• What do you call a lightning storm without thunder or rain? Hk, you and your crazy weather!


    • Tag: ‘gear’



    New toys, new project(s)

    Friday, August 15th, 2008

    There have been a lot of little developments that I’m excited about.

    First, Awesome Jeff (as he will henceforth be known) helped me fix some bugs with the blog. The top image now aligns in the center and displays properly when viewed in IE and wordpress is upgraded to the newest version which I’m sure includeds new perks as well. Sweet.

    Second, I have some really awesome co-workers. Not only are they incredibly smart, but they will let me geek out about photography and are actually interested. This week, after a quick lunch, we all went to a store near by that specializes in lighting equipment. I picked up a bunch of goodies, including a shoot through umbrella (that comes with the ability to turn into a reflective umbrella – how cool is that!), a clip on diffuser for my SB 600, a swivel head to attach flash and umbrella to my tripod, various knicknacks (lens/camera caps that I had misplaced) and most awesome of awesome, a wireless radio trigger trigger for off-camera flash! I can’t tell you how excited I am to be able to start strobist-ing.

    My radio trigger turned out to be incredibly affordable. It’s made in the mainland, and isn’t a pocket wizard by any means, but it gets the job done. I did finally figure out how to trigger my speedlight via infra-red on my pop-up flash, but it really ruined the effect I was trying to achieve, unless I covered the pop-up flash with my hand. Anyway, it’s good to know your tools.

    Tomorrow I have a shoot with my friend Char, who is leaving for college soon. We’re going to do some senior portraits that will a) develop my portfolio b) give me a chance to work with a model and my new lighting gear, and c) at the very least, give her some interesting pictures for her facebook profile. It’s going to be a lot of fun, and will probably be starting off around my apartment. I’m hoping to convince her to come with me to the Hong Kong Cemetary (yes, an actual grave yard) because the setting is actually incredibly beautiful and I’ve been dying to experiment there (no pun intended.)

    Last but not least, I have a new long-term project in mind. It will be on gravity. Here’s a test shot I did two nights ago, just experimenting. It’s certainly not well lit/processed/edited etc. I only took about four or five shots, and only one oriented landscape. Anyway, enough caveats, here’s me playing with the idea, testing for feasibility and yes, it is a rare self-portrait.

    Tonight I will be heading to a friend’s barbeque in kowloon, with one of the most stunning views of Hong Kong island. You can quite literally see from one end to the other. I’m really excited – I have about a month’s worth of photoshoots lined up, so I will be able to do something creative every weekend!

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    Awesome photographers and their awesome toys

    Tuesday, August 5th, 2008

    It’s past midnight, my LSAT book is open in front of me and what am I doing? Blogging about photography. I’m drawn like a moth to the flickering light of my Mac I tell you.

    It seems I’ve been looking at a lot of surrealist photography lately. They keep popping up on the “interestingness” page on Flickr. Some of the photographers are so good (and so young it makes me wonder what the heck I was doing when I was fifteen, like this girl seriously. Fifteen?!? WOW)

    I am absolutely dying to try self-portraiture, but my vanity only goes so far. As in, maybe the mirror. I’m far happier behind the lens than in front of it. In fact, I’m not quite sure I would know what to do with myself standing in front of a blinking timer. But taking a break from some of the images I’ve been browsing, I came across this collection and I e-mailed my brother the star wars nut. What a great sense of humor :)

    Some favorites:


    “A cunning plan”


    “Like father like son”


    “For the last time, there’s no magical wardrobe!”

    Some of these images reminds me of David Levinthal’s work with figurines, ranging from cowboys in the wild west, Hitler to romance and even erotic images, all with toys! Suffice to this gives me due cause to play with (my brother’s) legos..

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    My new baby!

    Monday, August 4th, 2008

    I finally did it! This past weekend, my awesome friend Sean and I spent hours scouring Hong Kong for the best places to get some gear. Hotdiggity, that was fun. I don’t get to geak out all that often nowadays, so I really appreciated the company that appreciates the same stuff I do :)

    This is what I wound up getting: the Nikon D80

    No surprise here, since I’ve had my heart on this little guy for quite literally a year now. I know it’s not the newest, nor the fanciest, and it’s not a FX camera (which costs a whopping HKD 22,000+ by the way) but it’s the one that I want. I love the body, so small and compact, the set up is almost identical to my F80 (now they can be friends!) – I know it’s a small thing but I really prefer it over the way the D200+ are laid out. Call me set in my ways, but if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

    I got it at a decent price, and have a little room to spare for lenses. I’ve decided not to get any DX lenses, because I know I will definitely be using them with my film camera, and hopefully in a few years, (if/when I wear this one out) the digital FX cameras will be more affordable. So with the money I save by investing in a good-enough body, I’ll throw onto lenses.

    Speaking of which, this is the only slightly anti-climatic part. I don’t have a lens! I’ve decided to restrain myself from walking the gear-obsessed path and have ordered a 1.8 50mm lens. That’s right, ordered, as quite literally every store I went to is out of stock. It’s a good little lens, definitely affordable, fast, FX, light and not at all intimidating as sticking a huge canon in a subject’s face. I’m super excited, it gets here in two to three weeks. Until then I will just have to stick with my 28-80mm. I was always dissatisfied with it because it’s one of Nikon’s cheapest, but really it’s not a bad lens. It’s light, and has definitely allowed me to grow to the point where I can appreciate gear as just a tool to achieve the images that I want.

    Besides, it’s not the gear that makes the photographer. Ansel Adams, anyone?

    Can’t wait to take it out for a test run. Now if only I had the discipline to really get out there, and keep seeing the world from my lens. I think this weekend I will try to photograph the graveyard I’ve had my eye on since forever.

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    April-May update and Nikon D700

    Sunday, July 13th, 2008

    Gosh it’s been long. The last time I wrote was in what.. April? About changes that still haven’t been made? Yikes. So much for blogging accountability.

    So returning from my accidental hiatus, a brief update. Summer has crept up on us all and the past few months have been a bit of a rollercoaster. I was staffed on a project in Taiwan, which was quite eye-opening as to what working across borders is like. Unfortunately it was a rather busy time, so for once, I went sans camera (never again!) I also spent some time in the Western Hemisphere for my brother’s graduation and our subsequent trip to Panama.

    Now last year, I was in Costa Rica with some friends and figured that Panama was going to be pretty much the same. I couldn’t have been more wrong. The logistics of us getting there was an adventure unto itself. We were nearly stranded (twice) and even though I’ve done the whole touristy zip lining experience in CR, it’s nothing like Panama. For one, we were high enough to be in the clouds and there’s no feeling like thinking you’re going to colide into a tree at what feels like a million miles an hour. We also went white-water rafting on the Chiriqui river in prime conditions and had a great river guide with a sense of humor. Just for kicks, he would get us to spin down class 3 rapids to make it more challenging. Now that’s my kind of guide!

    On to site developments. This afternoon has been relatively quiet at work so I took 20 minutes out to draft out a sketch of my site. It will be very sparse (I’ve been on this whole minimalist thing lately) and will likely function either as a low-bandwith version or temporary version until I can think of something snazzier (right. don’t hold your breath.) But I am relatively happy with the concept, even if it’s only on paper for the time being.

    Now onto the piece of news that prompted me to dust off my blog. As of July 1st, Nikon announced its first DSLR amateur FX camera. The shock and awe that I feel is threefold. Firstly, that it took me nearly a week and a half to find out. Secondly, that M, one of my all-time photography mentors was right (he predicted this nearly a year ago and told me to hold off making any investments until this summer) and thirdly, IT’S A FX CAMERA FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!

    *hyperventilates*

    To say that I desperately want this, would be no exaggeration. Aie me. Another thing to add on to the things-to-save-up-for list.

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