Thursday, April 30, 2009

Grad Trip - Photo of the Day 5

April 26, it was raining the whole morning and early afternoon. So couldn't go to Brussels early, and stayed home to clear my photos till dinner time. The girls brought me to a Greek restaurant in the neighbourhood, and the food was great. (photos will be up on FB soon) But not before we had to down a strange liquor that came in cute little cups like this:

Photobucket
© Lin Zhaowei, 2009.

Even at 1/128 power with diffuser, the flash was too strong, so I had to use the serviette to cover the flash. Unfortunately, the serviettes there were yellow, which gave a very strong yellow tint to my photos. And after correcting slightly for the yellow, the poor candle in the background looks discoloured.

Note to self: bring your own white serviettes next time. Now where's the nearest Mac's...

Regardless, the food was great value for money -- about 12 euros for a full meaty course plus salad bar. Greece eh... something to look forward to in the future?

Anyhow, I reached Brussels that night quite late at about 10.30pm. It was still raining there, but luckily, the streets were quite easy to navigate.

Grad Trip - Photo of the Day 4

April 25, was off to Maastricht, the oldest town in the Netherlands. Was planning to go to Bruges but according to weather reports it was raining that day, so change of plans. It was a very cloudy day in Maastricht, but at least it didn't rain.

Took this in the middle of a busy street, of Rita and her friend Vicky:

Photobucket
© Lin Zhaowei, 2009.

I didn't have my ND filters with me, but I did bring along my GND so that's all I could use. Closed the aperture to f/22 and pushed down the ISO to 100 to get the slowest aperture possible for a proper exposure.

Always wanted to take a shot like this back in Waseda University, where there is a street that is often jammed with students during the intervals between lessons. Which was why I bought my ND filters in the first place! But I never got down to it though. And this time, when I had an occasion to use them, I didn't have them. Oh well.

Grad Trip - Photo of the Day 3

April 24, woke up very late. Still struggling with jetlag. Rita was gone soon after I woke up, and I took my time with breakfast before heading out to Amsterdam for a walk.

Not really a photo-taking day and my best perhaps was taken at my temporary residence. Rita's landlord is an Indian national who is working in the Netherlands as a researcher. He lives with his family of three, and this is his adorable (but slightly overactive) baby son Guru:

Photobucket
© Lin Zhaowei, 2009.

I usually prefer my pictures tack-sharp, but I quite like the softness of this one.

Grad Trip - Photo of the Day 2

April 23, spent walking around in Leiden, where I was staying. It's a small university town with quite a few canals, and perfect for an afternoon walk.

Especially if you come across a bright red sofa on a boat like this:

Photobucket

Set up the SB800 on a coffee table in front of the sofa and put my camera on tripod. After a few test shots I decided to hop into the photo to make it more interesting. Tried it without diffuser and zoomed out to 105 first before deciding to use the diffuser instead. Taken with my Tokina 12-24mm f/4. Final shot:

Photobucket
© Lin Zhaowei, 2009.

The sunlight was less harsh by the time I changed to the diffuser though, which made the colours in the background relatively muted as compared to the test shots. Sofa was a little too big for just one person though...

Anyhow, hope to get more interesting portraits for the rest of my trip!

Friday, April 24, 2009

Grad Trip - Photo of the Day 1

It was certainly a long flight -- the longest I've been on so far anyway. It was thus a major relief to finally meet Rita at Schiphol Airport on Apr 22. I was initially confused about the time zone because I didn't expect the Netherlands to be on Daylight Savings Time. It's still a rather foreign concept to me, actually.

Anyway, as soon as I settled into my lodgings at Rita's place (her landlord was kind enough to let me sleep in the study) we went to the famous Keukenhof, the world's biggest flower garden that is only open from March to May annually. And we effectively spent the whole day in that beautiful place.

Anyway I was the only person I saw walking around with an SB800 mounted on tripod and an SU800 mounted on camera. Despite all that, it was not easy taking good photos... I wasn't happy with most of the pictures I took that day and on the whole, the portraits I took of Rita and her friend were my favourite shots of the day. But the last couple of the hours produced a few surprises, such as the photo of the day:

Photobucket
© Lin Zhaowei, 2009.

What you see behind are tulip fields. The colours of the tulips in the background, together with the water and greenery in the foreground, somewhat made up the full spectrum of the rainbow.

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Photographer's Math

What is an "artistic" shot? Or HDR photography? Is a Gary Fong Lightsphere worth the money? Find the answers at the Photographer's Math blog!

Thanks to Shaun for directing me to the blog! Sure cracked me up, although I must admit I don't get some of the "equations".

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

New Products Announced! Nikon D5000 and AF-S DX 10-24mm f/3.5-4.5G ED

Well I was eager anticipating the new entry-level DSLR from Nikon, and the just-announced D5000 looks like a worthy successor to the D40/40X/60. Some key new features I personally find useful, as compared to my D40X:
  1. CMOS sensor - ISO performance. Biggest improvement imho, reason enough to upgrade!
  2. 11 AF points - Very useful for shallow depth of field shooting
  3. Flip-out LCD with Live View - A huge boon for macro shooting esp. from low, low angles. And live view finally!
  4. New retouch options, including perspective control, square crop and colour outline! - Quite neat for quick editing on the go
The higher megapixel count is a bit of a bane though, esp. if you are doing RAW-editing on a Thinkpad X41. I don't think D-movie will be very useful either, but hey, you'll never know when you'll need it.

Probably a no-brainer for a first DSLR, but I'll probably wait and see how the pricing goes before deciding whether it is worth an upgrade.

As for the new wide angle, I think it is definitely worth looking at if you are searching for a lens in that focal range. A plus-point is that it takes 77mm filters... which is what you'd want to invest in now, if you plan to upgrade to better (i.e. more expensive!) glass in the future.

Links to the official Nikon USA sites here: D5000 and AF-S 10-24mm f/3.5-4.5G

Monday, April 13, 2009

Good Read

Stumbled across an interesting post on the Magnum blog. Basically two questions were asked to a bunch of Magnum photographers:
  1. When did you first get excited about photography?
  2. What advice would you give young photographers?
Reading advice like this once in a while is useful in helping one set a focus, I think. What I particularly like about this piece is that most of the answers are quite sincere.

Click here to view the post.

Blog Reboot

Even though I started this blog last year after I returned from Japan, I had done little work other than do up the page design and writing a first post.

Now, my academic life is almost over and here I am, reviving my blog when I *should* finally be studying. Anyway, I have filled in a few back entries that I'd always intended to write, and now I've finally caught up. I still think it's worthwhile writing a photoblog! Even if no one reads it eventually, it would still have been a useful exercise in sorting out my thoughts on my work.

My short-term goal for the blog is to simply showcase my favourite pictures on my upcoming graduation trip on a daily basis. If that works out, let's see how far this blog can go from there.

Saturday, April 11, 2009

Turkish restaurant

Bought my SU800 second hand today, and headed down to Shaw Tower to look for a good backpack for my graduation trip. And I stumbled upon Sofra Turkish Cafe & Restaurant.

Turkish food has a special place in my stomach heart. I'd only tried one Turkish restaurant in Singapore, at Holland Village. But it left such an impression on me even though I don't remember exactly what I had that fateful day. Something to do with eggplant puree and bread. And the restaurant seemingly closed soon after, probably because few people dare venture in.

Anyway I was alone that day, so was a little hesitant in forking out more than a few bucks for lunch, but the allure/prospects of rediscovering a new Turkish food haunt was too great. So I stepped in and chose a dish (maybe the only one) with "eggplant" in it: the Sofra Musakka:

Sofra Musakka
Taken at f/8, 1/100sec, ISO400 with Micro-Nikkor AFS 60mm f/2.8.
SU800 on D40X, SB800 on remote to camera right in manual 1/64 with diffuser on.


It was supposed to be "Oven baked eggplant served with rice" and there's a choice of beef/lamb and chicken. I instinctively had beef/lamb. To make the story short, the food was great (and very filling). The Turkish apple tea which I had was also quite refreshing, though nothing really special. The prices were quite reasonable too. Bottomline? I will definitely be back!

This was the first time I shot with the SU800, and the results look promising. Controlling the flash output on the SU800 was a breeze even without reading the manual. I hope this signals more interesting times to come.

Friday, April 10, 2009

ニコンSU800、登場!!!

After a week of reading through Joe McNally's excellent new book, "The Hot Shoe Diaries", I was convinced that I needed to take my SB800 off camera... and fast! Given that my D40X does not have any built-in commander function, the only ways to do that were:
  1. Buy another SB800 (if it's even still available anywhere)
  2. Buy an SB900 (a huge leap from the 480 I spent on my SB800)
  3. Buy an SU800 (highly recommended by Joe McNally)
  4. Buy an el cheapo ebay remote flash trigger (that means manual control all the way)
So in the end, I narrowed down to getting an SU800 and posted on the Clubsnap forum. I'd given up hope of finding a seller until someone texted me the other day, and the deal was sealed after some haggling and some further hesitation on my part. Agreed price: 400SGD. Sounds reasonable enough to me... though I was hoping for even lower.

When I get it from the seller tomorrow, it marks another milestone in my photographic journey, I think. I can finally use my SB800 as it was intented to be used, and hopefully some good things can come out of that.

Friday, April 3, 2009

Last day of school

I was literally counting down the months, then weeks, then days... and then it came. The last of school (the exams don't count). I was dreading this day because I'd always enjoyed school life, and I strongly suspect I won't enjoy worklife as much, esp. since I am still undecided on what I really want to do with my life. School was a sanctuary where you have certain prescribed goals to meet while having sufficient free time to pursue and explore whatever interests you have.

Worklife... is an open book, and it scares me.

Anyway, I shall have more to say about that next time, I believe.

All that said, I think I spent my last term very fruitfully - in fact it had been a blast. Mainly because I finally joined my university photography club and took part in many activities, from photo trails to studio shoots and talks by well-known professionals. In a way, it rekindled my passion for photography and I think I need to thank all the great people I've met in the club (shall not name them here though!). And oh, I barely did any studying throughout the term too, which meant I had lots of free time.

Pizza
SMUSAIC Pizza Chain

To end off the term, the club organised a simple gathering with pizza and drinks, after which we headed down to a gig held by the school rock band club. We didn't quite join the crowd to chill out to the music though - most of us were busy circling the stage and shooting pictures!

Two of my favourite shots of the night:

Starry Night 1

Starry Night 2

Both were taken with my Nikon AFS 10.5mm fisheye!