CNY in Auckland (part 1)

A couple of weeks ago I received a letter from Qantas informing me that my Frequent Flyer Air Points will be confiscated if I don't fly anywhere by Feb end!

Since Chinese New Year is just round the corner, we decided to check out the Chinese New Year Festival & Market Day at the ASB Showgrounds, Auckland on Saturday. We also look forward to catch up with old friends!

We were travelling light for a change, why... even my cameras are the "light" varieties ;) I took with me the "Neglected Gem", the Nikon Coolpix 8400 and the reliable Canon G9.

I also have on my belt, a pouch to put these two cameras in; phew! It was then I realised their combine weight is nearly the same as my Nikon D300! Ha ha ha...

We arrived in Auckland on Thursday afternoon, a hot and humid day; remind us of the sticky weather in Malaysia! The room was steaming hot! So we upgrade to an air conditioned room, a $20 extra for creature comfort!

Ellen and Jeff pick us up nice and early on Saturday morning for the ASB Showgrounds, even at 9.15 am; the car parks are filling up fast!

We supposed to wait till 9.30 am before we were let into the main building after the VIPs, but the VIPs were late!

The waiting game... why are we waiting ;)

Falling Off A Ladder?!

C.Bing, my high flying friend, D3 owner; intense photography enthusiast came back from Hong Kong, AGAIN :) In his email...

"Hi CY, just got back from HK and China yesterday. Had a great holiday and took around 1500 shots.

Discovered this guy in a HK studio. Great candid shots of HK.

Unfortunately he died prematurely. Fell off a ladder in his studio the shop assistant said.

The guy was single and dedicated his whole life to photography in the style of Bresson."

From the link he gave me, I also discover the marvelous shots of Yau Leung!

Falling off a ladder!?

We photographer do silly thing sometime, just to capture our shots! I remembered the time I was in SoHo, New York; shooting for a Singapore paper.

My subject was the art gallery owner, ex Singaporean; I somehow decided I can get a better angle from top of a ladder! Small shiver ;)

Art Pusher in SoHo, N.Y.

Kids. don't do this at home! You can fall off from the ladder!

The venerable DCS-520

After reading my posting on my "Neglected Gem", my good friend Huggies Chew of Singapore commented; tongue-in-cheek in Face Book:

"U are back to your old hobby of keeping sunset cameras..
Remember Kodak DCS 520? Only got 0.8 Mega Pixel and cost $23,000.00. I brought one to cover the 1999 Malaysian General Elections and wow! Don't need to process films !"

Those were the good old days my friend! But I remember you actually took a Kodak DCS 3 to Malaysia, take a look at the picture above :)

Neglected Gem - Coolpix 8400

The "GEM" in question is the Nikon Coolpix 8400 point and shoot digital camera I bought way back in 2005.

When the camera was launch in late 2004 it features the widest-angle of coverage of any digital camera available then, it was the answer to my search for true wide-angle photography from a compact digital camera!!

The Coolpix 8400 came with 8.0 effective mega pixel and a very sharp and low distortion ultra-wide 24-85mm (35mm equivalent) zoom with Extra-low Dispersion (ED) glass.

I also bought the optional WC-E75 wide-angle converter lens which takes the build in zoom lens even wider to an unmatched 14 mm (equiv) of ultra-wide coverage!

My DELL Saga

Every end of the year Kiwis chill-out during their "silly season".

We love our silly season in Wellington! The city is half empty, traffic are easy; we just laze about from 24 December till 11 January, then we go back to work.

During this silly period, internet is VERY important to us! We spent umpteen hours in front of our screens. So can you imagine the kind of stress and frustration on Tuesday, 5 Jan; when Le General's DELL Dimension 9150 refuse to start up?

Here are the day by day account of my saga :)

Wednesday (6 Jan) - Call the 0800 number for DELL NZ and get connected to their help desk in Philippines. It pay to have your service tag number and your "Express Service" number ready.
And the tech will understand you better if you say "One-France-Wellington-Thailand-Holland-One-Singapore" instead of 1FWTH1S ;)

After listening to my problem, the helpful tech asked me if I am comfortable to open the case cover and do some testing! I have been inside a Mac G4 and G5 before and I suppose a PC is not that different, five minutes later I am looking at the DELL innards.

Inside the DELL, arrows show where the RAM strips are located.

Welly Pano, 10 years later!

A decade ago, on a cool summer night; I was up at Mt Vic lookout with my family admiring the setting sun at 8.35 pm.

I had with me a tiny Canon S10 digital camera that Canon Malaysia loan me, the 2.1 mega pixel point and shoot was on a small Silk tripod for my first panoramic shot of Wellington.

The seven shots I took were later stitch together with Canon Stitch that came with the camera. The "low resolution" pano was enhanced and work on with Photoshop and I was please with the result.

The "Welly Y2K" pano was like by many who saw the print, through the years I gave it away as gifts to friends, some of the left over prints were sold by a local gallery. there can't be more than 20 of this collectible pano in New Zealand! If you own one, treasure it :)

Wellington Y2K, summer evening, click on picture for a grand view :)

A Foggy Day!

Another two days, 2009 will be history! Here we are, stuck in our little house in Karori. Why? Take a look outside, it is all misty; on a day like this the best thing is to chill out in front of our computers! Our favorite pass-time! ;)

In New Zealand, this time of the year is known as the "silly season"; large part of the population went on holiday and business slow to a crawl.

Where I work, we were let off from 24th December and we will chill till 11th January. Usually, we took this "shutting down" period to go traveling. This year we are saving what ever left of our leave for a important April trip :)

While tidying my photo archives I spotted this pano of our Karori valley I shot a while back, unlike today it was a beautiful sunny day!

The embedded meta data told me the pano was shot with my D300 DSLR and the 15 years old Nikkor 20/2.8 lens. What a glorious view from our deck on a day like this!

You must click on the picture to see a glorious sunny Karori day!