A = B,
Labrador Park = Sunset!

Its a hot day for photoshoot. News said its 34 degs. Pure Madness.

I thought I saw an oasis. Chey.. its a motif on the floor.

The beautiful sky managed to compensated a bit for the heat.

Photoshopped a bit to make it look like a watercolor painting. No no not HDR.

No. not HDR

Quickly sunset please. I want to go home!

And I saw a big cruise coming over and its getting bigger and bigger.

Here comes the Big thing!

No, its not a terrorist attack. The cruise is still in the water. Its just trying to get into the dragon's gate to berth at World trade centre.

Wa lau it looks like its banging into the coast.

Macro using my kit lens without flash. Not that nice but its my first attempt. Make do. Make do.

Don't know whats this flower. Anyone want to contribute?

This cat is my new found hero. Did anyone tell you that its 34 Deg today?

stone-grilled kitty

That's PSA, West Coast Port. Nice!

Going home to shower.

Take care, sun. You are running a fever today. I visit you some other day.

This is my first attempt at product shots using lighting effects.
Bought 2 lights recently and eagerly tried it out last night. Its really not easy to adjust. Lightings is really a art on its own.