Ultra-Wide Distortion Fix

In my "Battle Of The Super-Wide" post, I show you a picture of the New Zealand Old Government Buildings with the "Beehive" at the foreground.

The picture was taken with my 114° Panasonic 7-14mm f/4 ASPH LUMIX G VARIO which I use on my Olympus E-P2 m4/3 camera.

The lens exhibits the classical "leaning building" symptom of a ultra-wide lens, and I promised;
"In my next post I will show you how to correct this shortfall."

Royal Wedding Cup, NOT!!

Thursday March 17 2011

Prince William of England was in Christchurch and was stunned by the scale of devastation inflicted by last month's earthquake. He was touring the "red zone" in the central city this afternoon.

At the same time, some where in the world; a company known as The Guan Dong Enterprises Ltd is trying to hog off "a beautiful cup to commemorate the wedding of HRH Prince William and his stunning lady bride to be, Miss Kate Middleton."

Take a closer look at those pictures on the cup again!

Nikon 12-24 f/4 v Panasonic 7-14 f/4

Battle of the Super-Wide Zoom!

I love Super-Wide lenses!

Way back in 1975, I got acquainted with and fell in love with the Nikkor 20mm f/4; this was quickly replaced by the f/3.5 and finally the f/2.8.

"Looking For Shoes" at the KL National Mosque was shot with a Nikon 20/2.8.

The Eyes Have It!

We tend to take our sight and our eyes for granted!

"The eyes are the window of the soul." - English Proverb

As a photographer, no prize for telling what is your most precious sense!

May be I should have taken better care of my eyes?

I noticed my right eye was going out of focus two years ago and it turn out that I had a Retinal Detachment!

According to Wikipedia: Retinal detachment is a disorder of the eye in which the retina peels away from its underlying layer of support tissue. Initial detachment may be localized, but without rapid treatment the entire retina may detach, leading to vision loss and blindness. It is a medical emergency.

They Shoot Fishes, Don't They?

In 1986, while working for The Star newspaper in Penang; I accompanied a reporter to complete a story on Discus fish breeding on Penang Island.

During the photo shoot for the story, I discovered to my dismay; the following:

1. Little did I know that Penang is a major exporter of ornamental Discus fish in the world!
2. Discuses are the most beautiful tropical fish I ever seen and I easily got bitten by "discus fever"!
3. It is VERY difficult to light up a huge glass aquarium for photography!

Wikipedia define Discus (fish) as:

Discus (Symphysodon spp.) are a genus of three species of cichlid freshwater fishes native to the Amazon River basin. Discus are popular as aquarium fish and their aquaculture in several countries in Asia is a major industry.

According to The Discus Trail Of Malaysia and I quote:

"Penang Island lead in the breeding and export of Discus. As it has the best water quality required for breeding and raising Discus - pH value of 6.8 to neutral and a conductivity 60 to 80 microsiemens.
 
At the height of Discus Breeding in Penang (1987 - 1993) there were about 30 Discus farm of various sizes, ranging from a 100 to 500 Grow-out tanks with 20 to 50 breeding pairs and about 120 home-breeders with 30 to 80 tanks with 10 to 20 breeding pairs. 

(Grow-out Discus tanks are usually 250 litres and breeding tanks are usually 125 litres, though smaller capacity tanks are used depending on the preference of the breeders.)"

Hybrid HDD hiccup in MacBook Pro!

On February 17 I wrote about "A Hybrid HDD for my MacBook Pro", I was happy because now I have a 500 GB drive instead of only 160 GB of the OEM!

Now I am able to dedicate a 30 GB Scratch Partition just for Photoshop!

The main reason I pick this Seagate drive was the incredible review done by benchmarkreviews.com !

According to their review and I quote...

Key Features and Benefits

• Boots 40 percent faster than traditional 7200-RPM drives (for overall system performance, that's within 1% of an SSD*)
• Cuts costs by 75 percent compared to SSDs by combining solid state and hard drive technologies
• Delivers the perfect balance of speed and capacity
• Uses Adaptive Memory technology to optimize performance in real time by storing frequently used files and data on the solid state drive component
• Ensures compatibility with any operating system or application with a standard 9.5mm notebook drive form factor and the characteristics of a traditional 7200RPM drive
• Offers all the benefits of SSD performance with the high capacity, storage, battery life, power consumption and heat generation of a traditional hard drive

A PAPARAZZI TALE

I was accused of many things in my 30 years working in various newspapers as Picture Editor and News Photographer, there was but one time I was called a Paparazzi!

If you pride yourself as a photojournalist, being called a paparazzi is not a good thing!

According to Wikipedia:

Paparazzi (singular: (m) Paparazzo or (f) Paparazza) is an Italian term used to refer to photojournalists who specialize in candid photography of celebrities, politicians, and other prominent people. Paparazzi tend to be independent contractors, unaffiliated with a mainstream media organization.

By the late 1960s the word, usually in the Italian plural form paparazzi, had entered English as a generic term for intrusive photographers.

That's not moi!!!

In my working life as a news photographer I sometime got myself in really sticky situation!

Like taking a decisive shot of Reuters photographer Goh Chai Hin being man handle by the men-in-blue at the Penang High Court.