White Balance Filter

Recently, I bought a white balance filter called "Zerocs". It helps me to get accurate color in difficult lighting and removing color casts, so that objects which appears white in person are rendered white in the photo. Thus, it reduces or eliminates the need for post-processing on color adjustment. Sometimes, the camera fooled by the lighting and unable to deliver consistent accurate color result.



To have better idea, please see the shots below:


Auto White Balance set by the camera.



Custom White Balance using "Zerocs".

If you focus at the teddy bear's T-shirt, there is a great difference. The shirt color looks little bit warm under the fluorescent lamp on the first image. The white color shirt does not render as white. Whereas, the second image, the white color shirt turns out accurate white.
Good thing come with a premium price, it cost me SGD150.

BBB Virus

Okay! Once you have the DSLR and now you need some accessories to assist you to take more creative and excellent shots with camera. When that happens, you could be infected by "buy, buy, buy" or "BBB" virus. The virus would keep physco you to buy more accessories for a period of time, just like me. Accessories like bags, lenses, tripod, monopod, filters, blah, blah...hell lots of them keep flooding your mind and it's not cheap.
Here's the line-up:

1. Filters
2. Camera bags
3. Extra wide angle lens
4. Telephoto lens
5. Blower
6. Remote shutter
7. Extra recharge batteries
8. External flash
9. Flash diffuser
10. Tripod
11. Monopod
12. White balance filter

In fact, I have all the above. Fortunately, I have recovered from the "BBB" virus and recuperated. Final words, please always buy the best that best suit to your needs rather than buy normal one and upgrade later. At the end of the day, they cost you more.

3 Annoying Issues

After a few months playing with 350D, I found 3 annoying problems:

1. Front-focus
2. Hotpixels
3. Dust

You can't runaway with the above issues if you own a DSLR. Let's talk about each of them.

What is Front-focus? Front-focus is a problem found in AF cameras that means the camera tends to focus just in front of the targeted subject. So you'll get out of focus (OOF). For example, instead of the camera focuses on the eyes, it actually focuses the nose. This problem could lie on the lens or the camera body or both. I couldn't live with it, so I sent it to Canon Service centre for re-calibration. I guess this is one of the quality control problems. Here's the example of front focus. I actually tried to focus the centre one but the camera focused on the front one.

What are hotpixels? This occurs when you do long exposue shots (more than 2 secs), especially night shots. The problem worsening with higher amplification or sensitivity of the signal (high ISO settings). It can be easily identified by examining the individual pixels in red, blue and white color. It can be many of them just like a starry night. Again, I couldn't live with them, I sent it Canon Service centre to remap the sensor. Problem solved!

DUST? The main enemy of DSLR. Dust is everywhere. So I don't have a choice and have to live with it.

First Impression of Canon EOS 350D

This is an awesome piece of equipment. My first ever DSLR has come true. The camera is very responsive till today and it meets my standard. The only downside is the kit lens which comes with the camera. The build quality of the lens was awful and cheapo. The front element rotates so using a polarizer isn't fun. The image quality out from the lens was disappointed due to softness and ghosting at small apertures.
Many people complaint about the size of the camera is a bit too small to hold. Well, a battery grip can be handy to resolve this issue. Overall, I love it.
At the same, I sold my DMC-FZ20 for SGD500 with all the accessories. A big lost for me. Bye bye Lumix!

Here Come the Canon EOS 350D

After 1 month of DSLR camera hunting and comparing, I decided to go for Canon system. Why Canon? Because they have very good reputation in camera industry, film and digital, for many years. Also, they produce low noise image sensor by using CMOS. It's affordable for most amateur, fully electronic lenses, wide range of lenses and awesome user interface.
During that time, I considered myself as a DSLR beginner user. So I decided to buy a Canon entry-level DSLR, Canon EOS 350D. It cost me SGD1630 which was double the price of my DMC-FZ20. At the same time, I also bought a battery grip which cost me another SGD150.
It can hold 2 rechargeable batteries or 6-AA cells. Well, total spending was SGD1780 on 1 Nov 2005. Not a small amount eh! Gotta treat it like a baby ha ha ha...

Here's the battery grip,

Attach it to the camera becomes a mini Pro.


Yup! This is the exact look of my camera. Kewl!

Replacement of DMC-FZ20

To be frank, I still like the FZ20's Leica zoom. Do you know that in DSLR world, a 12x zoom lens (36 - 432mm) with f/2.8 constant aperture size could cost you a BOMB! Say a Canon "L" lens EF 70 - 200mm with f/2.8 could cost around SGD2,000. Don't play play, ok!

So what is Aperture?
Its function to help camera to collect light reflected from an object. The aperture of a lens is the diameter of the lens opening and is usually controlled by an iris. The larger the diameter of the aperture, the more light reaches the image sensor. Hence, f/2.8 has a larger diameter and f/22 has the smaller diameter. Any aperture value below f/2.0 (e.g. f/1.4, f/1.8, etc.), I classify the lens as "Fast" lens because it has larger diameter of the aperture which can collect light in a short period of time.

Advantages having a fast lens:

• Ability to capture object in low-light condition
• Allow you to engage a faster shutter speed to freeze action
• Great shallow depth of field (DOF) such as sharp object with blurry background

I presume you have read the previous post about problems that I encountered. Even though, it had f/2.8, it was still unable to capture object in low-light condition due to limited ISO setting, up to ISO400 only. In addition, the image taken at ISO400 was way too grainy, especially night shots. At time, I was very fustrated as I am very particular about image quality.

So I started to read more about DSLR camera. I found most of the DSLRs offer a wide range of ISO (100 - 1600) and have better image noise control even at higher ISO. By the way, ISO describes the sensitivity of the image sensor towards the amount of light present. The higher the ISO value, the more sensitive the image sensor. At higher ISO, the camera amplifies the electronic signal on the image sensor which can cause side effect of image noise. Hence, I would highly recommend everyone to start at the lowest possible ISO given sufficient amount of light.

So I decided to replace my DMC FZ20 with a digital SLR. To settle down which brand and model of DSLR system, I read a lot of reviews from dpreview and dcresource websites. Here was my criteria:

• Low noise even at higher ISO (the most important)
• Negligible shutter lag
• Excellent color and contrast
• At least 8 megapixels
• Reliable and reputable brand
• Faster read/write speed
• AF-assist beam
• Fast start-up

Problems with DMC-FZ20

After using it for about 11 months, I encountered some issues with this cam:

• Visible noise (grainy) at ISO above 200 and unusable at ISO 400
• A bit under exposure for most shots
• Focus hunting at telephoto end
• Image can look a bit soft although it's a Leica lens
• Electronic viewfinder is a bit too small and hard to see when dark
• There is no external TTL flash for this model
• Not wide enough for landscape photography, min 36mm

Visible noise at the dark sky. Shots was taken at ISO200 for 6 seconds exposure. Let's us look closer by cropping the above image...

Yucks! Can't imagine if the shot taken at ISO400.

Shots Taken by FZ20

I was very happy with DMC-FZ20 as it had a lot to offer, especially the 12x optical zoom. It helped me a lot to capture distant object such as airplanes, animals and birds. Furthermore, it incorporated MEGA O.I.S. (Optical Image Stabilizer) to suppress hand-shake effect which causes blurry images. I personally tested it and very effective.


Here are some of the shots taken by DMC-FZ20:

Batam - Nongsa.


Singapore - Jurong Bird Park.


Singapore - Jurong Bird Park.


Friend's wedding at chapel.


Singapore - Sentosa.


Singapore - Sentosa 360 view.

My Second Digital Camera

Bought a Panasonic Lumix FZ20 in Nov 2004. I bought it because I found my Fujifilm 4900Z was not up to my usage and kind of limited capability for my photography skill advancements such as focusing speed, shutter lag, megapixels, zoom, short battery life and storage type. I chose Panasonic Lumix FZ20 because it had superb Leica 12X optical zoom with f/2.8 constant, optical image stabilisation, 5 megapixels, minimal shutter lag and fast focusing speed. What's more important?! It cost only half of my Fujifilm 4900Z, lol.


I have been talking about the superb optical zoom of the cam. Let's see how good it is...


No zoom here. (1st image)


12x optical zoom. (2nd image)

Yes! That's the 12x full optical zoom spotted the ferry on the left of the first image. Kind of cool eh! By the way, it had 4x digital zoom on top of the 12x optical zoom. So if you use full optical zoom and full digital zoom together, you get 48x zoom in total. That's sound fantastic right. Anyway, I do not believe in digital zoom as it deteriorates the image quality by interpolating the image taken with optical zoom. If possible, please try to avoid it.

Here's an example of digital zoom effect taken at 48x:

You don't want to see this. Am I right?

My First Digital Camera

I bought a Fujifilm FinePix 4900 Zoom in Jan 2001. This is my first digital camera bought out of my own pocket money. It cost me SGD1600++. This is unbelievable because at such amount you could buy a DSLR in the current market. Nevertheless, the cam served me well and had been with me in many countries such as Singapore, Thailand, Bintan, Malaysia and New Zealand. As of today (after 5 years), the cam still in working condition and gave it away to my Dad. Unfortunately, this cam has been discontinued and sooner or later it will become an antique to me.

To showcase, here are some of the shots taken in New Zealand:

Queenstown, New Zealand.


Rotorua, New Zealand.


Dunedin, New Zealand.

My First Blog

Hi, everyone! Thanks for dropping by. This blog is dedicated for digital photography. It includes personal experience in equipment, image composition and editing. So please stay tune!