Temple via fish eye view

This is a high contrast image out of Voigtlander 12mm f5.6 which has that dramatic effect of wide perspective. The two people included in the image were my old photography pals. The image is a little desaturated to enhance that feeling of aged old look.

ONE in four Victorians think driving 10km over the speed limit in a 100km zone is socially acceptable.

Porcelain Doll

Quite a lot happened to my life last few days. This shot was taken to reveal the bokeh performance of Voigtlander 40mm f2 SL

You can see that the specular highlights turn out quite nastily...

I really want to get a Leica 50mm f1.4 now...

Foreground bokeh

The weather has been rather bad. This image was really just a messing around with foreground bokeh. Why?

Pentax lenses are usually better in the foreground bokeh department than background one...

Japanese Dishes

The images are all taken by Canon 50mm f1.2 L

The last couple of days are characterised by "happy go lucky" sentiment. Strolling the city without a purpose is a bit of fun really.

Joel and I tried out the many gourmet places to indulge ourselves. This dish is described as semi fried tuna abdomen with special sauce. It was very tender to taste melting at the tip of my tongue. Very nice in deed.

Seafood fried udon. It was a substitute for rice to improve satiety. But we really ordered too much...

Asparagus and bacon rolls. Very appetitising in deed. The sauce was too salty in fact. Joel spit out all the fat bits lol.

Good old sashimi to improve the fatty acid intake. There was this "oil" fish that gave us diarrhoea all day afterwards...

A bit of wine to colour the day. What a fulfilling day!

:)

Spider Macro

This image is taken by Voigtlander 125mm f2.5 macro APO Lanthar

Life is busy at the moment. Good to be occupied in fact.  This photo was taken a while back when I still had that obsession with insects in general. Sometimes it is amazing to see the extent I really want to get this sort of image spending hours of tracking and snapping to get this desirable outcome. You might not be aware that this macro lens is legendary. Yet, I have sold it to a Melbourne enthusiastist. This lens has absolute no fringeing and smoothest bokeh among all macro lenses. The colour rendition is clean and clear. Very mesmerising lens in deed.

Street photography is still my thing. Yet, it is so hard to pick this up after 3 years of non shooting. Somehow I am confident that I will pick it with the help of friends :)

The top name for boy baby is Jack and girl baby is Ruby last year.

Another McDonald is robbed in Melbourne. This is very spooky.

Happy lot

This image is taken by Canon 135mm f2

Sometimes it is that magic moment that makes the image tick. I have never seen so many ladies smiling at me at once. What a feat :)

Nothing to say about work today. Just plain tough to start working after a long new year break!

Williamstown

This image is taken by Tokina 11-16mm f2.8

Yes, another day of freedom to waste. Strolling along the Williamstown port where there are many restaurants open and Gelatti shops for enjoyment.

The ship museum is as old as it can be with nothing new added to the actual diel engine ship. HMAS Castlemain. Amazed how this ancient piece of crap survived WWI at all...

Oh yes. I felt so patriotic after seeing the flag. That really works for me.

This piece of artefact is not child proof. In a time frame of 30 min, I saw two kids being hurt after the whole set spinning around by some other children. Kids and weapons are a no no combination.

This man was over enthusiastic about reliving the days of WWI. It was funny to see that everyone has a story to tell.

I just cannot resist to do some bokeh shot. Lacking meaning but love the ambiguity of the background blurr.

What a day. It was time to get some Chinese dumplings :)

Scooter

This image was taken by Leica 25mm f1.4

There is an emerging trend for people to ride scooters these days. It is a practice considered green and environmentally friendly. However, scooter shared the same mortality rate as people who ride motorcycles in which the mortality rate was being reported up to 50% in 2 years riding time.

Being a Leica lens owner, any image I took has to be converted to black and white, with high punchy contrast and harsh grain added to look like a piece of Leica work. Tha is a generalising statement but that is my view of Leica shooters in general.

Good to see that I have finally managed to utilise my holidays for something worthwhile.

New Year Boredom

This image is taken by Canon 50mm f1.2L

It was a very boring day. No shops were open and there were no festivities except rubbish on the ground everywhere. Lucky, there were shops that were usually open 24 hours a day that ended up closed on New Year's Day. So I got to see the actual graffiti on these store facades.

Then I accompanied Joel for trialing out his new camera and range finder lenses. Good to see him paying so much concentration into these mundane objects of the streets.

When I spotted this lady walking pass me, I had a chill. I thought I was revisiting the scenes of Lord of the Rings. She really made me frighten for my life today...

A little trialing with bokeh shot: Damn harsh and ugly. But why not? There was nothing else to photograph.

Yes, luckily this cafe was located. We had the daily dose of Latte before terminating this boring New Year's Day!!!!

Happy New Year!

This image is taken by Pentax Da* 16-50mm f2.8 SDM.

After continuous of shifts throughout the naughty Christmas, New Year will hopefully bring more peace and happiness for me. I managed to pass my exam and made many on line friends :)

No more work throughout the new year break. It is finally a good relaxation time for me :)

P.S. Gordon Ramsay was reported to have 26 million dollouar debt from my local newspaper today!

Spring of Christmas Macro

This image is taken by A 200mm f4 Macro

4 seasons in one day. Melbourne is having a tantrum like a lady in menopause. With all friends leaving for festive season holidays (None of us really celebrate christmas), I managed to do 2 overseas shifts as well as reading a novel that I have made up my mind not finishing it. LOL.

Again, I think a photograph from the dying plant in my backyard would suffice for my blog. At least this is something!!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Macro of a bug

This image is taken by Pentax A 200mm f4 macro

Guess where this shot was taken?

Yes, on the wall of my filthy room. The amazing thing about this bug was that it did not even bother to move while I wag the big camera all over it. I guess I did not have to spray Mortein all over it.

However, I did use 2 flash guns to stun it pretty well. It was captured head on on my camera creating that good impact I liked.

This is less than 5 mm in length and I could not name what this insect was. Thanks to a dull and uneventful Thursday - this shot really made my day. Soon I would say good bye to Pentax system pretty much. Still some gears did make me a little uneasy to let go.

Merry Christmas Everyone :)

p.s. I just read from News Week magazine that 17% of Americans who are unemployed, are no longer looking for work or even looking for part time based jobs.

Quote of the day


Serious sport, according to George Orwell, is a war minus the shootings.

Steamed Shark, Lake Entrance, Victoria, Australia

This image is taken by Voigtlander 40mm f2 SL

This is a dish hard to forget. The reason being so unforgettable is the way it is discovered in a tourist coastal town of Victoria - Lake Entrance.

This place is reknown for its estuary exit of a river called Murray. The place is nothing but wattle trees. Yet most of the shop keepers liked to consider me as a Japanese speaking the twisted Japanese to me "O denki Deska?" Whatever. I even treated your regional health director in your regional hospital and stopped generalising me as a tourist!

This dish is sampled locally from the local fish market. Usually shark cannot be steamed for the very reason that it has contained high urea concentration within the flesh. The taste is not really pleasant if not deep fried like the good old time fish n chips.

But this plate of food was one of the best dishes I had in the region. Cost like 39 dollars but it was well worth it. Again, this type of refreshing bright colour can only derive from Voigtlander lens. So much clarity and rich intense colour.

Well, the restaurant had a chef that was originally working in a French restaurant in France. My question to the chef was why the heck he wanted to move to such a coastal town at all?

Poppy Flower Wonder

This image is taken by Voigtlander 40mm f2 SL

This picture reminds me of a time that I would not buy any lens but voigtlander. That was a period where I was addicted to the build quality of Voigtlander lenses and their image rendering characteristics.

Yes, the brand is not all perfect and its own lens production line had been taken over by Cosina in Japan. The lenses are just so good to hold in my hands... Truely addictive.
Speaking of the bokeh, I used to have a set of criteria for assessing them. Then I looked at this image taken almost 3 years ago. I had second thoughts.

How on earth do I like the harsh edge bokeh with distracting specular highlights? I guess I have a growing up period with photography in general. Now this pair of critical eyes are very hard to please. I dreaded the day I would become even more grumpy and critical when I got even older. God helps me.

Natasha

This image is taken by Canon EF 24mm f1.4 L at f1.4

It is always a challenge to photograph someone who needs to be placed in the most comfortable state. It takes that mutual understanding between subject and photographer as well as the total trust. Yet, it is really about getting a female subject to flirt with the camera.

Hang on, flirt with camera? a metal alloy object?

It sounds like a fetish already. It is just so hard to look into a dark hollow space through a lens. Yet, behind that lens, there is a sensor that allows a million possibilities how the image would be rendered, edited and distributed. So that thought of uncertainty is enough to freak the subject out.

So everytime I heard a friend's friend needing a portrait done. I went, "No thanks. Find someone else who is a womaniser."

My average time to get a satisfactory portrait on a stranger is often requiring a minimum of 30 minute crap shoots. Until the sound of clicking and myself as a photographer becoming less intimidating, the tension in subject's facial muscles would reduce and the atmosphere of the portrait shoot becomes more casual. This is in deed hard work. Yet, trying to find something in common to chat is really a tiresome but important task.

So why is it so daunting to do portrait business for living? It is not just for good looks and visual satisfaction. It is all about social skill exhaustion...

Now my whining session finishes. Heading back to work! Beeeeeeeeeeee !!!!

Roe

Blue Fairy Wren - a thought

The image is taken by Pentax A* 300 f2.8 with 2 teleconverters in King lake national park.

For some years, I had been an avid bird watcher and photographer. Apart from the usual boring exotic myenas and native rosella, a lot of the native Victorian birds were rarely spotted.

Due to real life commitment to various daunting chores, this hobby had been neglected for a number of years. However, I spotted blue fairy wren every now and then after a plentiful raindrop this year. Yeah, thanks to El Nina that these wrens were somewhat more prevalent in my local reserve parks!

Therefore, I googled a bit of information on superb fairy wren and discovered something very interesting shown below...

"The Superb Fairywren is notable for several peculiar behavioural characteristics; the birds are socially monogamous and sexually promiscuous, meaning that although they form pairs between one male and one female, each partner will mate with other individuals and even assist in raising the young from such pairings. Male wrens pluck yellow petals and display them to females as part of a courtship display."

So what does it mean by socially monogamous and sexually promiscuous? It seems to apply to male gender in general after all. I do love that phrase "socially monogamous" being socially isolated? Then "sexually promiscuous" as animal instinct disinhibited?

No wonder male wrens look very colourful while females look very dull. Again, male wrens tend to hop around in a very agile fashion. Any photographers in South Eastern Australia would know photographying wrens is an incredible task even with autofocus lens. So this image has been something like a milestone after I could get some clarity out of this image using manual focus ring!!

Now I am hesistating about micro 4/3 system where there is little range of telephoto selection for an avid bird photographer.

Birds are really interesting entities where all their organs are packed inside that tiny bodies and move so quickly that make it almost impossible to capture them on cameras.

Roe

Talking about 4/3s with Joel

My friend, Joel, has been convincing me to switch to the new camera system to experiment. Apart from the skilled preaching on his behalf, this new system does excite me a little.

While we were talking about the limitless possibilities of various lenses of different register distance used on the mirrorless camera bodies, I took out my old camera and canon 24mm f1.4 for some casual snapping.

Not too bad for a lens whose design dated back to 1982...

The day ended with a good nice pasta soup and rich choclate cream. Thank you, Joel.

Inparticipation with the link event Face Off Link

Olympus ZD 150mm f2 gallery

This lens has been my companion for a long time. This lens has produced some pleasant images throughout my university years.

Here are the example shots taken by this lens.

Hope You enjoy browsing them.

Colour Study: Red vs Green

This image is taken by Pentax Fa 77mm f1.8 limited

Some friends of mine have asked me about the applications of colours. Use of colours in photography is very important. Usuaully the colour profile of an image series creates a signature style of a photographer.

Sometimes the colour choice helps to protrays a desirable context to influence a viewer's mental state.

The most interesting and utilised choice of colour combination is Red vs Green, These two colours are equally weighted towards each other in terms of impact. A visual balance of these two colours is in 1 : 1 ratio. Therefore, a variation of proportion from these two colours will help a photographer to determine where the intended focus of any image shall be. Increasing the proportion of the red colour in an image will diminish the importance of the red itself, helping the viewer to look for the colour green subconsciously. Vice versa. This is a crucial knowledge to bear in mind during composition of any image.

The colour "Red" is the most ancient colour ever used in human history. In fact, the intensity of the red resets the brightness of a photograph to a medium dark overall. Most of the time, Red is avoided simply because the colour can be too dark, brooding and distracting if the subject of interest is not in red...
Very often, Red can only be a "host" colour in the image rather than a "guest" colour. Colour red has several effects on people. For example, normal red neck ties signifies ambience while burgundy red signifies classical or tradition. Intense Ferrari Red often denotes a flamboyant, progressive kind of message. Whenever an attention is needed, red colour helps to direct a confused and tired viewer to the desirable area of an image in order to perceive a certain message by the photographer.

No matter how bright red the colour is, colour red is considered to posess "darkening" effect. To compliment red, green is a must. However, green is considered even darker than red in general unless a choice of light olive green is considered. In general, light green is "no match" for any kind of red. Under such circumstances, the light green will be ignored by our higher centre of colour differentiation since light green is too "weak".
When Red is used, it shortens the viewer to the image distance in perception. Therefore, Colour red is not helpful in grandeous type of landscape images. Usually a dot or two of red is more than enough in most landscape if the scene is supposed to be vast and of huge scale. For moody, sentimental, sad, melanholy type of images, red or orange hue will be an ideal choice.
The choice of Green will hit hard in the visual cone cells of the human retina against the colour Red. Hence the impact is usually great enough to "elicit" certain type of emotion depending on one's upbringing experiences. This colour arrangment lasts visually even when the eyes are turned away from this particular colour combo.

Red and Green does cast great impact on viewing experience of many. But a port folio of images using only red vs green is not wise. This type of colour choice usually fatiques human vision. Hence tiring and exhausting for viewers. Therefore, this colour combination needs to be carefully planned out in a photography exhibition.
Lastly, the image I posted here obviously has the red leaf in the centre surrounded by the background bokeh, mixing red and green with variation of colour intensity. The colour choice is really these two colour where the intensity helps to create the sentiment. The rest is up to the viewer to interpret the red leaf...

Hope this article of colour red versus green will help many of my friends :)

What is chromatic aberation? (CA)

This image is taken by Pentax A 50mm f1.2 at federation square of Melbourne.
Chromatic Aberration

Many a times we come across various Optical terms that seem to fall on deaf ears. Not only they prove to be jargons but also drown us in a state of confusion as it is a human-tendency to start guessing thing which we don’t know.

Chromatic Aberration is one such term that many of you might no be able to explain. A person who uses any form of camera must know this term well as it is closely related to property of a camera-lens.Starting with the basic meaning of Aberration, it is stated that it is the inability of a lens to produce an exact image, particularly at the edges of the photograph. Hence Chromatic Aberration would simply mean the inability of a lens to converge all the wavelengths to a single common point, thus causing a blur. You can also say that Chromatic Aberrations are color deviations of lens systems.This is a common problem in large aperture telephoto lenses that are used to detect astronomical activities and even shoot the closest wild pictures of rare species.In modern times, most of the expensive cameras have special lenses that are protected from such defects. But in most of the normal cameras, the problem of Chromatic Aberration persists.

Every one of us has heard a common term in photography, ‘Purple Fringing’. The extremely small micro lenses of our digital camera that are used to collect more light for each CCD pixel are usually built and fine-tuned in such a way that they can focus the green wavelength perfectly.

The inability to focus the red and blue wavelengths results in purple fringing around the images.Ordinary cameras which have a very small pixel-pitch as in non-DSLR digital cameras have to incorporate a special processing step to remove it.Sometimes extremely sharp digital cameras may face the same problem. The image captured by the lens might have some really small areas. This tiny area is unable to stimulate red, blue and green color pixels and due to absence of some wavelength the captured image has some portion stored with incorrect color.Some of you might be thinking that avoiding colored photography is the simplest solution to this problem. But you are in for a surprise again because Chromatic Aberration affects Black & White Photography also. The phenomenon blurs the image completely. This problem can be overcome by exposing your original image for a longer duration of time to the lens.A very common example to experience is the blooming period for new leaves.

At the time of sunrise, try capturing the image of the filtered sun-rays that pass in between the new leaves and reach the ground. When you see the image, you’ll see the increasing visibility of purple-fringing.Hence, it is a good piece of advice to thoroughly check the lens features for Chromatic Aberration when you go to buy a new camera.

Black and White Photography

Title: Black And White Digital Photography

Canon 85mm f1.2L

Pentax Da 70mm f2.4

Canon 24mm f1.4L

Pentax 77mm f1.8 ltd

There are several ways to achieve black and white digital photography. With black and white digital photography, you are bringing the end user back into a period of time when life seemed a lot simpler. Many digital cameras come equipped with a function to take these types of photos. If your digital camera does not support this function, you can still change your photographs into black and white with software programs.

Pentax 31mm f1.8

Leica 25mm f1.4

l want your black and white digital photography to look its best when you are finished. A technique that can help you get the best image out of your digital photograph is through image manipulation. You may find it better to convert your eight-bit color images (which are usually jpegs) into 16-bit colors first. This is important because an 8-bit RGB can be the same as a 10-bit grayscale.

Canon 24mm f1.4L

Pentax 31mm f1.8 Limited

Pentax 77mm limited

You can find information all over on the Internet to help you with your black and white digital photography. These resources can be found in everything from websites to magazines. Colored pictures can look truly beautiful as a black and white display. You will usually have to convert your graphics, because although there are options with digital cameras, there are no true black and white digital cameras.

Canon 50mm f1.2L

Canon 200mm f2.8L

Pentax 200mm f2.8

Pentax Da 70mm f2.4 limited

Pentax 43mm f1.9 Limited

Voigtlander 12mm f5.6

Leica 50mm f2 Summicron

Canon 50mm f1.2L

Pentax Fa 77mm f1.8 limited

Canon 24mm f1.4L

Pentax 21mm limited

Pentax Fa 43mm limited

Pentax A 50mm f1.2

Correct the Colorcasts

An important part of black and white digital photography is correcting the colorcasts. These are caused by bad lighting, but you can use software such as PhotoShop Elements to make the relevant changes by using their editing applications. The Imaging Factory is also software that can help you to easily convert and fix lighting areas in your graphics to get the best look with your black and white digital photography. If you want to turn your graphics into black and white digital photography, you can step into a completely new dimension in photography. You can do an endless array of projects right from your own computer.

Pentax 77mm f1.8 Ltd

Pentax Da 70mm f2.4

Pentax 31mm Ltd

Pentax A 50mm f1.2

Leica 50mm f1.4 Summicron

Canon 50mm f1.2L

Leica 25mm f1.4

Pentax 200mm f2.8

Pentax A 300mm f2.8

Pentax Fa 24mm f2

Pentax A 50mm f1.2

Pentax Da 55mm f1.4

Pentax Da 55mm f1.4

Pentax Da 55mm f1.4

Pentax Da 15mm limited

Pentax 16-50mm f2.8

Canon 50mm f1.2L

Pentax 31mm f1.8 limited

Canon 135mm f2L

Canon 135mm f2L

Pentax 77mm f1.8 limited

Pentax Da 21mm

Canon 50mm f1.2L

Pentax 31mm limited

Pentax A 50mm f1.2