Donald's Digital Photography Corner

The Grand Old Lady

2008-05-17T14:07:00.002+08:00

This is the first oil well in Miri, built in 1910.

The almighty teleconverter lens

2007-10-03T00:54:00.001+08:00

Let's me explain what is teleconverter lens? And what does it do?
Basically, a teleconverter (also called a tele-extender, converter or extender) is an optical device that fits between your camera and the lens.
The main function is to extend the telephoto focal lengths without buying a totally new telephoto lens. It has a few magnification factors typically ranging from 1.4x to 3x. So if you fit a 1.4x teleconverter lens between your camera and a 300mm lens, you will get 420mm (672mm on 1.6x crop camera!) instead. Simple as that! Now you can have 2 focal lengths lens with minimal cost. Typically, it costs ranging from SGD190 to SGD600, depending on the magnification factor and brand name. As for me, I got it off from ebay which cost me about SGD190 for a Kenko 1.4x teleconverter lens. And its optical quality is almost as good as Canon 1.4X which costs about 600 bucks! In addtion, the Canon one only compatible with Canon lenses whereas Kenko can work well with other brands such as Sigma and Tamron.
After listening all the good things about this lens and now let's find out what are the drawbacks.

Here comes the EFS-60mm f2.8 Macro Lens

2007-10-02T23:06:00.000+08:00

Well, it has been quite some time that I have not posted anything about photography stuff.
Okay! I bought a macro lens recently. This lens is meant for non-full frame camera, such as Canon 350D, 400D, 30D, 40D and so on.
I did not go for EF-100mm because the focal length 100mm is a bit too long and very tight cropped for general purpose use other than close-up photography. With 60mm, I can use it for close-up shot as well as portrait shot. Hence, it kills 2 birds with 1 stone. Furthermore, the image results were all tack sharp. After playing a while, I outline with the following pros and cons:
Pros
- Sharp image
- Lightweight as compared to 100mm
- Fast focusing speed
- f2.8 constant aperture
- Excellent bokeh
- Good for portrait and flower and big insect close-up

Cons
- A bit AF hunting on less contrast object and low light
- Only supports 1.6x crop factor camera
- Requires a tripod to obtain sharp images
- Limited working distance on smaller insect close-up as compared to 100mm

Check this out!

Mid-Autumn Festival 2007 with EF 70-200mm

2007-09-25T21:24:00.000+08:00

Didn't really celebrate much on this festival. In fact, I had a few mooncakes even before the actual day. During that evening, my son was sick and somehow he lost interest in playing lantern. I brought him outside with a little lantern. He just walked a few steps and requested to go home. I guess he must be very tired. See...

So I decided to take some photos of this festival outside from my flat using my EF70-200mm f4L lens with tripod. Here's the catch on that evening:

Royal Flora Ratchaphruek 2006

2007-02-15T23:30:00.000+08:00

Royal Flora Ratchaphruek 2006, one of the world’s finest tropical flower, fruit and plant expositions befitting the name, Royal Flora Ratchaphruek 2006 – International Horticultural Exposition for His Majesty the King, it was hosted in the city of Chiang Mai from November 1, 2006 to January 31, 2007. Fortunately, we were there to enjoy the flower exhibition. This was the biggest flower expo I've ever seen.

Chiang Mai Night Bazaar

2007-02-15T23:00:00.000+08:00

Every evening, the centre of Chiang Mai comes alive with a massive Night Bazaar, and few people visit the city without picking up a few bargains here. In fact, the stalls that are squeezed on to the pavement and in the purpose-built arcades are one of Chiang Mai's biggest attractions.

Here you can pick up everything from antiques to fake Rolex watches, choose from an astonishing variety of handicraft souvenirs, sample the smoothness of the colourful silk on sale everywhere, have a suit measured up, ready for your collection the following evening, browse exquisite Asian silver jewellery or stock up on cheap DVDs.

The roti prata there very cheap and tasty, especially the banana roti prata with chocolate top. It cost SGD0.80 only!

Below is a taxi not a pick-up truck. It is called "songthaew" means "two benches".

Tuk-tuk, a three-wheeled bicycle equiped with a powerful engine, serve as Chiang Mai's taxis.

Wat Prathat Doi Suthep

2007-02-15T13:01:00.000+08:00

This one of the famous temples in Chiang Mai built in 14th century. Doi Suthep is a mountain, about 15 kilometers from Chiang Mai, with on it Wat Prathat Doi Suthep, a Holy Buddhist Temple. Every Temple with a name starting with Wat Prathat contains Buddha relics and therefore is Holy to Buddhists.

Inside the temple there is a giant Chedi, covered with gold.

Chiang Mai night scenery from the temple.

Chiang Mai Trip - Day 1 (12-Jan-07)

2007-01-20T13:11:00.000+08:00

This is a 3 days 2 nights trip. My wife and I stayed at the Empress Hotel located at south east of the city. Overall, it was a pleasant trip. More importantly, things there were dirt cheap and it's cheaper than Bangkok.
We arrived at the Chiang Mai international Airport at about 11am. Then we moved on to fill our stomach at the Park Royal hotel. It's a buffet lunch. So all you can eat.

After lunch, we headed to the Mae Sa Elephant Camp.

Here's the elephant profile and attendant...

Hey! Those elephants are very clever and they can draw very well.

Sample Shots of 50mm f/1.8 MK II

2007-01-19T23:33:00.000+08:00

As promise, here are a few sample shots. It creates nice blur effect (bokeh) at the background.

EF 50mm f/1.8 II

2007-01-03T23:59:00.000+08:00

Recently, I bought this new lens. It's a value-for-money lens that only cost me SGD130. In another words, this lens is cheap, sharp and large aperture. It's pretty good for portrait photography and low light environment. I would recommend everyone to get it. Take a look.

I will upload a few pics taken using this lens later.

Singapore Motorshow 2006

2006-12-06T16:26:00.000+08:00

This was my first visit to the motorshow on 18 Nov 2006. It was pretty much fruitful to me. Picture worth a thousand words.

Of course, I didn't forget about the model

7 Do's for Panorama Shots

2006-12-06T16:04:00.000+08:00

It had been quite a while that I did not post anything about photography. Because I was very, busy, busy, busy, and lazy, lazy, lazy.
Okay! Today I want to share about Panoramas. To do that, you need to shoot a series of photos and stitch them into one using image editor software like Photoshop. It sounds quite easy huh. Well, before that, you will need to take a series of good photos with same exposure, same focal length and a tripod. Just follow these tips below:

Switch off autoexposure and shoot in manual mode.
Switch off auto white balance.
Use one aperture and shutter speed setting for all shots.
Fix the focal length for all shots.
Shut off the flash.
Use a tripod.
Overlap the shots between 25 and 50%.

Just walkthrough the 7 tips before taking sequence of shots and you will be in GOOD SHAPE!

White Balance Filter

2006-11-21T23:05:00.000+08:00

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

2006-11-21T00:30:00.000+08:00

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:

Filters
Camera bags
Extra wide angle lens
Telephoto lens
Blower
Remote shutter
Extra recharge batteries
External flash
Flash diffuser
Tripod
Monopod
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

2006-11-19T23:18:00.000+08:00

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

Front-focus
Hotpixels
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

2006-11-19T22:52:00.000+08:00

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

2006-11-14T15:35:00.000+08:00

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

2006-11-13T15:14:00.000+08:00

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

2006-11-13T14:17:00.000+08:00

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

2006-11-12T23:36:00.000+08:00

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

2006-11-12T22:43:00.000+08:00

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

2006-11-12T19:10:00.000+08:00

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

2006-11-12T18:19:00.000+08:00

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!