10 Most Popular MBL Posts Of 2011

As 2011 came to an end, here’s a look back at 10 of our most popular articles from the past year:

1.    My Leica E-P2

2.   Funny Royal Wedding Pix Not!

3.   Canon G12, Best Of The G?

4.   Panasonic LUMIX G VARIO 7-14 mm F4.0 ASPH

5.   Remembering The Highland Towers Tragedy 

6.   Ultra Wide WC-E75 Canon Power Shot G12!

7.   Brian Me That Brake Was Good!

8.   Nikon E2 DSLR - Redux

9.   Bounce Flash For G12

10. My Lancer VRX Sportback

We started with a 23,000 page views in January 1911, today we are at the verge of breaking the 80,000 mark.

Thank you for all the support and a HAPPY NEW YEAR to all our readers :)

Encounter Of The Nikon 1 Kind!

♬♫♪♬♫♪  On the third day of Christmas my friend Meng brought to me...

One Nikon 1 V1 mirrorless camera,

Two Nikon 1 zoom lenses;

And a toy size Nikon Speedlight...  ♬♫♪♬♫♪

After three long years of intense research, on September 2011 Nikon Inc.
announced a revolutionary new digital imaging system built from the ground up to empower users with new ways to tell stories through photography, driven by imaginative next-generation technology.

A Nikon Fanboy's Confession !?

Fanboy is a term used to describe a male who is highly devoted and biased in opinion towards a single subject or hobby within a given field. Fanboy-ism is often prevalent in a field of products, brands or universe of characters where very few competitors (or enemies in fiction, such as comics) exist.  -Wikipedia -

So am I a Nikon fanboy? I will not call myself as such but I do like Nikon cameras a lot, in my long career with different newspapers; my camera of choice has always been Nikon.

I started photography in 1966 with a used Zeiss Super Ikonta 120 range-finder camera, through the years I have used many other medium format cameras.

The variety of 120 medium format cameras that I have used.

NOSTALGIA - Picture Without Permission!!

nos·tal·gia, noun - a wistful desire to return in thought or in fact to a former time in one's life...

Going through some of my "junk" recently, found a box of old black and white post-card size prints taken during my schooling years in Melbourne; Australia.

Ahh... those were some of the best days of my life :) And like the famous Kodak Eastman slogan, "We (pictures) capture your memories forever!"

This photo for instant...

A single shot taken with a film camera hidden inside a plastic lunch box, while I was attending our biology class in Oakleigh High School in Victoria, Australia; FORTY FIVE YEARS ago!

Buying a SAFER House In New Zealand

Saturday 7.19pm, I was preparing dinner in the kitchen; my wife was at her PC in the lounge yelled, "EARTHQUAKE!" One second later our house was shaking violently, it was like 5 full second... my wife was screaming and I was marveling how powerful that quake was! GeoNet inform me later it was of magnitude 5.7, 30 km east of Picton and 60 km deep. It was the second strongest one we felt since we are in NZ.

Le General do not understand why with all the rock & roll, I remained "so calm"! I did not tell her it was because I know our house can take lots more pounding before I started screaming ;)

That is the main point of my story, how to buy a safer house in New Zealand! A question I have been asked many times by new immigrants and friends.

The advice I am giving in this story are my personal experience and my own research, so please take it with a pinch of salt ;)

The Ring Of Fire...

All of you who intended to migrate and to make New Zealand your home, ought to realise this beautiful Land Of The Long White Cloud is sitting right smack on top of "The Ring Of Fire". And it got nothing to do with Johnny Cash ;)

Vienna - Best Quality Living Standard In The World!

Vienna has the best living standard in the world, according to the Mercer 2011 Quality of Living survey.

According to MarketWatch...

"Living conditions are analyzed according to 39 factors, grouped in 10 categories, including politics and social environment, economic environment, health and sanitation, education, transportation, housing and recreation. Mercer’s Quality of Living index covers 221 cities, ranked against New York as the base city."

According to Mercer, Quality of Living Ranking; the Top 5 Cities are:

• Vienna, Austria (1st)
• Zurich, Switzerland (2nd)
• Auckland, New Zealand (3rd)
• Munich, Germany (4th)
• Vancouver, Canada (tied 5th)
• Düsseldorf, Germany (tied 5th)

Digital Zoom vs Optical Zoom

Most point & shoot cameras came with digital zoom feature, you might even been impressed by the "extra pull" that the digital zoom on your P&S can do; what exactly is digital zoom?

Wikipedia explained...

"Digital zoom is a method of decreasing (narrowing) the apparent angle of view of a digital photographic or video image. Digital zoom is accomplished by cropping an image down to a centered area with the same aspect ratio as the original, and usually also interpolating the result back up to the pixel dimensions of the original. It is accomplished electronically, with no adjustment of the camera's optics, and no optical resolution is gained in the process."

Huh?  A bit too much for you?  ;)

What it meant was digital zoom is actually taking your picture with the optical zoom at it's longest focal length, then electronically enlarged the centered area, in camera; to give an impression that your zoom lens is much longer!

The digital zoom of my Canon G9 made it look like I was right behind the photographer, I was actually so far away that these tourists don't even know I snapped this shot :)