Third Day In London

This is our third day in London, so what do I think of this gigantic city that all my younger Kiwi friends are raving about?

"Naaaah!"...Sorry to disappoint all of you, it does not impress me at all!

London obviously are not make for older souls like us, especially if you have problem walking quickly! Everywhere you go, people are rushing; tense.. what kind of lifestyle you are having here? I miss good old Wellington!

May be we have been living in New Zealand for too long.

May be that is the reason why so many Poms move to our easy going Aotearoa, Land of the Long White Cloud?

Oh Singapura!

Saturday 6 pm, Le General and I flew off to Auckland to catch our flight to Singapore. Because of my knee problem I requested for an aisle seat and was told by the Air New Zealand guy who handle our check thru that there are none left! And that is for a flight SIX hours away? I protested and was told to see SIA in Auckland!

When I explained my predicament to the smiling SIA lady in Auckland at 10 pm, she fixed my request in 2 minutes; without question! I am very disappointed with you Air New Zealand! Again! It is no accident that SIA is our preferred air line every time!

We flew off from Auckland at midnight and landed on the "Garden City" at 5 am local time. One hour ahead of schedule!

The last time we were at T3 (Terminal 3) it was just open, what an impressive terminal it is!

They even have our favorite breakfast of "roti kawin" and local coffee, 24/7! And the delicious fare is served by the famous Killiney Kopitiam in Singapore!

My Leica E-P2

What?? I can hear you scream... there is no such camera as a Leica E-P2! April 1st was 19 days ago!

The camera above is my "Leica E-P2", ha ha ha... it is actually a Olympus Pen E-P2 with a genuine Leica lens!

In my younger days with the papers, I used two Leica-M rangefinder cameras; I still have the M4-P and M6 Titan and FOUR lenses. Sad to say after adopting digital I have not touch my Leicas for years!

Legend has it that Leica lenses are the BEST in the world! At the present price of NZ$2-3,000 per lens, they better be!

The PEN Mightier than...

The PEN is mightier than, NOT the sword; duh!

The "PEN" in this instance, an Olympus Pen E-P2 compact point and shoot digital camera which is mightier than my Canon G7.

According to Wikipedia Olympus Pen is a family of half-frame cameras made by Olympus from 1959 to the beginning of the 1980s. Aside from the Pen F series of half-frame SLRs, they are fixed-lens viewfinder cameras.

When I was a photography student in Melbourne, 1967; I dream of owning an Pen F! But alas it is too much for a poor student, so I bought a used Nikkormat instead :(

Olympus Pen FT with a 38 mm f1.8 lens

The compact Pen look like a rangefinder camera is actually a half-frame SLR!

Wide (why) Not?

In my write up about my "Neglected Gem", the Nikon Coolpix 8400; I showed super wide snaps taken with the optional WC-E75 wide-angle converter lens.

The WC-E75 make the build in zoom lens even wider to an unmatched 14 mm (equiv) of ultra-wide coverage!

I like what the combo can produce, except the 8400 is extremely slow when you are shooting RAW!

How slow? How about 5 to 6 seconds after you click and worst still, the camera just lock up while the image is uploading to the card! First time when I used the camera in RAW nearly gave me a heart attack!

Photographing the launching of the New Zealand "Super Car" in Jan 2007 with the 8400, timing is critical when you know there won't be a second shot because your camera took 5 second to "recover"! ;)