Things I hate about Facebook

1. If you update your status by saying : "zzzzzzzzzzz" baik tak payah!

2. People sending me chocolates, hearts, hugs, coffee etc....WTF!

3. Quoting text from Quran....so what's your point?

4. to be continued.....

Lenses wish list

I used to be a wedding photographer. I reluctantly started when my best buddy trusted me to take his wedding pictures. Remember, this was in film days. I had my fav EOS 50e and the 35-80mm kit lens. I wouldn't know the results until i had the films developed. It turned out my pictures weren't that bad, in fact according to my buddy it was better than the bride's pro photographer. That got me inspired.

I was now confident of doing weddings. I had fresh new ideas. I wanted my pictures to tell a story. And so I did one wedding after another. I did mostly Malay weddings but fortunate enough to cover a church wedding and a Hindu temple wedding. I then upgraded/invested in new lense and flash. The 24-105mm and the 540ex. I was enjoying it. The challenge of getting that perfect shot, the satisfaction of seeing the results. But it all got too tiring.

I had a day job. My photography job was just on the side. Some clients wanted the "normal" (boring) wedding photos, some where unhappy with my photo journalistic style. I then lost that mojo I had when I started out. My shots were turning out flat. So I decided it was time to give up.....just as I did all my gear got stolen. So that was the end of it.

Now, I found my mojo. I'm back into the love game with my photography.

I always believe in "its not the camera, its the person behind the camera". I have always made do with average gear from the camera to the lenses. I now realise for me to go up a level, I would need better lenses. What i mean by "up a level" is my skills. So this is my wish list for now...

The 50mm 1.4, I already have the 50mm 1.8 but this one is faster and would be ideal for low light. Price RM1,500.

The 35mm 1.4L. An awesome lense from the L series. Best for wider indoor low light shots. Price: RM5,300....perghh!

First lets clear all the cobwebs and dust in this blog.

I have not blogged because I have nothing to share with the worldwide web. Not so much nothing more like nothing interesting to say. Yeah sure there's been issues in the world, local political scene, idiotic Ministers and idiotic Malaysians but its just not worth my time. I have better things to do.

Lets talk about cravings....yeah cravings. I have a new craving, its the Panasonic GF1 (shiver). After researching online for about a month, I am now convinced that the new way to go for digital cameras is the Micro Four Thirds system. The leading brands are Olympus with their EP-1 and EP-2, Panasonic with the G1, GH1 and Lumix GF1.

I really don't mind lugging around a knapsack with one film SLR camera, DSLR camera, Flash and a couple of lenses. But with the M4/3 system, I would be carrying a little less. Imagine a compact size digital camera with SLR capabilities, exchangeable lenses... woohoo. It is the way to go I tell you.

In one professional photographer's website, he was so amazed of the picture quality that he predicted the death of DSLR by the end of this decade.

Anyway, I have been reading so much on photography recently that I stopped to realise we malaysians especially almost all the time take pictures indoors. As a result of being forced to use flash, the pictures comes out stiff and blown out. I have perfected the technique in on camera flash. I use the bounce method of course with high ISO and fast lenses. Now, I have decided to put away the flash in my dry box and shoot without it.

I have to get out more and shoot outdoors with God's given natural light. So in the next few postings I will show the results. In the meantime here are some...

Outdoors pictures. see how nice it looks. This was taken on film SLR with a fast lens.

My favorite picture of all. This is my niece. Taken on film SLR with bounced flash to my back. I cannot remember the aperture but looks like somewhere between f2.0 and f2.8

This picture was taken from light coming in from balcony. No flash used here. Au naturale.

This picture was taken with the on camera flash bounced to my right. I like the natural look to it. Of course did some adjustments in post processing.

This was taken with the flash pointing backwards. It doesn't look like flash was used at all. That was the idea.