f/2.8

Nikon D800

2012-02-08T01:27:00.000+11:00

No, I don't think I'll be getting this one (nor the 'E'). At the moment I'm still pretty happy with my D700 for what I do.

I don't need HD video and 36 million pixels seem a bit too much for my old PC (yes I'm still on PC) to handle, especially when the files have already been converted to TIFFs, not to mention having to get bigger storage.

And I don't really care if it's 95 grams lighter than the D700 and that the D800 has a 100% viewfinder (which is really welcome), the deal breaker for me here is no built-in GPS. That's what I need. Why can't (or won't?) Nikon add this nice feature to the D800? Why? If smartphones, which are way smaller than a dSLR, have geotagging systems within them, I don't see why the D800 can't have it. Or do I have to buy a GP-1 too?

I hate add-ons.

Until the next incarnation then, or the one after.

have yourself a boxy little christmas

2011-12-24T13:34:00.000+11:00

the walking dead - overdue from halloween this year

2011-12-24T13:32:00.000+11:00

venice

2011-07-10T18:17:00.000+10:00

amsterdam

2011-07-10T18:13:00.000+10:00

paris

2011-07-10T18:04:00.000+10:00

london

2011-07-10T18:00:00.000+10:00

a boat on the sea of grids

2011-03-21T19:45:00.002+11:00

montsalvat

2011-03-21T19:44:00.002+11:00

happily (n)ever after?

2011-03-21T19:43:00.000+11:00

chimping

2011-03-12T22:23:00.000+11:00

Quoted straight from Wikipedia.

Chimping is a colloquial term used in digital photography (especially when using a digital single-lens reflex camera) to describe the habit of checking every photo on the camera display (LCD) immediately after capture.

Do you? I do.

muted

2011-01-26T23:13:00.000+11:00

backup your files!

2011-01-21T00:29:00.001+11:00

Seems like a no brainer but not everybody can get a neat system backing up their photographs (if they are backing stuff up, that is). If you're reading this and you haven't even have any backup of your photographs, stop reading and get yourself an external hard drive or something so you can get to work.

Files do get corrupted or lost or deleted or damaged or whatever that they'd seem unrecoverable.

Back them up!

Just now I realised that I have lost a chunk of my photographs taken between March to June 2010 (which were around 85GB), and that include my recent trip to Japan and Singapore. I thought I've backed them up twice to my two separate 1.5TB external hard drives. Can you imagine how I must have felt?

I'd describe it as a low level heart attack. Plus I feel stupid, careless and irresponsible.

So I dug straight onto my three other hard drives praying that those chunk of photos are backed up there.

They are.

I was so frickin' relieved!!!

I am now in the process of backing these files up to my 1.5TB external hard drive. I'll back it up to the second hard drive tomorrow evening.

Backup your files!!!

photos for sale

2011-01-14T10:01:00.000+11:00

Just in case you didn't know, I've been selling my travel pics on Lonely Planet Images for a while now.

The latest ones I submitted was Japan and Singapore and they're now online for sale.

Check 'em and buy 'em!

Nikon D800?

2011-01-13T22:15:00.005+11:00

With all the rumours about the upcoming Nikon D800, I'm beginning to make a wishlist of what I really want with my dSLR.

I'm pretty happy with my D700 but if Nikon does decide to update it, please make the following happen.

A built-in GPS/geotagging unit.
The more I travel and photograph, the more I realise that a GPS geotagging unit is a must, especially when you travel for a few weeks. If you didn't take note of where you were and what you were snapping you won't remember what it was except if it was a very famous landmark. And let's say you're snapping somewhere where there is no landmark, a built-in geotagging unit is priceless. It's one less accessories to worry about too.

100% viewfinder.
It's really annoying when you've composed that perfect photograph only to find out that there are more to it on the sides and tops and bottoms. If Nikon could do it for the D300, why only have a 95% viewfinder on the D700?

Double CF card slot.
Not much of a big deal for me but it would be nice to have. Raw files on one card and lo-res jpgs on the other card. And please keep it as a CF instead of changing it to SD cards.

Lighter.
A no brainer. The more you travel, the less weight you want to carry. Even if you're not travelling overseas, the weight of a dSLR sometimes make me less willing to take it out. If only a full frame could exist in a D300 body or a D7000 body with menu layouts of the D700, that would be ace. OR!!! Or, if somehow Nikon could make a full-frame dSLR in a micro 4/3 body, God forbid, with the same features on the D700 plus the features I mention above, I'd grab one straight up.

Lastly please don't keep bumping up the megapixels. It's just not worth having. 12-16 megapixels are really good for quite large prints. If you need to make a poster, you wouldn't shoot digital anyway right? Plus I don't really want to run out of hard drive space that fast (I have to work in .tiff).

Of course I'm talking full frame here and I wouldn't mind having a second camera body just in case I need to shoot a wedding or events that needed wide angle shots to zoom shots.

Oh, and I don't give a damn if it shoots 1080p HD Video. I really don't.

not much of a zoo

2011-01-03T00:18:00.000+11:00

OK, it actually is a zoo, I just didn't bring my telephoto lens. I only had my 50mm instead. I just wanted to try to take photos with some limitations.

Enjoy.

have yourself a merry little christmas

2010-12-25T23:40:00.002+11:00

lesson learned

2010-12-13T19:21:00.000+11:00

helped a friend shoot a wedding yesterday.

forgot to replace my flash's battery even if i had remembered to get new ones the previous night.

my flash died in the middle of the shoot.

it didn't die immediately. the flash started to take longer and longer to accumulate power and in the end, it just became a heavy burden on my camera.

will not happen again next time.

cambodia with a hint of thailand

2010-11-27T16:48:00.000+11:00

i saw red

2010-11-06T01:20:00.000+11:00

effendi & shierly - wedding registry

2010-09-30T21:48:00.000+10:00

fisheye madness

2010-07-03T15:47:00.000+10:00

singapore

2010-06-07T23:42:00.000+10:00

flowers

2010-04-25T19:43:00.000+10:00

faces

2010-04-25T19:40:00.000+10:00

conceptual japan

2010-04-21T17:07:00.000+10:00

pretty japan

2010-04-21T16:26:00.000+10:00

japan here i come

2010-03-16T17:41:00.000+11:00

I'll be flying to Japan next week. A trip that took me three years of planning, delaying, canceling etc etc.

Well now I'm so ready for it. Are you ready for me Japan?

Will be travelling to Tokyo, Hiroshima, Osaka and Kyoto (and hopefully Nara).

Photo gear?
- Nikon D700
- Nikon 18-35mm (will probably be unused most of the time)
- Nikon 24-70mm, my main lens for all trips
- Nikon 70-200mm, not really my thing, but I got my friend to bring mine from Melbourne so I can use it back in Jakarta
- Nikon SB800
- Gary Fong cloudy
- Gitzo Mountaineer Tripod
- L-Bracket
- Singh Ray Colour Combo Polarizer

Will be there for 20 days. I'm super psyched.

photodining at the apartment

2010-03-16T16:27:00.003+11:00

bella segarra

2010-03-16T16:02:00.003+11:00

snowy blues

2010-01-27T23:27:00.001+11:00

leader

2010-01-26T23:54:00.002+11:00

the exhibition

2010-01-24T22:58:00.001+11:00

my heart to you

2010-01-24T22:57:00.002+11:00

travel light

2010-01-24T00:26:00.003+11:00

My gear for travelling as of now:

- Nikon D700 body with the upstrap

- Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8

- Nikon 18-35mm f/3.5-4.5

- Nikon SB800

- Canon S90

- Singh Ray LB Colour Combo filter

And yes, no Tripods anymore!!! I'd bring myself a gorilla Pod though.

I wouldn't say that's compact and light enough as there are still other things that I need to bring because of the digital world:

- battery charger

- laptop

- battery charger for laptop

- mobile phone and it's charger of course

I need an assistant.

lucky bastard

2010-01-23T21:59:00.002+11:00

g freestyle

2010-01-22T20:25:00.000+11:00

heads up

2010-01-22T20:24:00.001+11:00

welcoming 2010 on cloud9

2010-01-22T20:19:00.002+11:00

winter china

2009-12-31T08:08:00.000+11:00

merry christmas

2009-12-14T04:15:00.003+11:00

thailand through my lens

2009-12-14T04:02:00.011+11:00

in thailand

2009-11-13T03:45:00.003+11:00

I'm now on a trip in Thailand.

Nice tropical weather

Photo gear I'm taking with me:

- Nikon D700 body

- Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8

- Nikon 18-35mm f/3.5-5.6

- Gitzo 0541 tripod with RRS ballhead

- Nikon SB800 flash

- Joby Gorilla Pod SLR Zoom

Everything works nicely. Not too heavy but foolishly I forgot to bring the L-Bracket and clamp for the tripod. Crap.

I think I'll go with this setup for my Japan trip in March.

Or should I have my 70-200 f/2.8 with me?

Photos coming soon. Hopefully sometime next week we'll start seeing some cool pics.

red and mel

2009-10-26T15:48:00.002+11:00

freak

2009-10-26T15:46:00.002+11:00

lin & bella

2009-09-14T00:15:00.002+10:00

I had the pleasure of doing a photoshoot for Lin & Ho today for Lin's test make-up.

love the noise

2009-09-06T19:25:00.003+10:00

travel light?

2009-06-30T11:02:00.002+10:00

I'm flying back to Indonesia tomorrow for three weeks and Singapore for a week.

Will go to Manado and probably Bromo or Tana Toraja depending on the time.

What do I have in my camera bag (the National Geographic backpak)? Not a lot.

One body, one lens, one flash and one tripod. That's the Nikon D300 with the 18-55mm VR lens attached, an SB600 and my Gitzo carbon fibre tripod.

Other than that it's just the standard extra battery, charger, polarizer, small netbook and an external hard drive.

Should I do film? Maybe I should. I've got myself a Nikon F100 body but I have still yet to use it. Definitely after this trip. I'm pretty sure I'll need to carry a lot less (laptop, hard drive) than what I'm carrying now.

my first holga result

2009-06-30T11:00:00.002+10:00

Yes, it was all over the place.

Ha!

A lot of the subjects aren't in focus. I'm not sure if that's the way the Holga's supposed to be or it's my fault since I didn't use the depth of field thing.

I like some of them anyway.

Will do better next time.

D700

2009-06-13T00:26:00.002+10:00

I want a D700.

I don't need one but I want one.

The only reason I can think of to upgrade is that it's a full frame dSLR and having the same megapixel count as my current D300 (12 megapixels), with D700's larger sensor, each pixel would be bigger and my brain is telling me that each can store much more colour information compared to D300's.

It should also boost low light performance. I've seen usable photos taken with ISO 4000, and this is for submissions to image libraries. This, paired with a fast lens could eliminate the use of tripods for night photography unless you'd want that long shutter effect.

So why not get one?

It's frickin' expensive. I can't afford one right now, or anytime soon that is.

And second, I'd need to get a lens to go with it. Probably the 24-70mm. I'd prefer if Nikon would have something like 14-50mm f/2.8 as I don't usually go more than that. And the 24-70mm costs around AU$2500.

So in total, getting a D700 with a 24-70mm lens would cost me around AU$5500.

If I managed to sell all my gear at the moment, I would probably have AU$3000. You do the math.

Another reason is that I don't do a lot of indoor shots. I know it's a hassle carrying my tripod but that's the price I'm willing to pay for clear images.

Last but not least, this is just my complaint that D700 doesn't have 100% viewfinder and a live histogram. I've always wanted a live histogram.

I'll stick with my D300 for now.

my best friend

2009-06-12T23:38:00.002+10:00

breakfast at blue train cafe

2009-06-08T22:35:00.003+10:00

my HDR tutorial

2009-06-08T18:37:00.006+10:00

I know it's been done a million times but I just wanted to do my own version of it so here's the way I do my HDR images.

What you need, image-wise?

For HDR processing, you'd need to take photos of a scene with at least 3 different exposures. I usually go for 2-steps underexposed, 2-steps overexposed and the supposedly correct exposure.

Tools:

- I use a dSLR, you can use any cameras that would allow exposure bracketing

- a tripod is 99% a must (especially when trying to HDR at night), unless you've got a really steady hand

- shutter release is recommended but not compulsory. I usually use mine for night HDRs only.

My camera setup:

- I shoot with Aperture Priority mode for HDRs. It's the A Mode in Nikons.

- I'll select the desired aperture.

- I'll set the bracketing option to 5 or 7 or 9 exposures depending on the scene. This is because my D300 can only bracket at 1-step intervals compared to the D80 I used to have which can bracket at 2-step intervals (boss!!). I wish they'd kept this feature in the D300 but that rant is for another time.

- set the camera shotting mode to Continuous High Speed (CH on the D300)

And you're ready to go.

Once the camera is on a tripod and my setup has been done, I'd frame and hold the shutter release until the camera finished shooting. If you set the bracketing to 5 frames, it will shoot 5 times and it will then stop.

When shooting at night, a shutter release would be handy as sometimes for the 1- or 2-step overexposure, it could take a while for the camera before it releases the shutter (20- to 30-second exposure or more) and a shutter release would minimise the movement of the camera.

HDR EXAMPLE

Below are three photos of the State Library of Victoria I took years ago when I still have the D80. Exposures from firts to last: 2-steps underexposed, correct exposure, 2-steps overexposed.

Now I'll be generating a HDR image from these three photos. I use Photomatix, but there are lots of HDR softwares out there (even Photoshop does it too) so feel free to try them.

In Photomatix, click HDR - Generate (or Ctrl + G).

It will ask you to load the pics for HDR generation. Click Browse, I'll select the pics I've got and click Open then click OK.

Another dialogue box will appear. Leave them on default but tick on 'Attempt to reduce ghosting artifacts' then select (depending on the scene) 'Moving objects/people' or Ripples'. In this case I'll select Moving objects/people. If a tripod was used when taking photos, the checkbox doesn't need to be ticked, but I always do it just in case. Then click OK.

Wait for a few seconds, an image should appear with a small box saying HDR Viewer. We're not done yet here.

Close the HDR Viewer, then click HDR - Tone Mapping (Ctrl +T).

Another dialogue box should appear like the one below. I'd usually leave everything at their default value except for Strength and Light Smoothing. I'd usually put the Strength around 80-100 and Light Smoothing to the very right or second from the right. Seems to give me the most natural result. When you're done here, click OK, then save. I usually save the file as a Tiff file as I'm bringing it over to Photoshop.

Here's the pic generated by Photomatix that I'm bringing over to Photoshop.

Tweak the photo until you think it's right. I'd usually fix the curves at least, sometimes the levels if I need to. And just tweaking the colour until I feel I've got the right mood for the scene. Here's the final image after tweaking in Photoshop.

And I'm done. You'd notice that the leaves on the top left corner are a bit blurry. This is because it was windy when I took these photos.

IMPORTANT STUFF

Don't use Shutter Priority Mode. Why? Because Shutter Priority will bracket different exposures with variable apertures which we don't want for HDR. We want the same depth of field for the different exposures.

When editing in Photomatix or Photoshop, watch out for Halos appearing around hard edges. We don't want this and it makes your HDR image look amateurish. And yes, I've been there too.

When doing HDRs handheld (yes it is possible), make sure you zoom in at 100% to see if your images are aligned perfectly before tweaking even in Photomatix. You can do this after Photomatix has generated your HDR image before closing the HDR Viewer dialogue box.

And last but not least, if you want to have a look at more HDR examples, here's my HDR Set live at my Flickr.

stuck

2009-06-08T01:56:00.003+10:00

Argh, I think I'm kinda stuck.

I've been using my 35mm f/1.8 lately and today I found myself feeling that 18mm is so very wide.

I'm not sure why but at the moment I felt like my 35mm lens is best for composing and framing.

Uh oh...

point nepean national park

2009-06-07T22:25:00.003+10:00

I'm glad I had the chance to do some outdoor shooting again. It's been a while and it feels like a very long time.

Went to Point Nepean National Park with some friends today. It's at Seaford, Mornington Peninsula. We went even thought the forecast said it was going to be really bad, thunderstorm.

When we got there, the weather wasn't that good, but it wasn't raining so that's a relief.

Anyway I had fun shooting with my D300, my Holda and the Polaroids (including the latest Fuji Instax 500).

Here's the best pics of today.

I will now complain about my Fuji Polaroid cameras. I think I'd have to put some kind of tape in front of where the body opens (to insert the film). I got back from today's trip only to find out that both of them, inside my bag, somehow managed to open their bodies and made the film obsolete (especially the huge Instax 500). I had two left in that body and when I opened my bag, those two weren't usable anymore. The Mini Instax was OK. It was open, but the film was OK, but now I don't know how much exposures I actually have left in there.

I will tape both of them as punishment (and a way to conserve the precious polaroid films).

published

2009-06-01T16:02:00.002+10:00

Here and here are some examples of my photos which have been published on the web.

Some of the others have also been published in some Lonely Planet guidebooks.

family

2009-05-23T21:58:00.004+10:00

Got myself a few more toys.

On the very left is the Fuji Instax Mini 7S.

It's a polaroid camera which uses polaroid films with the size of a credit card. A friend's got a spare and I bought it off her. There was no other colour. That's why it's pink. Got it with thirteen rolls of film.

Second from the left is a Polaroid 600 One Step.

Uses Polaroid 600 films. It was quite hard to find the film for this one since I got it off eBay. Finally got it from one of the camera shops in the city. The girl told me that this was the last batch of the Polaroid 600 film IN THE WORLD!!! I stocked on quite a bit of the film. They'll expire this coming August. After that, then what? We'll see.

Second from the right is the 35mm Holga.

I've posted about it before. It currently holds a roll of black & white film. I still have about thirty shots to go before I can develop it.

On the very right is the Holga.

Lent for an indefinite amount of time by a friend. I'll try to get film for it from another friend who's got a spare.

green in the dark

2009-05-18T19:23:00.001+10:00

Holga

2009-05-12T21:07:00.003+10:00

The Holga 35mm I ordered arrived today.

It's plastic, it's antique, it's fantastic.

Gotta go buy some films now.

Nikon D300 firmware update

2009-05-03T23:59:00.003+10:00

Have you updated your D300's firmware?

Just in case you're like me (ignorant) and doesn't know that Nikon has released an update for the D300 firmware, well it's available now. It's version 1.10 both for firmwares A and B.

Download it here (Windows users).

The thing that I'm quite pleased about this update is that I can now attach my copyright information into the photos themselves instead of just attaching a comment like what I could only do before this update.

Root16

2009-05-02T01:05:00.000+10:00

chilli egg with hashbrown

2009-04-26T15:34:00.001+10:00

caffè latte

2009-04-26T15:33:00.000+10:00

st kilda pier

2009-04-25T17:44:00.003+10:00

jumbledat

2009-04-25T17:44:00.002+10:00

cute

2009-04-25T17:43:00.001+10:00

deep shadow

2009-04-20T19:01:00.000+10:00

long white fence

2009-04-20T19:00:00.002+10:00

contemporary

2009-04-20T18:58:00.001+10:00

stuck on the wall

2009-04-18T17:16:00.002+10:00

AF-S DX Nikkor 10-24mm f/3.5-4.5G ED

2009-04-17T09:40:00.002+10:00

On the same day of the D5000 launch, Nikon also revealed a new lens for the DX cameras, the 10-24mm f/3.5-4.5.

my way home

2009-04-16T23:53:00.001+10:00

queuing

2009-04-16T23:50:00.003+10:00

Nikon D5000

2009-04-16T10:01:00.005+10:00

Nikon's released a new dSLR on the 14th April, the D5000.

It's got a vari-angle LCD screen (it flips out like a point & shoot's unlike dSLRs we've come to know so far).

protest

2009-04-15T22:26:00.002+10:00

hopefully a photoblog

2009-04-15T17:21:00.006+10:00

I'll post whatever is related to my photography life here.

Will try to bring my camera out everyday, and will try to put up a photo hopefully pretty regularly.

enjoy.