Chinatown Streetshoot

The Chinese New Year is fast approaching and the streets of Chinatown are teeming with shoppers, tourist and photographers alike, soaking in the festive atmosphere. I ususally do not feel comfortable in crowded areas, especially around this time of the year in this part of Chinatown, but it was still manageable, as it is still quite a couple of days before the Lunar New Year. I actually went there twice with 2 friends on 27th(Sun with Rachel) and 29th(Tue with Trevor) to have dinner at the abundant mouth watering and gastronomically savoury delights at the various roadside stalls, eateries and restaurants. Of course being photo hobbyists, we did go there to take some pictures of the biggest yearly event in Chinatown, which is the Chinese Lunar New Year. Chinatown is a place with good food to eat and great photo subjects to take, beautifully blended in a marriage of contrasting old world charms and modern convenience and technologies. More pictures can be viewed on this walkabout by fellow blogger Rachel, who has some great pictures of her own here.

In Loving Memory Of My Late Grandfather

Weekend Botanical Stroll

I spent the lazy saturday weekend taking a short stroll along the flora and fauna of the Singapore Botanical Gardens, armed with my cheapo Sigma 70-300mm F4.5-5.6 APO Macro, as promised earlier. For those seeking solace and a place to unwind, away from the hustle and bustle of citylife or the demands of work, the tranquility and quiet beauty of the Botanical Garden is the perfect antidote. Many people may not know that in spite of my many portrait shoots, I still DO like nature and macro photography. Anyway, I started out mostly with nature shots during my early days. It feels great to connect with nature again! And like a very close and good old trustworthy friend, it feels great to connect to my roots again too!

The Gunnery

Yesterday morning, I met up with 2 bubbly and fun loving gals for the first time to have a TFCD(Time For CD) session with them. They basically have not done a photoshoot before and wanted to try one out for the experience. To those who may not know what TFCD means, it works whereby the model poses for the photographer, and the photographer gives the model a copy of a CD/DVD for her time. This is usually the case for models and photographers who want to built a portfolio or have more practice. We went to Chinatown(Yeah, I know, always the same place, but how big is Singapore, haha!), and we started off taking some pictures along Keong Saik Road when we were watched closely by "Curious" Ah-Peks(Old Man), eyes glazed and in a daze as usual, and a friendly elderly British man from one of the budget hotels who tried to strike a conversation with us. Anyway, we moved on a little distance away after awhile, and very unexpectedly, a Caucasion man, from one of the shophouses there invited us to take pictures at his music/pro audio/software production house, "The Gunnery". He shortly introduced himself as Ben and showed us in. What a show of commendable hospitality! We accepted his very generous offer and good will! As I was not prepared for any indoor shoot that day, I did not bring my external flash and shot mostly with my inbuilt camera flash or without flash. We shot at the cosy and stylish lounge, air-conditioned and with a great sound system to play music to set the mood. Without the proper equipment for an indoor shoot, I tried my best to take some pictures with what I had. My apologies if the pics are not up to standard. For those who are wondering more on the technical side, I used a Nikon 35mm F2 for all the pictures posted here. No external flash was available for me at that time. We all had a great time and I thanked Ben for giving us the opportunity to do so. Thats one of the reason why I love my hobby Photography so much. It gives us the opportunity to meet up with new and interesting people and personalities! Thanks to Ben, Samantha and Adelyn once again.

Busy Days Ahead

Starting in the month of December, up till around 2 months later, busy days are scheduled ahead of me due to work, OT and RT commitments. Photography would have to take a back seat during this exhaustive period. Sometimes a little break could do me good, and I hope I take this opportunity to find inspiration and redefine certain aspects of my photography, and go full steam ahead when I am free of my other duties! Which reminds me... The current year 2007 is coming to a close. How time flies. How the years just go by when we start working. How I must feel when I take a look at my blog(if it still exists then, haha!) a few years or more later, especially in chronological order. Snapshots of time brings back Precious Memories that can Evoke our Emotions. Photography does it all. So that we can embrace Life.

Prime Time

The story behind what happened during the taking of this half face portrait in Chinatown Area is quite hilarious! As some people may know, Chinatown has its Red light districts and some freelance hookers roam the streets there trying to seduce lonely and usually older men with too much time in their hands, hehe! I took this picture of her along a busy and crowded bridge there, knowing that the freelancers usually come out during the evening time along that area, but I didnt care, as it is a public area.

We both soon realised that there were quite a number of Dirty Old Men pausing in their tracks along the bridge to stare and ogle at her, haha! It was so abrupt and the way they stared was like they have never seen a young lady before, the desire in their eyes full of perversity! Haha! There was even one TeeKo Peh(Dirty Old Man) who literally stepped forward quite close to us with his eyes almost popping out and mouth open, as if he wanted to eat her there and then! I joked with her that maybe he should take out his hanky to wipe his drool... I kept an eye on him and the rest in case they tried to do anything funny, haha! It was quite an eye-opening experience for both of us with all these unwanted attention on a crowded Friday evening.

Beach Party Pic with Sigma Lens

I seldom take event photography, but there was quite a spectacular fire dance performance that day at Sentosa, hence I decided to try out for a few photos. I used my first nikon mount telephoto zoom lens, the cheap but versatile, sharp and contrasty Sigma 70-300mm F4.5-5.6 APO for these shots to isolate the performers and not get too close to the flaming performers. Sharpness is a little bit off at the extreme telephoto zoom end, and corner sharpness could be better, but I do not think you can get much better at this price range, hehe! Excellent value for its price.






More pictures by this lens to be added soon... Stay tuned...

Nikon 50mm F1.4 AFD

I used my fastest lens in my arsenal, the nikon 50mm F1.4 AFD yesterday. Cloudy weather was the order of the day as usual. Many a times the decision to choose between the 50mm F1.4 or F1.8 had tormented me, but I bit the bullet and went all out for the bigger aperture lens, since I use the 50mm focal length relatively frequently. I have never looked back since. It has better built. It is slightly prone to flare wide open but reasonable sharp. DOF at that aperture is almost paper thin so focussing accuracy is very critical. It is sharp and contrasty at F2.0 onwards and for F2.8 onwards, it is just faultless. The picture of this cute girl with the sweet smile was taken at f1.4 and the bokeh at this distance and aperture turns the background and even anything behind her face plane to turn to smooth buttery cream, without sacrificing usable sharpness! Bokeh Heaven! These two frisky and leggy gals are seen here leaping into the air, and it might not have been possible to do this in natural light during the cloudy weather without a fast lens! The 50mm F1.4 does the job well at f2 and shutter speed of 1/1000th second. They are fast and nimble, but nothing the 50mm f1.4 cannot catch! Special thanks to these two gals for their spontaneous energy in helping to create these images. More pics taken with this lens can be found here...

Nikon 85mm F1.8 AFD Casual Field Test

After a brief hiatus, I am back with some more Nikon 85mm F1.8 pictures from yesterday's casual photoshoot. As they say "A Picture Speaks A Thousand Words", so maybe I have a few thousand words to say today! Haha! Jokes aside, we had dreary drizzly weather that day, but that did not dampen the spirits of my online friend, who showed great patience and enthusiasm to model for me. From my experience, I feel the single most important element in a portrait photoshoot would be Chemistry between the Photographer and the Model. Since we have only recently just met, I believe we can only get better as time comes along. Selecting the correct tool for the photoshoot for today's gloomy weather is also important, and of course the 85mm F1.8 is a fast prime lens that is suited to low light environmental portraits. You can opt for a little fill-flash to open up the shadows a little, or use a reflector for softer fill in effects, but I did not have an assistant to help me out.

I am always a sucker for greenery because maybe I like nature in flora and fauna. The lens performed very well at F2.8 for half body shots, giving a very nice bokeh effect for both foreground and background interest. No evidence of the harsh bokeh effects as stated by some internet reviews. I have heard about a redesigned 9 bladed rounded aperture version. Maybe that makes for smoother bokeh. Whatever, judging from my current real world samples, I am pleased because I find my lens bokeh okay! Hehe!

As mentioned before earlier, the 85mm focal length provides sufficient isolation of the environment for full body shots, but leaves enough clues to make out what the background is like, rather than blur out the background beyond recognition, which I feel defeats the purpose of environmental portraits. Here I dialed in a touch of flash from my built in flash, set at minimum output manually, to counter the backlit subject. I did not use any external flash or reflector cause yes, I tend to be rather lazy at times, haha! Aperture was set at F2 since the full body shot requires me to stand futher from the subject, making me compensate for a bigger aperture to still achieve sufficient degree of bokeh. You won't believe the difficulty we had in getting this shot on a friday evening when everybody is starting to knock off from work!

Here is a picture taken wide open at F1.8 with highlights in the background to test for the rendition of bokeh highlights. ISO was bumped up to 800 and like above, a touch of fill-flash was added to lift her face up a little from the shadows. The bokeh is quite neutral in this image, and the circular highlights were rendered beautifully as expected. Its Bokeh may not be as beautiful as a specialised portrait lens, but at least it is still quite pleasing and not at all offensive as compared to some lens. Its a big thumbs up for me!

Another Nikon 85mm F1.8 AF-D Sample Image

Have been rather busy with work lately but managed to try out a little bit more of the lens. Found out that focus has to be accurate, and if you have any front or back focus issues on your camera, the images will show very readily. The shallow depth of field from f2.8 and less onwards requires me to use the corresponding AF points rather than centre AF point only as I used to do the last time. Have heard about the harsh bokeh of the Nikon 85mm f1.8 in mixed reviews via the internet but my shots so far have bokeh that is very pleasant, at least at f2.8 aperture. When I have the chance, I would try it out on pictures with more background highlights to determine if it really has harsh bokeh as reviewed by some. But up till now, I have no complaints with this lens whatsoever.

Nikon 85mm F1.8 AF-D

Recently I aquired the Nikon 85mm F1.8 AF-D and I am loving it! It has a decent price and compact construction, and although the 85mm focal length on a 1.5 crop factor DSLR is a little bit too long for full body portraits, it is still manageable. For outdoor location portraiture, the focal length is still able to capture parts of the scenery in relation to the subject. I found it very sharp and contrasty from F2.8 onwards, with quite decent performances wide open. Here is a sample of a recent picture from my newly purchased lens. Watch out for my next posts for more samples. Cheers!