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Tuesday, 22 June 2010

  • Buy SanDisk!

    Apparently when I took out my much abused SD card (which I keep unprotected in my wallet) had it's "lock" came out and I couldn't write into the card anymore, I decided to give Vector Magnetics a call.  No receipt.  No package.  But was sure it had a Vector Magnetics sticker when I bought it.  "Can but need to pay $10 admin fee".  Woot!  Went down and apparently they didn't repair the SD card... they just gave me a brand new one in package, with new $10 receipt, no questions asked.  Oookay... that's service.

    No wonder I still stick with SanDisk all these years.  They're one of the most durable and reliable memory chip makers around, not to mention, fastest speed (unlike some dubious companies which over rate theirs).  Just get their medium speed and it's already faster than some of their competition's "much faster" cards.

    Five chilli points to SanDisk and Vector Magnetics.

Wednesday, 14 April 2010

  • Amusement

    Was back on the Spin bikes last night.  Trying hard to regain lost fitness since I stopped cycling since Oct last year.  I saw so many people pushing hard on the bike.  Some, I can understand (small sized girls) but geez, at least now I understand why I am "fast" on the bike - slow by my own considerations but relatively fast to a huge number of the population who consider a 40km time trialist going at 33kmh to be "fast" - one reason why I stopped taking part in OSIM is because I am trying to get past the "fastest" 36kmh people hogging the rightmost lanes (they assume no one else will overtake them, or at least take their time getting out of the way, and are actually the ones costing me the most time, whereas those going slower than 33kmh generally keep to the left) when I am zipping by between 40-44kmh trying to figure out how to overtake these guys and ending up jamming brake and re-accelerating all the time.

    The new Spin bikes have an obvious problem - the lack of grip - and thank goodness for the last many years, we've had good ones else I don't know how I would ever have trained for Genting.  At it's "hardest" which you can normally find after trying to make three turns of the knob and not getting any extra resistance, I can still ride during my base stage and yes, at my untrained stage, I was already using 90% of the resistance.  It's good because it limits the amount of power I am generating during my base training, forcing me to go low... but when I move to the next stage, these bikes are pretty useless.  I may have to make Orchard my permanent spin place where there's still a couple of old bikes (I hope).

    Thus when I see people huffing and puffing on these new bikes, it becomes even more obvious than usual, how much power they are really generating.

    Last night, I was dripping with sweat on the outside.  But I have learnt that generating power can only be seen in two ways
    1.  flywheel is hot
    2.  my socks are drenched
    Neither happened last night despite all the sweat I was generating on the outside.  I also know myself, being my first ride in weeks, I was basically not generating power - at least not much by my standards, but I guess it must have looked like I was.  If I continue at this rate, by the end of the week, I am going to be pounding on the handlebar trying to find more resistance from the bike.

Thursday, 11 March 2010

  • A cycle in photography

    When I first started out with the G1, I took mainly jpeg photos, but found limitations, especially in the colouring system of the Panasonic.  That made me switch to taking in RAW, using SilkyPix that came with the G1.  I found some commonly used settings to mass produce photos.  After that I moved on to Lightroom (LR).  And then I moved back to taking jpeg when I moved to the Nikon.  As is.  Then I started fiddling with jpegs using LR, which sort of put me back into the seat of a photoshopographer, rather than a photographer.  I was being lazy, thinking I could always fix my pictures later on.  Not that it's a bad thing - essentially a badly taken shot is better than a missed shot, and things can always be fixed later.  Plus I started trying to capture the maximum dynamic range of the light, which means the jpeg does not always come out nicest.  Thus the confusion.  I was taking some pretty nice photos with limited dynamic range; should I try to capture more dynamic range light and use post-processing to fix things, or to just use the best of exposure and lighting to take the picture that looks the nicest?

    Hmmm.

Wednesday, 20 January 2010

  • Fav photos

    Some of my favourite shots...

    This was at Fullerton Hotel.  I was moving around the figure, trying to find the right light, and suddenly, I saw it!



    I thought this was a nice picture of the cat.  It was either this, or a side profile shot... in the end, I chose this instead.



    I thought I did pretty well, considering I was using a 35mm prime lens which translate to about 50mm focal length, and still managed to take this giant in total.


    I'm not sure why I like this.  I just do..
    It's from a wide-angle from Panasonic G system


    Nice wooden horse from Penang


    Choosing one of two pictures... in the end, I chose this because it shows the vast expanse of sea and fisherman is a good size comparison for everything else.

    The other picture focuses just on fisherman..




  • Sunrise @ Esplanade

    Great morning shoot with the "Relax shoot" guys at Esplanade.  In fact, my second shoot with them.  My first shoot was kinda messed up.  Not sure why but I think my G1 with the 7-14mm wide angle lens were not focused properly (maybe).  But this time, I came with an exact idea of what I was going to do.

    I was going to park myself at one spot and just take pictures of multiple exposures of the same spot.  By the time I got set up it was still okay - darkish at 6.37am... took a few test shots, then started shoot at 6.38am.  Every minute after that, I will take a few more shots of different shutter speeds.  First time doing this... now I know, every 2 mins, the shutter speed needs to be moved up.  Also, as the sky got clearer, I need to not let the shutter increase too fast, as it is supposed to be brighter with sun going up.  In the end I took 350 photos... till 7.52am.  Quite enjoyed what I learnt, it's amazing.  In fact, out the the 350, I think there's only three photos that are "there", each from a different scene.
    1.  Dark, with lights from the building
    2.  Sky turning from blue to red, half half
    3.  Sun is on the way up, or fully up - yellow.

    My fav is two.  It only happens between 7.01am and 7.02am, with only the right shutter speed to bring out the full colours.  Undoubtedly, a lot of shots, and different setting, all to get "the" picture.

    Now I understand.



cyphercat

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    • Name: Bernard
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