Monthly Archives: May 2007

Sing a song right here


It’s that time of the year again. Singer Songwriters’ Round at Alexis, Great Eastern Mall, 18th May 2007!


Featuring lounge lizard Shanon Shah


And (from left) Pete Teo the folker, Mei Chern the uh… singer songwriter, and Ariff Akhir the acoustic uh… crooner.

It was then that I found out that The Sofa Sessions were no more! I will miss their superb, groovy bass player.


The next day, I ended up there accidentally again. This time around, was Jerome Kugan (who sounds every bit like Morrissey, but they can’t do covers at Singer Songwriters’ Round so I can’t ask for Ask or something.)


Then there was Reza Salleh (who stole my shot for his Myspace and now Channel V’s AMP), Pete Teo the sombre, Azmyl Yunor the folk rocker.


(Yeah, this one. Click.)

It’s alright, I’ve only made like 23 copies of your CD for my friends.


I swear, everyone was trying to outdo themselves in sounding sombre. Yin! notes that Pete was playing the slower version of his songs. His vocal vibrato (please correct me if I use the wrong musical term) wasn’t as obvious this time.

Thank goodness the performers were relatively still; I used the beercan lens on these, and the softie combo later.


Only Azmyl had a smile on his face. I think he looked rather… Kermit-like.


OPEN MIKE NOW, YEAH! No more sad songs!


Rina and her happening Rooftop song. She had the most kickass woman voice. I loved how the softie lens made their jeans glow!


Good voice, rather soft though.


Izzy and her Pelan-G. Heehee!


George Wong the emo punk rocker gets all acoustic with his Friendster Song, which was a hit with the older-looking crowd.


Mia Palencia, powerhouse of jazz vocals.


Zalila Lee, who tried to sneak in a cover song. Clever.

More links:
Singer Songwriters Round 2006
Singer Songwriters Round 2004

The Jam And The Junction

11th May 2007 – the first gig I went to in the month of May. Yes, that’s right. Classic Rock night at KL Jamasia. For some reason, I wanna call it The Jam.


Azmyl Yunor, folk/blues rocker meets my Peleng 8mm F3.5 fisheye. Sony HVL-F56AM wireless flash from right, held by Xian Jin.


Crosstown Traffic! Hard rock heavies. Flash from left, held by me, shot by Xian Jin. Never has accidentally putting the flash in a shot looked so good!


They didn’t do Lynyrd Skynyrd – Freebird. Damn you drunken rockers! At least they did Cream – White Room.


Reuben on guitar.


Shot by Xian Jin. As you can see, it is often a great, great challenge to illuminate a scene with a flashgun and a fisheye lens.


He asked if he could get my flash dirty. Sure, why not?

I didn’t expect him to take a few shots in the middle of the non-existent moshpit, getting a lot of attention at it. As it turns out, he was trying to get the shoe to glow by sticking the flash inside… and the rest of it was trying to kill the light coming from the camera’s flash (which must be up to trigger the flash.)

Technically, three things could be done to kill off the light:
1) Use the darkest aperture
2) Lower the ISO (it was 200, when the Sony A100 goes down to 80)
3) Put an infrared filter in front of the flash commander (it will still trigger, but I didn’t bring the filter)


Then, there was Triple6Poser. Hard rock and them foot-stompin’ blues.


Flash pointed left makes for some interesting balance between flash and stage lighting.


Zubira!


Scalloped frets never looked better on my soft-focus combo.


They did a cover of Pink Floyd – Shine On You Crazy Diamond, this time without a keyboardist. Oh and some Indon rock band, and Free – All Right Now!


Lohan! Jangan lari! You gotta sing with us!


N. Rama Lohan has a pimpin’ velvet case for his Gibson Les Paul. Damn.


The next night, I was at Groove Junction for Aseana Percussion Unit. This guy has amazing vocals! He can do a Louis Armstrong impression.


They played mostly adult comtemporary songs from a time gone by.


You will be a belly dancer!


I love my fisheye.


Leonard the soundman.


This is as close as you can get to having a teeth solo on percussion.


Gotta have more cowbell!


Something tells me she won’t mind carrying such front-heavy weights in the foreseeable future.

I’ll get my spaceship to pick her up.


Prema on vocals. That makes like, 3 vocalists or something.


I’ve posted this shot before. I love it!

No Sweat

This post was meant for Saturday, to keep my one-post-a-day record, but I broke it by not blogging from my phone as originally intended.

There was many a time I have been proud that I do not sweat much.

Then, I realized that I do sweat in polo shirts and shirts with more than 2 buttons (which is rare, so make sure you take every oppurtunity to camwhore with such a perspiring Albert).

Then I realized that I rarely wear polos and button-ful shirts. Every other guy probably wears them more often, and thus propagate the idea of men being sweaty pigs.

It’s not true, they’re just trying to look nice. If you would stop staring at their drenched sleeves.

Oh and for the record, it is good to make a girl sweat. 😉

In Other News

Somebody thought I was a spy.

What me Albert a spy? I don’t even remember what a martini tastes like! I talk into my phone, not my shoe! (Though the part about getting it on with hotties might be about right.)

Who do you work for?” he asked.

Yes, my camera does bring some attention, but no, I don’t take spy shots; I am a voyeur, and if I am flashing the crowd it is just to shoot some random chick.

Sightings


Just when I thought it was an uneventful neighborhood…


Strange sightings are seen.


Random streaks of light.


The energy arced and entered…


My neighbor’s car. It was alive! It glowed like the sun.

How did I do it?

It was a power outage. These shots were actually at 8 to 9pm, 20th March 2007. All shots at infinity, 30 seconds at ISO100, mounted on a tripod, and then darkened if necessary. Shots #1 and #4 were at 50mm F1.4, #3 and #5 at 18mm F3.5, shot #2 at 50mm F3.5.

Shot #2 was me with a torchlight. Interestingly, the moonlight was strong all the way till 10pm, when the power came back on. I had no idea moonlight was so bright!

135 on 135

Backdated shots from the Auto Chinon 135mm F2.8 K-mount manual focus lens on my Pentax P30t, using Fujifilm Superia ASA400 film. All shots are wide open, at F2.8. Color balance has not been tweaked, but contrast increased ala high contrast paper, and minor sharpening to show the lens characteristics.


smashpOp is tired of posing while I manually focus, attempt to shoot… and find that the stupid P30t has swallowed yet another frame. I’d have to wind it again until I can shoot.


Oddly, bokeh is nice on the road curb, but rather bright-lined on faraway objects. It also does not look fully round, despite being completely wide-open.

Looking at the full-size scans, this lens isn’t sharp at F2.8. I have yet to find its sweet spot, though if I was to shoot at F4, my Minolta 70-210mm F4 beercan lens would already take care of that range.


At infinity. It has a built-in sliding-out lens hood. Pretty decent flare control.


I have to say, it does a superb job of bringing out the color.


Mere levels tweaking and the colors have punch!


Nearer to infinity, the effect of F2.8 on faraway objects is much less. However, the focus marks on the lens go all the way up to 30 meters!


Fujifilm film rocks. This shot shows very subtle light falloff and subtle chromatic aberration.


This is a crop; note the horrid bokeh on the trees.


This is way, way weird. Out-of-focus spots nearer to the plane of focus are nice and round, while distant spots take a weird octagonal shape.


I also brought it to the Guitar Artistic Series! 135mm F2.8 1/30s ASA400 to let in enough natural light, mixed with the Nikon SB-28 in manual mode bounced.


Fadlly. Hooray film for keeping the highlights from being burnt!


Looking at the shadow, I’m not so sure if I bounced it or went with direct flash.


You’d get equivalent brightness and field of view with a 90mm F2.8 lens on a digital SLR with 1.5x crop factor.


The hair on the back of her head is in focus, but the hair in front is out of focus. Sweet!

I don’t dare to put this on my Vivitar 2x matched multiplied K-mount teleconverter because the last time I did, it got stuck on it. I didn’t shoot with the Vivitar 75-205mm F3.5-4.5 either as my Minolta 70-210mm F4 already took care of that, and brighter, too.

Fee Shy!

One fine sunny day, I went down to Poslaju KL Sentral to pick up a package. Yes, a package shipped all the way from Canada!


The Peleng 8mm F3.5 circular fisheye lens for M42 mount.


I also ordered an M42 to Minolta AF A-mount adapter over eBay.


With the lens on the adapter, on the Sony A100. Note that MenuGearPage 2Shutter lock must be set to Off: no lens to shoot, as the Sony A100 does not detect any lens on it and otherwise would not shoot.


Sadly, the fisheye was misaligned; the markings were on the right-side of it. It cannot turn clockwise anymore in its M42 screw mount.

So what does an 8mm M42 mount fisheye do? 180 degrees of insane wideness, and distortion like no other.

Why didn’t I get the Sony 16mm diagonal fisheye, which has auto-focus, then? I wanted to use the much cheaper M42 mount lens on all my film SLRs. The package was supposed to include the Nikon F-mount and Pentax K-mount adapters, and color filters (screwed on the back of the lens) but none of that was included. Thus, I would not highly recommend Kremlin Optics, the online shop where I bought this, just yet.

Fortunately, the lens that came was well-coated, and was good and sharp. Russian-made lenses are solid. This was made in Belarus. The only sign of weakness would be the lens cap, which many have warned will lose its tightness.

Because it has 180 degrees of coverage there is simply no place for a lens hood. There’s no way you can put filters in front unless they were shaped like the front element.

Since it was an M42 mount lens, there was no way for the camera to tell the lens to stop down, thus you had to stop it down yourself by turning the Unlock-Lock ring as far as it would go. A separate aperture ring limits how far the Unlock-Lock ring will travel.

There is also a focus ring, but this lens, having such a short focal length, has such great depth of field that I rarely ever have to touch it. Considering the hyperfocal distance at F3.5 wide open is 1 meter, I can get everything from 50cm to infinity in focus by turning the infinity marker to the rear F3.5 mark.

If I stopped down to F16 (which doesn’t have any noticeable diffraction, wow) and set the infinity marker to the F3.5 mark, I’d have everything from under 10cm to infinity in focus. Interestingly, I could turn it way beyond the rear F16 mark (looping into the front F11 mark).

It would be pretty hard to conduct a test with a ruler extended to see how much DOF I can get close up, as the ruler would look pretty much in focus everywhere!


Left to right, top to bottom: Sony 16mm F2.8 with Tamron 1.4x teleconverter for 24mm F4.0; Sony 16mm F2.8; Peleng 8mm F3.5 with Tamron 1.4x teleconverter (for 12mm F5.0, note that the vignetting is gone); Peleng 8mm F3.5; Sony KLCC with the Sony 16mm F2.8; Peleng 8mm F3.5 represents what a fisheye is all about.

If vignetting is a big deal, a 1.4x teleconverter can solve that at one stop of light loss. The Sony 16mm diagonal fisheye would be great on a full-frame body, but is unfortunately not as fisheye as expected.


The Peleng is a sharp, sharp lens. Everything is already in focus; stopping down just sharpens the image. F8 is the recommended aperture for decent all-round crispiness.


A crop of the previous image. This was at F16. Blistering! I can feel my whiteheads.


A fisheye is a very interesting effect; it affects near and far objects differently; curved and straight objects differently; objects near the side and smack center distort differently. This shot of KLCC shows how skinny it can make something.


It also has uh… practical use, as I uh… took a picture of my phone.


Get in the action! Sony HVL-F56AM wireless flash fired to ceiling at 1/4th power, held up with left hand, camera in right hand.


So how does the Peleng do on my infrared-modded Fujifilm Digital Q1? Left is my Canon Powershot A520 at 35mm equivalent, and right is the Peleng on the Q1, for 8mm x 6x digital crop factor for 48mm equivalent. Except that it doesn’t look it, as it seems the fisheye is wider than a rectilinear lens of the same focal length.

Both shots are at ISO100 and F8. The Q1 got 1/500th of a second with all the infrared bouncing around, and the A520 did 1/50th of a second.


The fisheye can remove curves! KL Performing Arts Center actually had a curved dome, which has been straightened by the distortion.


Point-less photography. This cannot be any more convenient. Just hold the camera in the general direction and shoot. In this case, the HVL-F56AM wireless flash bounced against the cabinet walls.

We needed was a serial number off the back of the casing.


With the fisheye, you have to get close to get stronger distortion.

Note my shoe; it is quite impossible to get a shot of the floor without your feet unless you jump forwards, am free-falling or have mastered the art of levitation.


30 seconds, ISO100, F16, I think. The original was overexposed by 2 stops and was brought down in Photoshop. I haven’t seen enough clear night skies though. 🙁


Interestingly, the lens I am holding in my left hand is used to remove distortion by tilting and shifting the lens; the lens I have in my right hand is its worst enemy.

Yes, it’s the 85mm F2.8 PC Micro-Nikkor tilt-shift lens. I don’t quite get why perspective correction would need such a zoomed lens; a wide-angle tilt-shift would make more sense to the architectural photographers out there.


It is quite challenging to get flare with the Peleng. This was at F16. Because I had to stop it down before shooting, the sun wasn’t too glaring (though it would still be unsafe.)

The Peleng’s wide coverage will make any outdoor shot have extreme highlights and shadows. The Sony A100 chooses to underexpose, in which case it is wise to tap the AEL/Slow Sync button to spot-meter the scene. Alternatively I use Shutter Priority to have a quickly adjustable shutter speed, and use Aperture Priority with +1 exposure compensation.


There is a real macro mode if I remove the rear glass filter, making it short-sighted. Spot my feet!


TTL wireless flash almost certainly causes a spotlight effect, as with ultra-wide-angle lenses, unless the flash is placed far back or bounced to have wider coverage. This was at Cheah Repair, Mutiara Complex, Jalan Ipoh. I was testing my Minolta 70-210mm F4 beercan with the Tamron 1.4x teleconverter on a Minolta Dynax 5xi to see if it had the same compatibility problems with my Tamron 1.4x teleconverter.


It didn’t, so I went to Futuromic in Dataran Sunway one Saturday morning to find out if my Tamron could be rechipped. No, it could not, but at least while waiting for it to open I met the managing director, and we had a nice long chat while waiting for the technician. Futuromic brings in Tamron, Pentax, Ricoh and Nikon stuff, among others. Even the Pro Tama 0.7x wide-angle converter I had was brought in by them!

Nope, no scoop on the Tamron 70-200mm F2.8 price, though it will not come with any image stabilization so we know which systems will benefit from such a (presumably) well-priced lens.

I pitched to him the idea of having a weekday off and opening on a Saturday (they were only there because there was training) to cater to photography enthusiasts who have day jobs. I think a lot of old-timer camera shops could do with such an approach, getting more casual customers on weekends.


Walking on the moon.


Subtle distortion.


Draw a straight path from A to B…

How does the Sony A100’s Super-Steady Shot fare with such a short focal length?

Or rather, does it even know what the focal length of the lens is, and how does it compensate?

A shot in Aperture Priority, Auto ISO would wield 1/15s, ISO320, or 1/5s ISO100. Auto ISO works by increasing the ISO up to 400 if the shutter speed is slower than the inverse of the focal length.

Thus, the camera assumes that the focal length is 5 divided by 1.5 crop factor, 10/3 or 3.33mm.

Surprisingly, much longer lenses like the Sony 500mm F8 reflex lens on my Tamron 1.4x teleconverter (making a 750mm F11) still get stable at 1/80s despite the camera not detecting the lens (due to incompatible teleconverter.)

I simply have no idea how that works.

Anyway, I have yet to encounter handshake with the fisheye. Then again, I haven’t shot much near 1 second handheld, though the formula for Super-Steady Shot promises 1 second.


Now on to shots with the Pentax P30t on Fujifilm Superia ASA400 film! I brought the Pentax out while picking up the lens so I could test the full-frame glory, but alas the adapter was not in the package as promised!


This was actually overexposed due to the P30t being cranky. Amazingly I could bring it down from its 1 second exposure.


I also tried the Pentax 10-17mm fisheye-wideangle zoom on my P30t!

The Peleng 8mm F3.5 circular fisheye has to be one of the best buys I’d ever made. You don’t get any wider than this (except the 6mm F5.6 Nikkor that does 220 degrees and catches your hands holding the camera in the shot). Plus, the immense depth of field means no more focusing lag. The immense field of view means no more pointing. The only thing I’d need to concentrate on doing is to get the camera into the heat of the action, at which point holding the camera on a tripod and aiming it like a mike boom with a shutter release cable would work.

After currency conversion, the lens and adapter came up to under RM1400.

I would not recommend using M42 lenses for auto-focus SLRs, digital or otherwise unless you:

– have changed the viewfinder to a split-prism viewfinder for easier manual focusing
– can live with manual focusing in dark conditions and am not in any hurry
– have no money, but want a 85mm F2.0 lens

If you have to get M42 lenses, get the wider ones like the Peleng 8mm F3.5 circular fisheye or the Zenitar 16mm F2.8 diagonal fisheye.

O Sim-ulation

As a connoisseur of massage equipment, whose fine practice has been refined back while waiting for ever-so-punctual friends, I can thereby declare OSIM’s uPilot… the best there is.

This effectively dethrones their previous top model, the iDesire. With hand massagers that looked like a comfortable bondage chair, and a distinct head-slapping program towards the end, a grown man could experience what it is to just lay back for 15 minutes and have an orgasm.

OSIM is the only massage equipment company that has successfully made products that consistently make me feel good even when I get up. Some hurt me and feel good after I get up; some feel good but hurt after I get up.

So what’s new with the uPilot? Ultimately, the joystick lets you control the rollers/slappers. You can make it sink into the couch for less power, or make it push you up. You can shift it from your lower back to your neck.

Yes, just like telling the masseuse to go up a bit and work on your shoulders.

A good massage is usually of the harder variety. Anyone who has ever been for the real thing would know. Don’t tingle and giggle. The octopus/jellyfish move, which creeps up the scalp, is tingly at first, then you brace the fact that having your brains sucked out like a coconut is bliss.

Some ask how I do it so well. Simple – you massage a friend like you wish you’d like to be massaged at that moment. It works. Heck there have been times where I’d need a massage bad, but headed over to knead some random colleague and I’d feel much better.

When I am old and retired, I will want to have children who are a benefit to society. I wouldn’t want just a dumb corporate slave. I already won’t force them into boring stuff like accounts or law (though, if they go into law hardcore, I don’t want to pick up death threats for them.)

At the very least, they should earn enough to buy me a massage chair.

Sony A100 Tips And Geeking Out

Reprogram the AEL/Slow Sync button

MENU – play icon – menu 1 – AEL button

Options are AE hold, AE toggle, spot meter AE hold and spot meter AE toggle. I choose spot meter AE toggle. (Okay, so it shows a spot metering icon; a circle with a box around it.)

Using spot meter AE toggle, I can keep my camera in MultiSegment metering, and press the AEL/Slow Sync button to use spot metering on whatever I’m pointing at. This is useful when pointing at a extremely bright or dark object, where it would otherwise lose detail by being too bright or dark; point at it so it covers the center circle, tap the AEL/Slow Sync button and shoot. Thus, I never have to access the Metering part of the left Function Dial.

Flipping up the flash and pressing AEL/Slow Sync will activate Slow Sync mode as usual. This saves me a trip to the left Function Dial. Also, if you spot meter on a bright object in the background, and point the flash from an angle, you will get a 3D pop on the subject, and a flat 2D look to the background.

Decreasing Contrast

Yes that’s right, decreasing contrast is good for this camera. Especially so when there is a backlit subject; it tends to retain the highlights and leave the shadows dark. (Even when Dynamic Range Optimizer is set to Advanced, its effect is subtle, unlike the overly grainy early versions of Nikon’s in-camera-post-processing D-Lighting.) While it can still be pulled up in Photoshop, decreasing the contrast to -2 makes the blacks… less black. Pleasantly reminiscent of my Canon Powershot A520. 😀

The Sony A100 is notoriously predictable that it would underexpose for backlight, while the Nikon D80 and D40 overexposes. Throw in +1 EV for backlit subjects and DRO+ saves the highlights from being clipped.

Alternatively, just tap the reprogrammed AEL/Slow Sync button to spot-meter on a face. 😀

Skipping Eye-Start Continuous Auto-Focus

There is a very simple way to disable Eye-Start Continuous Auto-Focus when the camera is on your stomach, without going through the menus – just press the Drive button!

It’s the button on the top surface, on the right, behind the shutter button. Pressing it will go to the Drive menu. In fact, you can press the Func, Menu, Play or EV button and Eye-Start will not be active.

Press the shutter halfway to reactivate Eye-Start.

By habit, I like to chimp (view shots right after shooting) so I press Play by reflex.

In dark areas with telephoto lenses, where the camera is more likely to hunt, I use this method, raise the camera to my eye, point at the subject (already in focus from before) and half-press. This way, the camera does not hunt because it is already closely in focus. If you were to look through the camera without aiming at the already correctly focused subject, the continuous auto-focus will hunt!

Direct Manual Focus… For Confirming Focus!

Direct Manual Focus means you can use manual focus after auto focus has locked focus. You will hear it focus, and when it has locked focus, the focusing screw releases itself from the lens so you can turn the focus ring.

When the focusing screw releases itself, you can hear an audible whirr. Look through the viewfinder and listen for the sound when the focus dot becomes solid.

In a way, it’s better than turning on the Audio Signals in Menu – Wrench Icon – 1. No more beep-beep that will make you sound like a newbie!

(This lets you set Menu – Gear Icon – 1 – Priority setup to Release, which lets you shoot whether or not the camera thinks it is in focus, while still knowing for sure if you’re in focus. Pressing the shutter fully and finding that it doesn’t take a picture because the camera thinks it is not in focus is annoying, especially when camwhoring with hand extended.)

Forcing Full 1/1 Power On Internal Flash

The Sony A100 always fires a preflash before firing the actual flash. This is so the camera can measure how much light is needed to illuminate the subject.

So what if you hid the preflash from the camera?

If you change to Rear Sync flash, Shutter Priority, and choose a slow shutter speed (1/4th of a second should be just nice), you can put your hand in front of the internal flash. Press the shutter, let the preflash fire, then quickly remove your hand. The actual flash will be at full power, because it thinks the preflash had not enough power or effect on the subject.

And now, for some geeking:

Some of my geek exploits are listed here! How to Clean, Upgrade, Repair, Mod, Disassemble a Camera

Rube Goldberg game!

Somebody has already done a M39-mount interchangeable-lens digital camera, like my infrared-modded Fujifilm Digital Q1. I particularly like his concept camera at the end, with a moving tilt-shift CCD to focus; tilting could give much greater depth of field at a very bright aperture. This would make a F1.0 lens usable.

How to make 300-style pictures (okay, maybe you guys already figured it out…)

Post-processing geeking at Matt Greer Photography!

Rotation 360 – an amazing rotating belt/camera bag system for those with loads of lenses.

A Minolta fan’s report of PMA Report 2007.

There was talk of a 70-300mm F4-5.6 dark zoomer, but that would be quite pointless as there is already one. I’d rather see the 70-210mm F4 beercan be reinstated, and the 50mm F1.7 to show what value for money the Sony with SuperSteadyShot can bring. The 24-70mm F2.8 be great on full-frame; one could have a constant F2.8 trio from the Tamron 17-50mm F2.8 DT (I’m surprised there was no collaboration on this), 24-70mm F2.8 and 70-200mm F2.8.

I love what David Kilpatrick pointed out here:
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/readflat.asp?forum=1037&thread=23251643&page=3

A top LCD would be fine if you could switch to put the data on the back screen when required. When the camera is mounted vertically – and this discussion has said loads about portrait shooting – the top LCD is round the left hand side and it’s much harder to turn the camera sideways to view it.

The back screen just reformats the data for a perfect view. When the camera is on a tripod for architectural work or seeing above crowds, obstacles etc – frequently at or above eye level, you can’t see the top LCD at all and have no idea what adjustments you are making (we found this a real pain with the Mamiya ZD which, of course, is exactly the kind of camera used on a tripod most of the time). It can also be a nuisance on a copy stand (you can always see the rear screen but ducking down to view the top LCD is awkward), and finally, when shooting normally, you have to drop the camera down from your eye to make adjustments, while I only have to move the camera forward a bit retaining my aim at the subject.

I have good eyesight in terms of sharpness but very poor accommodation and the tiny symbols used right next to the edge of the Fuji S5/Nikon D200 top LCD are actually not clear to me with or without specs. They are too small to be clear at a glance. The Dynax/Sony rear screen display, in contrast, is legible without removing my normal (corrected for distance) specs. I don’t have to lift my specs or even force myself to refocus my eyes, as everything is perfectly clear without correction.

I could not agree more. Heck, I thought the Canon 350D’s LCD placement, while a bit small, was already one step to genius. Having your shooting info on the back does not consume much battery power, really; I still get 750 shots by CIPA standard.

SLRs have been eating batteries since electronic shutters were invented. My Pentax P30t and Minolta X300 both eat batteries. Leave it on by accident, without even half-pressing to meter, and it will be dead the next day! Fortunately, the Olympus OM-2000 is fully mechanical and only needs 2 LR44 batteries for the meter (though, the sunny F16 rule will get you through.)

Wrapped, Sadly

What: Rhapsody’s Farewell Gig
Who: Rhapsody, the funky, jazzy, soul-ful (and most recently, 80’s synth-discovering) band.
How Much: Free entry, for reservations call 017-3620750
Where: Groovejunction, Desa Sri Hartamas, near Karma, Bojangles, KL Jamasia and behind True Fitness.
When: 9:30pm, Wednesday 23rd May 2007

Yes, I am going even if they are not gonna play the cover of Queen – Good Old-Fashioned Lover Boy as I suggested (which I thought was such a Nicole-ish song.)