Confidence For My D300

To be honest, I was quite afraid of my new baby, Nikon D300, when i first got it, by trading in my less-than-one-year-old D80. I think the jump is just too far, until I didn't have the confidence to control the D300.
Without doubt, it's a very very excellent camera. It's just my problem, i have to admit...

After long period of hesitation, i think i shouldn't sit here and wait for the next improvement or new skills to have better images. So, i started to take out my camera, and learn from the beginning. I went through the whole user manual for my D300, and also the speedlite, SB-800.
Oh, it's not really that tough. Just that the control seem more than the entry level equipment. And it does allow you to have more control of the machine to help you achieve more than what you could do with other cameras.

I have self learnt a few editing technique from the net. Though they are not anything fresh for the images, but i guess the editing part seem interesting now.
Here are some images that I have been taking for this few days under the learning:)
Hope you like them.











Oh, I have to say that, D300 is really a magical equipment. These images were all taken at iso 800!!! And it's very very clean. I guess this is the main reason that i didn't trade in my D300 with my old D80 back:)

Classic Me

I found this interesting thing from Facebook few days back. My friends had uploaded their portrait form images on it, and tranformed into funny look. Though some of them don't really impressive, but I think it's funny and it made my day:)

After scanning through all my self taken portraiture images, i have decided to apply this one:



Well, it's very simple. What I need to do was just to upload this image( not more than 1MB), and then adjust the angle by rotating it a bit, pulling it down slightly, zoom in or out, until I get my eyes , nose and also my mouth are aligned properly on the intersecting points set by the page. Then choose my gender, and it's basically done!
Next is to wait for the images to be shown shortly. click on the years, and see how we look like in the past centuries, from 1950 until 2000. Here are my version, i hope you wont vomit out:)





Do you find that i look like the member of Beatles in 1974?
And personally, I think i look like the romantic period composer pianist, Robert Schumann in 1976!!!



The best shot that i picked would be 1994 one! As i can't believe that i can look that manly and gorgeous at all. I bet most of the girls will feel the sense of safety beside me huh...

That is not the end of this post yet, as i explored more on that site and found that it's sort of unfair that female always have better accessories and hair styles compared to guys. I tired to upload the same image and tried it on girl's side. I think some of them are really funny and annoying, but i do look cute i tell you!!!



Well, i am totally speechless for the 1954 version of me:(



Well, in this set of my classic girly looks, i think i look cute in 1962 and 1966. But not the 1960 and 1964 ones. I look so lame in that hair style and the glasses:(



There is a breath-taking one among all the versions of me here. If you ask me which one i like, I will sure answer you " The 1976" . In 1978, I look like Aretha Franklin right?



And my friends said I look elegant in 1984. Another one said i look like the mother of Alicia Keys in 1986. Which is, to me, a compliment though.



The very last set seems interesting also. To be honest, I love them all, except the 2000 version, as i look so fat and stupid in that picture. I think i like the 1994 one, as i can imagine that i will look sexy and wild if i change into disco or pub dresses:) The 1996 and 1998 me, are so special and different from others. I think i look like a career woman also. Hahaha...

Well. Go and try out yourself, to see how you look like for the past centuries!
Click on the link below to get started:

http://www.yearbookyourself.com

Hope you like it!

A Dead Bird

This few weeks, Penang's weather are damn horrible until having an outdoor shooting practice seems totally impossible. Furthermore, my car was almost flooded in the water! I was in fright but and made a call to my dearest daddy, just to get calmed. But I got scolded terribly by him, saying that i shouldn't use that road to go back home, and he wondered why i "purposely" went into the "sea". I was totally speechless. It didn't help me calm down at all, daddy, but in fact you just made me worried:(
My dearest daddy, that is the only road i take for my daily life to get back home. And the traffic jam didn't allow me to go out from car and have a check on what was happening 100m in front.

Well, that is not the story of today's entry. I actually a fan of rainy season!
I like the melanchony dim lighting produced by the raining days. Since i didn't have to work after evening yesterday, so i took out my D300 and a 50mm f/1.4 lens to have some practice in my garden. Just right after the first shot of the leaves, something dropped from the sky to my left hand ground. I was shocked actually, though it was not a heavy nor a loud one. I turned my body and found that it was actually a small bird. After the drop, it didn't seem that the bird was going to stand up and fly again. But it remained in that position and was dying.
I quickly adjust the settings of my camera and had a few snapshots of her. And she's gone just within one minute!
It was raining actually, and my camera got wet at some spots. This time, i dare not touch the body of the dead bird. So i asked my brother to do the job. He used a few layers of the tissue papers to pick up the bird, and then put it into a plastic bag and threw it into the hige MPSP dustbin close to our house.

I actually felt sad because it happened in just less than one minute. And the bird looked so kind and not harmful at all. Maybe she was gone due to hunger, or the cold temperature this few days. I didn't know the reason. But i did read sutra and forwarded the blessing to her. Amitofo!

For the shot, i set the camera to manual mode, spot metering, ISO 800, aperture of f/3.5, shutter speed 1/60s. I set up my own picture control from the original "vivid" mode, but reduced the contrast by 2 steps, reduced the saturation by 2 steps, and increased the sharpness to 5, and it's done. I think D300 is really a fantastic equipment for me to take better pictures. What i need to do is just to have more practice, and find uncommon angles which can make the pictures look more interesting.
Btw, I highly recommend Adobe Lightroom version 2.0 software for those who use raw format to snap pictures. It's very different from the older version, and it's more flexible. I love the adjustment brush and luminance fewtures of Lightroom v2, and also the soft skin feature, which allows us to make the skin tone of our portraiture shots softer in natural ways, without affecting the other areas. The only complaint is that, the reading of the color and tone of lightroom v2 is quite different from the original raw files, but there is some corrections and also convertion we can do by downloading something from adobe website.
The release of Adobe Lightroom 2.0 obviously attracts photographers spend more time in lightroom, rather than the more expensive photoshop. Many photographers claim that, other than the color and tone production, Lightroom is much more stronger than Photoshop, and more flexible, but yet simple to use. I don't know, but i love it very much!

My company is having some management problems this month. Hopefully the voting will side to our company, so that i can remain in this company as a casual dj for every weekends, because the stable income allows me to purchase better lenses in the future. But on the other side, It's not that good for my photography hobby and business, as most of the wedding shootings will happen on weekends. Not to say the stable income:(

I hope the weather will become better and better each day, so that i can find a day to take landscape images as soon as possible!

My Thanksgiving Day

Wow, I have celebrated Thanksgiving Day today.They are just part of the gifts I got today. Let me introduce them to you one by one...



Being a host and also dj at shopping malls, I think it's quite a tiring job and also energy-exhauting. But the benefit is that, I can easily get the chance to approach artists who come for the promo tour, have the opportunities to get lots of vouchers to spend less and become a smarter consumers, and also getting free gifts during work!
Yesterday, one auntie came to the stage area and asked if we are going to do the groundnuts eating contest. I remember this auntie as she did participate in my previous games couple months ago. But unfortunately, we were not having that particular session yesterday. She felt disappointed and didn't want to try for other games. But she did tell me and Eunice, my colleague, that she appreciates my permission for her to participate for times, and decided to make some jelly for me and Eunice. I thought she was just kidding, then i told her that i love strawberry flavour. She said she didn't have any strawberry at home, and asked if i would like to try the "dragon-eye" ( i donno what it's called in english). I found that she was getting more serious, so i said any flavour will do as long as it's made by her. She then asked the time we start the game for today, we told her that it will be from 2pm onwards.
But today, we didn't even see her shadow after 3pm!I found Eunice and told her this, and she felt so. We thought she was just kidding and "aeroplane" us today. But in a sudden, she turned up 5 minutes just after our conversation, and she passed us a big whole bag of all the jelly! We counted on it and found that she has made 6 cups for us!
She then came up on stage to play one game which is Guazhi seperating contest. She won it but she said she didn't want to get the big main prize. She prefer to bring me home. We were shocked but then i told her i need meals everyday in great volumne that she might not be able to afford my meals. She said it's ok, she is ready to spend for me .-_-111
Fortunately, she told us that she was just kidding, though we didn't really feel so:)

There was another auntie who saw that auntie A gave me something as an appreciation to my permission to allow her to participate. Then she went to the store right beside the stage to buy me a soya drink. It's so touching lah...




When i reached home, i saw there was a big bag placed on the long table in my house. Mother told me that it was sent by Nicole's parents this late afternoon after their vacation in Canada.
We examined these two little thingy for quite some time but didn't realise that the left hand side one is actually a Canadian leave pin and the right hand side one is a magnet. We thought the left hand one is an ear ring, and the right hand one is a namecard:(
I was clever enough to find their actual identity on the covers!



Well, obviously, this is a t-shirt. When Nicole had just arrived at Canada, she did msn me that her father bought me something. She descripted that it's a large t-shirt, with a Toronto font which is eye-catching enough and there is also a cow sort of thing being printed largely on the t shirt, until she was so confident that i will react with a long " yyeeerrrrrr.....!!!!!"
But i promised her that i am going to wear it to welcome her back at the airport when she comes back one day.
Nicole, it's actually not as horrible as what you descripted. It looks really large to me, though the size is an "M". But the material quality is superb, and i just love the "cow" on it. It makes me look sharp and energetic and more dominant, dont you think so huh?



I suspected that the Nikon D300 doesn;t allow me to apply the remote control for the shutter release for self pic:(
I could only do it for this extent.



I look cute, ain't I?

:)

Thanks a lot Nicole, to your lovely parents. They should have carried too many things from Canada back to Malaysia. But they still brought us so many fancy stuffs. It's their heart which conquered all the difficulties to do so. They are amazing couple!
I hope Nicole can succeed in everything in her study.
Do take care of your own health ok?
Gambate!

And I have a Thanksgiving Day celebrated for the very first time in my life. I just couldn't believe that I have received so many present for today!
Thanks a lot for the present. I greately appreciate them!