Author Archives: 2konbla

Moving Out

The 27th of July 2007 marked a sad day for me. I was leaving the office of mine for over 6 years; the Xfresh fishtank, in the All-Asia Broadcast Centre.

My desk, which overlooked a glass window which overlooked hot chicks coming in and out of the elevator walking to different departments. I will miss those hot chicks dearly.

I’d miss the Chinese fried rice (nasi goreng cina) and Goodday chocolate milk. Every excolleague I meet asks “does the AABC cafeteria still have nasi goreng cina? Oh man I miss that…“. I fondly say yes.

I’d routinely fish out prawns because I’m allergic to them.

One fine sunny Tuesday morning, I took the bus as usual to AABC. I then walked to the new office in Technology Park, Malaysia. (My original plan on Monday was foiled because of rain.)

An abandoned drink.

An underpass under the Lebuhraya Puchong – Sg. Besi.

Soon, I was reaching…

…passing the guardian of the car park…

…into the new building.

I found a mamak, where I have my fix of Teh Tarik Kurang Manis and Roti Kaya.

The new office.

Ah, sweet new cubicle. Sweet, fast broadband. Not so freezing cold air-conditioning.

I asked for a pool table, but I guess this would have to do.

Because I didn’t want to eat only at the mamak downstairs, I decided to check out other buildings and their cafeterias. This particular building had weird plants growing all over.

Sadly, the grass was indeed greener on the other side; this is the cafeteria at the Recreation Center.

Even construction works looked better than my building!

Patimas. This building was made to look and feel like a resort, complete with greenery, a pool, and a pool table (which supposedly is in a storeroom somewhere now.) The poolside cafeteria was a great idea; however the food wasn’t great.

Kept Era

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A Saturday a long time ago, I helped Macdude with his shoot for the Bantus Capoeira group. He used the trusty Minolta 24mm F2.8 with his Sony A100 and iISO hotshoe to ISO hotshoe and Cactus V2 remote triggers to trigger two cheap flashes pointed at brollies.

Why’d I mention it, if nothing from that appears in this entry? Because I love 24mm lenses, and flash hotshoe adapters. 😀

And so, I used strobe mode on my Sony HVL-F56AM flash mounted on my Sony A100. Note that some of the shots are panned to avoid the strobed actions of the performers from overlaying each other and getting overexposed. Also, if the performer was facing the right, I’d align him to the left of the frame, and shoot just as he is about to perform an action… while panning quickly so he’d be at the right of the frame.

18mm F8 1/4s ISO400 with flash on strobe mode, 9 Hertz, 3 times, 1/8th power (if I remember correctly.)

18mm F6.3 1/4s ISO400 with flash on strobe mode, 9 Hertz, 3 times, 1/8th power (if I remember correctly.)

8mm fisheye F4 1/20s ISO800 with direct flash.

18mm F3.5 1/30s ISO1600 with direct flash.

Oh by the way they’re always performing on Saturday nights in the Telawi area of Jalan Bangsar. Go catch them, but try not to flash them unless you had permission.

The big debate about Live View

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…because reading about the newly announced Sony Alpha 700 has taken up my time.

SLR cameras traditionally need you to look through the optical viewfinder to compose. This is different from digital cameras, which let you see what you are shooting on the LCD screen. This feature is known as Live View.

However, as of late, major camera brands have introduced Live View on their digital SLRs.

What’s good about Live View?
– You could hold your dSLR way up high and shoot a crowd while aiming accurately …or go way below and shoot from the floor. (I do this when handed a digital camera and am asked to help take pictures at gigs.)
– You get 100% frame coverage. Some dSLR viewfinders show less, often 95%. After you shoot you’d find the picture has more stuff on the sides.
– You can zoom in on the image for more accurate manual focusing.
– You can shoot macro, much much easier.

What’s bad about Live View?
– Leaving the sensor on for extended periods of time will make the sensor hot (due to current running through it, and light coming in) and thus more noise will show.
– Opening the shutter to go into Live View, and then shooting, probably needs the shutter to return. Thus, every time you activate Live View, you take one shutter cycle away from your camera’s life. Some cameras are rated at 100

The New Sony Alpha 700!

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The new Sony Alpha, called the A700, was just sneaked out through certain Sony sites, and promptly taken down. However, I managed to watch the intro flash, and grab a screenshot!

It feels like Sony is hitting on the trend done by Michael Bay with Transformers. Release little, bit by bit.

I absolutely love:
– AF/MF switch on the back! No other brand has this. They may have an AF On button, but not a toggle to go into MF when in AF, for all lenses, whether they support full-time manual focusing (called Direct Manual Focus on Minolta/Sony systems.)
– 12.24 megapixel ExMor CMOS sensor with ISO3200 and extra ISO6400, much cleaner than their noisy ol’ CCD.
– Sony Ericsson-style AF-point selector joystick. You can also navigate menus and shooting settings with this (note the screenshot at ISO400? I reckon it will allow you to jump from panel to panel.)
– vertical grip has everything, including the AF-point selector joystick!
– front and rear dials.
– changeable focusing screens. I might get a split-prism manual focus screen!
– separate AF illuminator.
– PC Sync terminal for studio light compatibility. This also means I can hook it to an adapter to bring it into a regular ISO hotshoe!
– kit lens is a 16-105mm F3.5-5.6 DT. After the APS-C crop, I love 24mm. I also felt that 70mm on APS-C wasn’t far enough, but 105mm was just nice. This would have all my favorite focal lengths!

This deserves special mention:

– double cross-type sensors in the middle, and a stronger AF motor. Honestly, this means a greater deal than 9 or more cross-type sensors because you get so much more accuracy and speed in one AF point. My Minolta Dynax 7 had double cross-type sensors and it was claimed to be the fastest AF film body of its time. The Sony A100 tended to hunt; it would overshoot the subject, focus back to close focus and then focus on the subject. The Dynax 7 didn’t hesitate; it went straight onto the subject and stayed there.

Rear view, not a screenshot, but stolen from another site.

Stuff that is worth mentioning, though I’m not rancid about it:
– 921

Musical Progression And All That Jazz

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So I bumped into Hunny the rapper from Admonition/guest-starred-in-Three-Flow/Doze-2 who is now-a-hitz.fm-deejay at the last night of the Sunrise Jazz Fest. She said I was familiar!

How I’d love to pick that as a pick-up line but she said she’d stumbled upon my blog.

So here’s a “Albert with celebrity who found my blog” shot.

I really need to figure out a better expression to have in pictures.

So there was Adil, Malaysia’s best saxophonist according to Saharadja, this kickass Indonesian jazz/fusion band. Yes he is kickass because he used to play Prince and James Brown covers back in California, and I have yet to see anybody do one of those super funky Prince numbers (just piano ballads like How Come You Don’t Call and Nothing Compares To You.)

Somehow most naturally, the topic went to music.

What if we had… progressive rap?

You know, progressive in the sense of progressive rock, not progressive dance. Where the song tempo and mood changes often, with complex time signatures, polyrhythms and elaborate instrumentation. Think Pink Floyd and Dream Theater… or even Queen – Bicycle Race for a simpler example of such musical schizophrenia. Locally, I could cite Tempered Mental as a well-known progressive band around here.

Rappers could be switching beats and vocal styles real quick. The only coherence might be that they’d have to rhyme.

The lazy crop of song producers these days don’t bother playing with beats that interweave with the vocals. They’ll put in just one part of the song and loop it all over. Think Rihanna.

Try to play Beastie Boys – Intergalactic in your head. Note that you can remember all those times the deejay starts scratching and making funny bleeps?

At this point somebody pointed out that Kanye West is progressive.

…well, not with what he did with Daft Punk – Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger. So not cool, man. The original song feels progressive due to the ever changing tempo, although it keeps to its motif. Like what Fatboy Slim does.

Despite how much the Black Eyed Peas annoy me, I think they did good with Pump It. Without vocals, the song is exactly the same as the Dick Dale – Miserlou instrumental.

Anyway, on to pictures from a gig long time ago, Moonshine 9th August 2007 to be exact. Shot with my newfound love for Kelvin White Balance set to 2500 K.

Mia Palencia!

From acoustic fingerstyle, she now has a full band, with the ever guitar-lick-ready Faz.

Reza Salleh, who I’d say has a few rock progressions up his sleeve. Spot a different drummer!

The crowd went too insane, plus I didn’t want to get caught in the Hujan crowd.

Travelling?

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The real reason why banks change currency often is to prevent good, honest people from time travel into the past.

That’s right.

If you could go back in time to buy something and then bring it back to the future to sell it as something immensely valuable, you’d need their currency. Of course, the only problem with that would be that your current currency would’ve changed!

Unless, of course, you travel progressively back in time, to a time where both your new currency and the previous unit was usable. For example, I could change my RM50 notes into older RM5 notes (right around the time of Chinese New Year, where such behavior is acceptable), then travel back more to change it to RM100 notes, and travel again to the point before it changed look to change it to RM20 notes, and so on and so forth.

At some point you’d want to change your money into tin ore, since that probably is the only thing that depreciated over the years.

Of course, the smarter of you might travel forward in time and sell what would be worth a lot in the future. Though the question is, what would you bring back in time, then, that would be worth a lot more?

Ikon-Ikon

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I think it’s ironic that if I was to nominate two icons to represent Malaysian society, they would be:

1) The dude in the DiGi Shhh cinema ad, who goes “Who dare scold me? I don’t care la I taikor mar!”

2) The Magnificent Shiny Disc Hero. Yeah, you know, the bright-color-haired DVD seller who goes “Yo! Hello friend!” and gets a load of “Tai jor laa!”

Who’s your Malaysian icon?

A-mount To Something

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More geeking out!

Tamron 24-135mm F3.5-5.6 lens for Minolta/Sony A-mount

Apertures:
24mm onwards F3.5
28mm onwards F4
45mm onwards F4.5
50mm onwards F5
75mm onwards F5.6

Not as bright as the Minolta/Sony 24-105mm F3.5-4.5 sadly, but still beautiful as a walkaround on full frame. 24mm is phenomenal. 24mm on APS-C is still very convenient, and 135mm is sweet.

This is beautiful. Ribbed like a Star Wars starship. The gold ring is very captivating. Even the rear mount looks pretty, like the back of a Carl Zeiss 85mm F1.4. It also comes with a special Tamron 50th Anniversary cap. The Nikon and Canon versions don’t have this cap. Must be a bonus for the Alpha male (Alpha female where applicable).

Decent bokeh at 135mm F5.6.

Found at Bintang Maju, Maju Junction.

Minolta 28-105mm F3.5-4.5 lens for Minolta/Sony A-mount

Shot at 105mm F4.5 1/25th of a second.

I found this in Foto Miami, KL Plaza, Bintang Walk. Small, light and bright. Just a bit less wider than the classic 24-105mm F3.5-4.5 lens. If not for my Vivitar Series 1 28-105mm F2.8-3.8 I would’ve considered this. It’s decently sharp at 105mm F4.5, with the classic Minolta colors, and smooth bokeh.

I’m beginning to miss the Minolta 35-105mm F3.5-4.5 lens I sold; it was a good example of Minolta bokeh. Minolta had always been big on bokeh, throwing in circular apertures with all their RS (ReStyled) lenses.

Guess what’s different about this picture’s bokeh.

That’s right – a loose aperture blade!

Strangely, other than the misshaped bokeh, pictures from it look fine. This is for the Pentax K-mount. Yes, I held the lens in front of the Sony A100.

I found the Sigma EF-500 DG Super for Minolta/Sony iTTL mount. It does wireless TTL, HSS and manual power mode, feature-wise equivalent to the Sony HVL-F56AM I have. Those who are looking for this can find it in Kotaraya, just up the stairs, behind the big camera shop at the corner.

However, it is not as powerful; only at 105mm zoom does it give a guide number of 50 meters. In comparison, the Sony HVL-F56AM does 56 meters at 85mm zoom! It also requires a separate press to release the swivel heads in two directions, and its flash head is 1-2cm longer.

What if I put my Minolta 70-210mm F4.0 beercan lens with the Tamron 1.4x and Kenko 2x teleconverter? I get a better quality 600mm F11 lens, better than my previous 600mm F11 combo!

Since my beercan has very low levels of chromatic aberration, it does not show up with teleconverters.

A shot with the previous 600mm F11 combo would have colors bleeding onto the crow.

The creamy bokeh still shows.

(Just a plain beercan shot.)

My Sony HVL-F56AM flash came with a pouch; unfortunately, it did not come with a belt strap. I had a cobbler add on a leather strap so it could be strapped to my belt. It also fits a lens the size of the beercan (55mm filter diameter) as seen in the image on the right. However, I do not recommend putting heavy lenses and a flash on the left-side configuration.

I’ve also been experimenting with custom white balance as of late; this is at 5500 Kelvin, to give a more film-like color tone. Flourescent lights come in a variety of flavors; some green, some daylight-adjusted. Below is the Auto White Balance version.

I have too many 70-210mm lenses for the Minolta/Sony A-mount; from left: Minolta 70-210mm F4.0 beercan, Cosina 70-210mm F2.8-4.0 push-pull (Vivitar Series 1 rebadge), Sigma 70-210mm F4.0-5.6 push-pull (new!)

The Sigma is the most compact of the lot, but it was broke to begin with; it cannot focus to infinity at 70mm, and draws into regular focus as you push to 210mm. It reminds one of the old vari-focal zoom lenses, where you’d have to zoom first, then refocus! Modern lenses keep focus when you zoom in and out. I reckon something inside was misaligned.

It’s also aged as heck, pulled out of a box of junk (yet to be blogged about). Its rubber coating had melted and was sticky, which I had to file off tediously.

It makes for some trippy shots. Defocused images have a spherical distortion about them.

Focused wayyy beyond infinity, methinks.

And yet, you could spell portrait lens with this. All these shots were not post-processed; color tones were a result of playing around with white balance along the Kelvin line (2500K-9900K) and the Green-Magenta axis.

This is the 2500K end of Custom White Balance.

It gives a surreal, cool feel.

You can even induce iodine-like color onto your shots.

In other news, my Olympus OM-2000 is acting up; the mirror is starting to slide outwards. I suspect aging glue. However, nothing like a little nudge to get the mirror back into alignment on its plate.

A Canon EOS 300D disassembled. Yes, they use Sony LCD screens.

So what do I think of the news, with the Canon 40D, Canon 1Ds MkIII, Nikon D300 and Nikon D3 announced?

Well, Nikon finally did Live View properly, with contrast-based auto-focus (the Canon Live View works like Olympus, where you have to press the AF-On button to auto-focus in Live View). Nikon also has ISO 25600 (if you choose to choose ISO in 1/3rd stops I will confiscate the camera from you and slap you with one of those solid Nikkor lenses you pride yourself owning). Plus Nikon being on CMOS finally rids the noise levels associated with CCD sensors. They also have a sweeter Nikkor 14-24mm F2.8 full-frame lens out.

Of course, the 36×23.9mm FX sensor size is not true full-frame; full-frame is 36x24mm! Technically you’re getting a 1.004x crop factor.

September 4th 2007, however, is when I’d expect the new Sony to be announced.

Who knows, there might be somebody with one of those new Canon/Nikon bodies at the Sony launch. Though, it wouldn’t be new news… unless it was say, the unannounced Olympus or Pentax. 😮

…and that’s not all. This does not count my most recent acquisition, something in the lines of birding territory. 😀

Happy Birthday Both Of You!

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…sang the waiters at Italiannie’s. Yes, Cheryl and Slinky both.

She’s such an incorrigible camwhore she pushed me aside.

There, one of the rare normal-looking-me shots.

Cute.

Certainly the subject of papparazzi.

(Only when the cameras stopped flashing did we get this.)

Sexy back.

One of those rare stalker-me shots.

Psst amoi tengok apa?

Oh tengok I ya…

Pardon the lame captions, this is my way of indirectly giving them the pictures I owed her for over a year. Yes, those earlier shots are from her birthday last year!

“Yay we finally got our shots!”