K O M T A R

Last Saturday, I went on a photo outing with some colleagues at KOMTAR. Our intention was to learn about photographing architecture and looking lead-in lines. For those who don’t know what that is, its short for Kompleks Tunku Abdul Rahman. Just go to Penang and look for this gigantic cigarette sticking out of the ground, thats the one.

Quite easy to find right? Hahahah!

Before we start shooting, we need to warm up first. Luckily there were a load of birdies around to help us.

 

On a serious note, I did learn about hyperfocusing, which is really useful for situations such as this where there’s no time for auto-focus. Fun leh!

Here’s what it actually looks like lah..

A few steps to climb to reach the base of the tower.

All 65-storeys of it.

As we found out, there were a lot of hidden gems around the area. Nicely kept but devoid of people… I’m guessing most people dont even know about it. There were even a few enterprising businesses around.

Dun Wan lah… Hahahah.

A shot of the “Lima batang jalan”, an intersection of 5 roads in front of KOMTAR. The light was still good, not too harsh.

While we were looking down at the traffic, I decided to teach some of the newer folks about panning. Hard to get right, but the results are very syiok. This is the best one that I managed to get.

We also practised some longkang shooting. Hahahahh.

You can see the Trader’s Hotel from here. The big round bola is the KOMTAR Dome, which is an indoor hall for concerts and events.

There was a moat around the Dome to protect from invaders, but it hasn’t been used in a while.

Oklah… last tall shot. The sky was really blue that morning.

Doesn’t that shot remind of a certain male appendage….? Hahahahah.

In support of Earth Hour

Earth Hour is this Eco initiative that asks people to turn off their lights for one hour on 28th March 2009 from 8.30pm to 9.30pm. Supposedly to save energy and reduce the carbon footprint of electricity generation. It doesn’t really make sense if people only support Earth Hour for the heck of it and then continue to turn on the combined 4000W air-conditioning systems and 1000W entertainment systems after that…

But thats besides the point. CEO and myself decided to support also la by turning off all our lights for that one hour. Here’s a picture we took to commemorate the event:

Here’s another shot from a different angle:

HAHAHAHAH! Actually we just switched all the lights off and went to Queensbay Mall la…

Speed test!

Was supposed to go for a photo outing last Saturday but it rained in the morning! So I slept a while longer then woke up with nothing to do. Suddenly I remembered, I bought this Kingston Elite Pro CF 8GB a few months ago, thinking of replacing my Sony MSPD-thru-converter for my camera. The Sony MSPD ain't exactly the fastest bit of kit around, so I thought at RM78, the Kingston Elite Pro should be a worthwhile replacement. Spec'd at 133x or 20 Mbps some more! 

But then hor... it doesn't seem fast la... almost the same as my MSPD only! Even my colleague who shot my wedding for me told me it was slow. And once it reached 200+ pictures, it began moving even slower still.

So I decided to do a very unscientific speed test between the two. I randomly chose 6 RAW and 20 JPGs totally to 112MB and did a copy-to and read-from to my PC, to see if it was really faster or not. 

And the result? On average...

Sony MSPD write: 11 Mbps read 20 Mbps

Kingston Elite Pro 133x write: 11 Mbps read 22 Mbps

What the heck?! Writing speed almost the same! Rugilah my RM78... didn't achieve my objective also! Further reading on the internet showed that the 8GB version used MLC flash technology which is slower than the 4GB SLC flash technology. At the time, the 4GB version was selling for RM50. I thought 8GB more worth it mar..

Oh well. Spare memory card I guess. Elite Pro 133X my arse...

Goodbye old friend...

My Minolta 50mm f/3.5 Macro is going off a new home. Very sharp lens with trademark Minolta bokeh. It's "only" f/3.5 but personally, it doesn't really matter because the DOF at f/2.8 is so thin that its hard to use. Makes a reasonably good portrait lens too, but again DOF is hard to manage. 

When I got it second hand from a forummer, my first impression wasn't that good. The box was quite weathered! I thought habislah... sure item condition no good..

But the lens itself was flawless! I suspect it lived in a dry box most its life.

 

Two things that let it down is 1. Its 50mm focal distance means you gotta get in real close and 2. It's only 1:2 magnification. Coupled with the short focal distance, it means the bugs will see me before I shoot them! Anyway, hope the new owner puts it to good use. 

Here are some of the best shots I've taken. 

Now Mr Seller... please send me my Minolta 100mm f/2.8 Macro quickly!! Bwahahahah!