HS25 Review – Part 11 – LvsM again … this time at the same ISO …

People are stubborn. All of us. Once we’ve bought in, there is little that can shake us out of our commitment.

And since my recent LvsM article left a slight amount of room to equivocate – the M image was shot at 160iso and the L image at 400iso, I thought it best to do it again with both images at identical exposures and ISO. So … 1000iso in the shady forest ought to so the trick.

We have leaves and branches and trunk and bark … all kind of interesting textures to smooth over, if that’s what shows up.

Obviously, you should click on it to get it into your browser and then click again to expand to full size. And what you will see is the usual texture that looks like it was shot through a screen. You will see edge integrity issues and general smoothing by noise reduction.

The upsized M image is *much* more convincing. It looks 3-dimensional, whereas I find a close look at L sized images always leaves me cold. There is no sense of being there. Rather, it usually looks like staring at a painting …

Anyway, YMMV … but it shouldn’t.

Read more

Olympus Malaysia Walkabout at Pudu

Olympus Malaysia had a walkabout session at Pudu, Kuala Lumpur this morning, and guess what, I was the one leading the session! 

The purpose of this Walkabout was to encourage our Olympus OM-D, PEN and E-System (Four Thirds DSLR) users to go out and shoot more with Olympus gear. After all, the purpose of having a camera is to shoot photographs and we do want our users to use our cameras and lenses more. At the same time, it was a group outing so it was a platform to connect the Olympus users together. I was an Olympus users for many years and believe me it is a lonely camp when you do not know where to go and how to find other similar brand users. The registration to this event was open on last Tuesday and within just one day, the slots were already filled up! I limited the slots to only 15, mainly because it is easier to manage a small group, and in case there were questions or issues I can try to make sure that I am available to tend to as many people as possible. I have joined outings with 30-50 people and while they were fun, it was almost difficult to have any chance to talk to the leader at all. 

The turn-up was great and we had 16 people with us this morning, which comprised of many OM-D E-M1 users, E-M5 and also PEN users. Of course managing a lot of people means I have less time shooting (hence less photos here) but it was a joy to be able to bring a group of people to my usual street hunting ground, Pudu and introduce street photography to many people for the first time. People there were friendly and very approachable and there were so many activities and things happening around the place. My only wish was to be able to connect and communicate better but that was difficult to do when the group was difficult to move together once we have hit the wet market (we had to move in smaller groups). 

Full Attendance - Olympus OM-D, PEN  and E-System users for Pudu Walkabout!

Portrait of a Stranger 1

Hugging Vegetables

Petai

It is alive

Portrait of starnger 2

Sugar Glider

Yellow

Manual Picking

Healthy Colors

Steaming Hot

hanging

Old and Damaged

Local and Foreign

Portrait of Stranger 3

Big Box

Morning Shopping

OM-D E-M1 user, Mohd Hisham in action

Tai Foong

Allan and OM-D E-M1 with M.Zuiko 12-40mm F2.8 Pro

Khoo and John, giving their Olympus gear a workout

Single handed shooting by Constance

Tilt-Screen on the E-PL3 

Carmen Hong

Allan and Khoo

Peck Yah with her E-M1 and 12-40mm F2.8 Pro lens. Great street combo. 

Friendly Olympus people. My colleagues, who both used Olympus OM-D E-M1 for todays shoot. Chun Kett and Desmond 

It was a great shooting session and I was so glad to connect to so many Olympus users. Surely I hope everyone had fun and had learned something useful to go home with. Do not worry, we will have more of such similar activities soon, and I am looking forward to seeing more and more Olympus supporters!

Read more

Food Review 21 On Rajah Restaurant at Days Hotel Singapore

Hi Readers! Have you heard of 21 on Rajah?  It is a restaurant located at Days Hotel Singapore at Zhongshan Park, 15 minute away from the city centre. Days Hotel Singapore offers 405 guest rooms with an all day dining restaurant and gym. Hence, the interior design of the hotel room looks modern and elegant too.

For today, I am going to introduce you guys the signature foods found at 21 on Rajah Restaurant.  This was my first time visiting 21 on Rajah and one thing I like about was the fine exquisite dining ambient. It gave me a great impression whereby I enjoyed my delighted food tasting dining session at Day’s Hotel 21 on Rajah.

Rooms at Days Hotel Singapore

I like this room design! Haha

Photo with Sheena at 21 On Rajah Restaurant

The food tasting session started off with their signature starter dish, followed by main course and dessert. Through this session, I like almost all the dishes especially the Grilled Chicken Satay and Jumbo Prawns with Dill and Saffron Paella dish. The seafood look fresh and with a tender bite of its meat, it taste awesomeness delicious. Yummy!

Crostini of Smoked Eel

Prawn and Bacon Roll

Grilled Chicken Satay in Balinese Spices

Stewed Fillet of Danish Cold Water Halibut

Pannetonne Bread and Butter Pudding with Dates

As for dessert wise, one of my favourite desserts was the Dark Chocolate fondant with raspberry coulis. It was a form of molten lava chocolate cake with the marshmallow topping on it and inside the chocolate cake it contain mouthful hot chocolate sauce which flows out from the center of the cake. For chocolate lover, you will definite love it!

Dark Chocolate fondant with raspberry coulis

Last but not least, with the excellent service and delightful meal, I had a wonderful time moment with my friend dining at 21 on Rajah Restaurant. The price range of the Ala Carte meal start from $12 - $50. Is recommended and worth price dining at 21 on Rajah Restaurant. *Smiles*


21 on Rajah Restaurant Address:
1 Jalan Rajah Road, Singapore 329133
Lobby of Days Hotel Singapore at Zhongshan Park

Operating Hours:
Weekdays:
6am – 10.30am (Breakfast)
12pm – 2.30pm (Lunch)
6pm – 10.30pm (Dinner)

Weekends:
6am – 11am (Breakfast)
12pm – 3pm (Lunch)
6pm – 11pm (Dinner)

Reservations: +65 6808 6838
Website: http://www.21onrajah.com

Current Promotion:
Spend minimum of $100 in a single receipt and receive a bottle of Kissing Bridge Chardonnay (white) or Cabernet Merlot (red) - subject to availability

Two-course Set Lunch at $18
Starter + Main + a cup of freshly-brewed coffee or tea

Four-course Set Dinner at $48 for two
Appetizers + Tapas + Mains + Dessert

Read more

Fun at Pudu with The Original Pancake

When I was thinking about what I could do differently this weekend on my shutter therapy session, I thought about the now underutilized Olympus Zuiko Digital 25mm F2.8 pancake lens. This lens is probably one of the over-looked and under-rated lens from the standard grade Olympus line-up. It is not difficult to see why, I have been shooting more frequently with the High Grade 11-22mm and 50mm macro lenses that offer much more superior image quality, in terms of sharpness as well as shallower depth of field rendering abilities. Also, this pancake lens has a special place in me, since it was the first lens I have purchase as an addition to my original Olympus gear (besides the twin kit lens of course). Remembering the good old days I have had and plenty of great images the 25mm pancake lens has produced, I decided to pair it up with my old yet still very trusty Olympus DSLR E-520. Together with a group of friends, we attacked Pudu this morning. 

All images were taken with Olympus DSLR E-520 and Zuiko Digital 25mm F2.8 pancake lens

Peaceful

Watch where you were going !!

Tired of waiting

By the main road. 

Friendly Greetings

Morning paper

Layers of motion

Work and rest

Small leg

Beautiful Mess

Since location of shoot was Pudu, one of my usual street hunting grounds, there was no problem looking for subjects or approaching the people there, having been there countless times for street shooting now. However, most of the time I was there I was more comfortable shooting with the 50mm F2 macro lens, allowing me a few advantages: 1) being able to shoot from a comfortable distance away from the subject and 2) the ability to blur the background away at F2, for subject isolation. Knowing that a huge part of Pudu shooting would be at the open air wet market area, the background was composed of unimaginably ugly and messy things, using the 25mm lens, at a much wider perspective than my usual preference, would give me a lot of problems when it comes to composition. Arranging my subjects against all the other distractions was the biggest challenge. Not only that, I have to be that much closer to get the kind of images that I seek, and to produce at least some sort of subject isolation (shooting nearer to your subject will have their presence filling your frame, and increase the blur background). 

Oh the joy of shooting with E-520 and the pancake lens was just indescribable. Did I feel at one brief moment that this combination was less than my expectations from my usual gear (E-5 with high grade lenses)? Not really, the autofocus was very fast under bright conditions, and if I did miss the opportunities it was my own fault for not reacting quick enough anyway. The beefy grip on the E-520, though the body was smaller, was good enough for very comfortable and long hour shooting. The small size pancake, almost feather weight on the E-520, was another great advantage, I felt like I was hanging nothing at all on my neck, after so many hours using the much larger and heavier E-5. The E-520 in comparison just screams fun, and that was what I had plenty dosage of this morning. The images the E-520 + pancake delivered were nothing short of satisfactory. They were not perfect, could have been better (add in any 100 reasons of choice on how to improve this set of images) but I was pleased with them. 

I also intended to shoot and presented everything in color, but the weather was terrible, having over-cast and thick ugly white cloud overhanging everything. The color output was dull and boring, creating very flat and uninteresting photographs. Not having the diligence to post-process and add vibrancy to each photo, I decided to convert all images to monotone, and increase the contrast to add the sense of depth. Not something most photographers would recommend you to do, since they would care to preserve the highlight details and not have them overblown. For me, I want my street photographs (bear in mind, this processing is only valid for my street photographs only) to have the whites as white as they can get, and the black to be truly black. 

How to kill someone with an umbrella

How to torture a dead chicken

The religious man

Down

Conversation

Waiting

A cup on the knee

Restless

Luke Ding (click blog here) and Nick Wade (from London, UK)

And this was me shooting the image earlier. Photo credit: Kelvin Ng (blog here)

Weekend is here. 

So are you out for some shutter therapy session? Do share some images !!

Read more