DP | Photography, Food and Life...

Let there be light. And there was light! A one day seminar at Shangri-La KL was packed full with a large group of people already lined up waiting to get into the ballroom. I mean, this is the Shang, with excellent finger food, coffee, tea and all that and people rather just line up to be the first into the room? Anyways, the day started with a short introduction with Louis Pang showing guerrilla lighting techniques for wedding photographers.

More fun was the "krumping" by volunteers and Joe McNally himself as the "father" of the "bride", Evon. The only letdown was that we didn't get to see the shots from Louis' shoot of the krumping. We got cool stuff in our goodie bags and finally snagged my World Tour DVD!

Joe was funny, humble, instructive, approachable, direct, simple, profound and all that thrown in. He doesn't hide a thing, shoots openly for all to see. His thought process laid-bare. The way he approach the subject, the lights, the step-by-step build up, was just inspiring. Joe started with a single speedlight and built up using reflectors, diffusers, multiple speedlights, EzyBoxes, Octas and more. The gear alone was staggering but the information and stuff he showed were all more important. After all, there'll be newer bodies, newer lenses and newer flashes but light is light. If you can see "light" and you can direct it, control it, bend it, beat the heck out of it, you'd be good to go! I think I need one of those paint pole thingies and an EzyBox, and more speedlights!

And here are some shots of the day...

Of course I have to have a shot of us and the Guru of Lights... and of course, he signed both my books! Awesome!

Almost seven years ago. Let me see if anyone knows the equipment I used ... I feel like the time I showed my 8 year old nephew a film camera and he asked me where's the LCD display!?
Camera bodies:
- Canon EOS 30 (with Eye-controlled focus)
- Canon EOS 50E ( " )
Lenses & Other (hmm, my lens collection is pretty old!)
- EF 16-35 f2.8L lens
- EF 28-105 f3.5-5.6 IS
- EF 70-200 f2.8L lens
- EF 50mm 1.8 lens
- EF 2X TC
- 550EX Flash

And my sensors, aka film were Fuji Velvia (ISO 50), Fuji Provia 400F (ISO 400), Kodak EliteChrome 100 (ISO 100)! All the photos you see here are almost as-is. What's done is my Nikon film scanners is the Digital ICE correction (for dust and scratches) and for resizing, unsharp mask was used. The output from the scanner was intentionally left soft for any post-production work if needed.

Aoraki Mount Cook, shot on the side of Lake Pukaki, 70-200mm lens at 200mm with 2X teleconverter. 400mm on Fuji Velvia.

Church of the Good Shepherd on the shores of Lake Tekapo. 16-35mm lens and Fuji Velvia

Another view of Aoraki Mount Cook while hiking in the area. Kodak EliteChrome, 28-135 IS lens.

Farm gate, on the Road to Wanaka. 16-35mm lens, Kodak EliteChrome

Queens town from the Peak. 16-35mm lens, Kodak Elitechrome and guesstimate exposure. Hey, no LCD previews then. I'll guess exposure times from 1 to three minutes at f/11. Shot half a roll on this!

Saw this sign while driving/wandering around the Milford Sound area. Kodak Elitechrome

Our 25km hike from Wanaka. Kodak Elitechrome. 16-35mm lens

Prancing Pony from Lord of the Rings or in real life, the Cardrona Hotel, Arrowtown. 16-35mm lens, Fuji Velvia

Morning drive along Lake Wanaka. 16-35mm lens, Cokin 2-stop graduated ND filter, Fuji Velvia

If you want him, come and get him! The black riders cross the Bruinen Ford here in Lord of the Rings. Near Arrow town. The water is very cold but I walked across! 16-35mm lens and Kodak Elitechrome

Pesky Kea parrots. They were rather destructive, trying to take the wipers off our CRV.

Sheep making love? Te Anau downs, 70-200mm lens, Fuji Provia

On the road to Milford Sound. Fuji Velvia, 16-35mm lens

Looking for Isengard! Near Te Anau. 70-200mm lens, Fuji Velvia

Angry cows near Wanaka. Found out later that they were bred for beef, hence their hostility -- milk cows it seems are friendlier. 16-35mm lens, Fuji Velvia

Parked at Isengard. Tea with Saruman? 70-200mm lens, Kodak Elitechrome

Sheep pasture, Te Anau, 70-200mm lens, Fuji Velvia

Looking for Navorra lakes and the spot where the Riders of Rohan ambushed the Uruks of Saruman... 28-135 IS lens, Kodak Elitechrome

On the Milford Explorer cruise ship, Milford Sound. 16-35mm lens, Kodak Elitechrome

Milford Sound. 70-200mm lens, Fuji Provia

Arriving at the woods of Rivendell, near Te Anau. 70-200mm lens, Kodak Elitechrome

Road-kill possum. No, I did not run this one down. They are a pest in NZ though and some bumper stickers urge you to run them down. It was getting dark and I had my 16-35mm lens and ISO 50 velvia... hand-held at like 1/2 second exposure. The digital era has spoilt a lot of us

Henry, the Tuatara at Invercargill. 70-200mm lens, Fuji Provia

The YHA we stayed at Dunedin. Supposedly haunted. Didn't bring any IR film and nothing untoward happened anyways. 16-35mm lens, Kodak Elitechrome

Lands' End at Bluff. 28-135 IS lens, Fuji Provia

Arthur's Pass, the high road cross the south Island from Christchurch to the West Coast (Tasman Sea). 16-35mm lens and Kodak Elitechrome. Obviously someone felt that the name Arthur's Ass was more appropriate!

Misty mountains? Not really but it was really misty when we drove across to Hotkitika. 70-200mm lens, Fuji Velvia

Toast on a clothes line. Near Milford, this home of Murray Gunn, an elderly bachelor is a museum of sorts. 16-35mm lens, Fuji Velvia

Caitlin Falls, the Caitlins. 16-35mm lens, Fuji Velvia. 2-stop ND filter, Again, another guesstimate exposure.

The light house at Bluff, Land's End. 70-200mm lens, Fuji Provia

Kaikoura Whale Watch catamarans. 28-135 IS lens, Fuji Provia. At ISO 400, my fastest ISO available! The Pacific ocean is no joke. Expect the boat to be rising and falling over fifty feet and getting soaked with sea spray. Suffice to say, my Canons had no problems with the ocean water!

Sperm Whale tail. 70-200mm lens with 2X Teleconverter. Fuji Provia.

Dolphins decided to show off instead. 70-200mm lens with 2X teleconverter. Fuji Provia

Christchurch Cathedral Square. 16-35mm lens, Kodak Elitechrome

What do you do when you start getting a large collection of movies, videos, music and photos? Shuffling around DVDs or audio CDs gets old very fast and if your house is fully wired, you definitely want to also pull content off your PCs, Macs, NAS boxes, USB sticks, internet, whatever. I went with the Popcorn Hour C-200 since my workplace has a couple of their A-200 and S-210 store front units. I chose the C-200 because it had the ability to put in a BD player or two hard drives (2.5" and 3.5").

I've had the C-200 for about 3 weeks now. In a nutshell, the C-200 is still not ready for prime time. It's still too rough a product, doesn't do what it advertises on the box (Yet!). There's pending firmware updates though but that should not be the case for a shipping product. You advertise 10 functions and it should deliver all 10 functions. Firmware updates are good and can bug-fix, polish-up or add new features but to back-fill functions it suppose to do when shipped is wrong. It, however, works for people who are willing to live with the rough edges, quirks but the ability to play a large set of media types. Tested firmware version is 02-01-091113-19-POP-408-000 (19 November 2009). There's a new version released last week but I haven't had chance to upgrade yet.

Here's a summarized list of what works, what needs a bit of work and what doesn't work.

What works:
- Plays almost everything I threw at it. That includes AVI, MPEG1, MPEG2, MPEG4, H.264, WMV, MP3s, JPEGs, MKVs and even complete DVD ISO images.
- Playing media off the hard drive, USB sticks or portable disks work perfectly.
- Good quality playback (can't test the audio properly since I don't have a good audio receiver) but HD content looks awesome. Anything less than 720P pales in comparison now.
- USB ports front and back along with HDMI interface

What needs a bit of work:
- Gigabit ethernet connection seems flaky and unstable. Wired it to a 100mbps switch and it was faster to transfer data across. Go figure!
- Interface is still on files. While that may be the underlying structure and may be used for the technical users, content should be the primary means of the UI. Why should you navigate to the videos folder on your disk and then into the folder named Transformers_HD and then select the appropriate MP4/MKV file to play? Give me a catalog of movies, songs and photos, not a directory structure!
- File-based interface means using it as a jukebox is also quite poor. No shuffle, no selection of genre, artist, etc.
- Photo support and slideshow support is again also poor out of the box
- One or two AVI files had problems and required some patching/fixing in VirtualDub. Not a big issue if you're the one ripping/extracting your own videos.
- Stability. Lock-ups on network hiccups or corrupted videos/images/music is more frequent than it should (I've to hard reboot the unit 5 times so far)

What doesn't work:
- The remote is too laggy. Anything over 100ms is noticeable and the lag can be as long as a second. Don't know if it can be fixed in firmware.
- Size. While the need to be able to accomodate a Blue-ray drive and 2.5" hard drive is good, there's a helluva lot of empty space inside.
- The network services is terribly slow and buggy
- The display panel is totally not viewable/readable from a distance greater than 2 feet.

Conclusion, it's expensive for what it does along with all the rough edges. At this price point (USD 299), I'd expect a much more refined product. Would I buy one again if I had the choice? Not really. I'll probably build a HTPC next

What happens when you break your phone. I mean shatter. Well, whether its covered by warranty or not, you'd definitely want it fixed pronto. In today's mobile, connected, internet world, how is one suppose to have no phone for four to six weeks?

Well, that's exactly what happened to me. With a broken four month old iPhone 3GS, Maxis' reply was simple. It'll be fixed for RM600 to RM700 and you'll get your phone back within six weeks. I'm not sure how certain (I've friends who have had Maxis take up to 8 weeks to get their iPhones fixed) the six weeks was gonna be but it was 5 weeks and five days too many. I expect a 48-hour turnaround at any time for a critical device like this. Otherwise, they better stop billing me anyways.

What to do? I put the word out on Twitter and @thebackpackr came to the rescue (via @zilch) to recommend an excellent iPhone repair specialist (well, he certainly qualifies) and I got my phone fixed (glass replaced with an original part) within two hours. If you'd like to contact him, he's on the Low Yat forums here : http://bit.ly/aZtNVe

And also why I really need a small camera (The Lumix GF1 comes to mind... my Birthday is coming you know)...

Anyways, it was an interested drive down south and into areas unknown. While the highway stretches were ridiculously boring (how exciting can highway driving be), there was a short stretch of about 15 kilometers of plantation track where going at dust storm churning rally speeds provided a bit of thrill. All for a bit of fresh (live) fish. Really awesome considering that they survived the trip home. Well, not every fish though, just the ones we wanted. The rest were mercilessly packed into ice. Surprisingly though, they survived till the Pagoh rest stop, or maybe beyond, I don't know as some were still flapping around at the stop. Probably expired between Pagoh and KL but I wouldn't know.

Wanted to post this much earlier but didn't have the time to. When it was time to replace all the old wiring in my new home, it made sense to lay enough cable drops to various rooms and areas in the house. I used Cat 5e cabling because I had a box of it lying around. Cat 6 would be better but no point throwing a thousand feet of good cable away. A few hiccups happened for the wiring contractor conveniently forgot to add a drop near the kitchen and dining so those areas will need to be wireless now and means they can't get Satellite TV either via Cat 5. All cables were home-run (star topology) into my "home office" room. I didn't want a standard Rack occupying the space so I turned Ikea-hacker. An Ikea PS cabinet was modified with my dremel tool to mount a 24-port patch panel and patch block to distribute phone lines. Since I had a DSL link, I patched all phones behind the DSL splitter which makes things cleaner.


Data-links were patched to a Linksys (Cisco Small Business) SRW2008 managed gigabit switch which in turn is fed off my dual-WAN Linksys RV042 VPN router. Also connected is a DLink DIR-655 wireless router and a Netgear 10/100 8-port POE switch to power my IP cameras distributed around the house. It all fit somewhat nicely into the Ikea PS cabinet with space for two Belkin power strips fed off an APC UPS with extended run battery. That'll give an approximate three hour runtime for my cameras, broadband and network during a power outage.

Improvements? I'll need to add a few more cable drops for IP cameras sometime this year and since my NAS will be coming soon, I'll probably need another patch panel. I've three data ports in each room, that makes 9 plus my "home office" has 4 ports so I've already used 13. My living room and common area has another four ports so that goes to 17. I've 3 POE ports outside the home (to be increased to 5) so that's 20. My phone line distribution ends up take another three so I'm effectively out of ports! The picture below is not the latest one as I've added a modified shelf to hold my router to make space for a 16-port 10/100/1000 switch below and will be color coding the patch cables for easier maintenance soon.



BTW for those interested in laying their own Cat 5 or 6 cables to connect to Telekom Malaysia's demarcation point such as a telephone pole, here's a quick guide depending if your cables are new or not. Newer cables are usually color coded. Mine are blue/white and white/blue and typically, you'll use the same matching blue/white & white/blue center pair in the Cat 5 cable. The good thing about Cat 5 is that you can carry more phone lines on the same cable using another pair (up to 4) so your one single Cat 5 cable can then be split internally (hence my patch block & patch panel) to multiple incoming phone lines and devices (fax, line 1, line 2, etc). Typically, white/blue (white cable with blue stripes) is the positive cable but do verify with a voltmeter to be sure. In older areas sometimes the color is red and green where green is positive. If you have all black cable, a ridge (feel for it) marks the side of the twin cable that's the positive wire.

p.s. Sorry for the photo quality -- all taken with my iPhone

Lots of great food, good company, cooling weather thanks to the earlier rain and you've got the making of a great time!

These Pork burgers are beep awesome!

Here comes the KL Chan Ceramah Series...

For the photographers: all shot on a 5D Mark II with a 24-105mm lens. Aperture was mostly f/5.6 with shutter speeds ranging from 1/100 to 1/800 with RadioPoppers and high-speed sync flash 2x 580EX IIs and a 430EX II.

2009 was my quietest blogging year with only 65 entries compared to 117 in 2008! I guess things got a bit crazy, especially with work after the big house move. I guess also a lot of things happened as well.

Well, here goes 2009 in review on DP...

January

February

March - Before the big house move...

April - No time to blog... moving house

Truck load #1

May - Settling in...

New Home switches!

June

July

August

September - Realized I shoot more of others' families than my own...

October

November - A blacked-out month after life's greatest lesson about living - dying.

December - Miracles do happen... more over here.