Self Potrait

It is very difficult for a photographer to do a decent potrait of themselves. It is true. Well, at least it is for me. I can have a million ideas to direct models to pose, but I can never get a decent pose of myself! Isn't that an oxymoron?

Anyway, I was playing around with my Sony A700 dslr last night and decided to experiment with the wireless flash feature of this camera. It came built-in the A700 and the only other element it required is the external flash, which I have (HVL-F56AM). Fired a few shots to tweak the settings and finally got a shot that I liked. And it is this shot. Finally managed to get a self-potrait! OK, so it is not a photo of my face, but it is still a photo of me. Hehehe...

I think it came out quite nice eh?

Jesselton Point @ 08 May 2008

I wanted to go for a recital by Syafinaz Selamat that was supposed to be held at Jesselton Point. Unfortunately, this event never materialized... But three of us (xcaliber, JACQ & myself) decided to meet up at Jesselton Point anyway for some TT session. :) Jesselton Point is such a great place to hang out & take photos. Great location.



We met Leili, who was at Jesselton Point for the not-materialized recital as well. Leili is also a avid photographer and she brought along her friend, Ann. Ann is quite a natural model. Took a couple of shots of Ann just to see how good is she as a model. Turns out that she is pretty good with it! She got a great smile.

After the day had turned dark and it becomes rather difficult to take photos, we decided to look for a nice place to sit our tired bums down for some drinks - and hence the Teh Tarik (TT) session began....

Another new lens in my collection - yippeeeee!!!!!

Yay! I had always wanted to venture into the realm of M42 lenses ever since I saw the photos from an 8mm Peleng lens more than a year ago. But I decided to introduce myself gently into this format (meaning not spend too much money on it). At the end, I purchased this nice Vivitar Auto 135mm f2.8 M42 mount lens. It was in very, very good condition. The aperture blades and focusing ring works exceptionally smooth. I'm ecstatic with it! Here are some photos of the lens attached to my Sony A100 dslr:



Well, after the hype of seeing how this thing looked like in flesh, what else can I do? Well, shoot some sample photos with this new lens of course! Here are some sample photos from around the house. Look at the bokeh from this lens! One thing though, since this M42 mount was created ages ago before the invention of Autofocus, everything is manual on this lens. The focusing and aperture setting had to be done manually. For me, who came from the manual slr film days (I started of with a Canon AV-1 slr), this is indeed a refreshing return back to basic photography technique.





I'm surprised really at how good the picture quality from this lens is. Considering the fact that I paid USD 21.00 for this lens, I think I have every reason to be satisfied with this lens. Now I have one more toy to play with. :)

Self Potrait Competition

One of the photography forum that I'm more active in (Alpha Malaysia Club: http://www.amc.com.my/) is holdng a weekly challenge photography competition. Decided to enter it with the above entry. Done using 3 separate shots combined together. Shot using the Sony HVL-F56AM flash gun set on a tripod, and firing wirelessly from my left. One good thing about Sony's Alpha flash system is that you only need to buy the external flash, ANY Sony Alpha flash, and straigh away you have wireless flash capability. No adapters, no wireless commaander to buy. Great for novices like me to learn and strobist ways.... You think this photo is nice?

New update: Nope, I didn't win the self potrait competition. :( But some of the entries are reaaaally good. You should go and check it out!

My Beercan is Here!

No... I'm not turning into an alcoholic. By "Beercan", I meant the venerable Minolta's legendary telephoto zoom lens. The actual name of this lens is Minolta AF 70-210 f4 (32) - quite a mouthful, I have to admit. But why the nickname "Beercan"? Well, because it literally looks like a can of beer! This is the lens mounted on my Sony A100 dslr:

You can see just how big this lens is, by comparison to my Sony A100 dslr. They really made it huge back then. A lot of metal & glass for the money.

Why all the fuss about this lens? Well, for one, the bokeh (blurr out effect) created by this lens is simply mind-blowing. It is very smooth. Here are some fast & simple shots to demonstrate the nice bokeh from this lens. I had only resized these photos and had not done any other post-processing to them at all.

Kota Kinabalu @ Night

After taking the sunset photos, I spontaneously suggested we go up to the Observatory at Bukit Bendera for some night shots. It had been a while since I last went up there. It is now rather neglected with no lighting inside the Observatory at all. Great place for lovers to hang out though :P by evidence of at least 4 to 5 couples there. Anyway, some shots from the Observatory on the Kota Kinabalu street @ Night.

Sunset & More in Kota Kinabalu. Man! I love it here.

OK! So I finally managed to take some photos from the Sutera Harbour Resort jetty. I had wanted to take some sunset photos from this location since 2 weeks ago but the weather in Kota Kinabalu was really being a b*tch for raining almost every evening. Had a great time taking photos with my friend Japrin & George. All 3 of us are photo-nuts you see...