The magic of Canon

I have used my new Canon 50d for roughly a month now and after nearly 600 actuations, I must say it is a truely amazing midrange camera from Canon. Don't get me wrong though, I still absolutely love my first dSLR, the 400d but this 50d just opens out so much more options for me to play with. The most useful feature that I found (and sadly missing from the 400d but available through later 450d and 1000d) is the auto ISO mode and in the 50d, it switches between 100-1600 in auto mode.

Pairing it with the large aperture of 50mm f1.4 lens, the 50d takes amazing handheld night shots. Another plus is a significantly lower noise level at higher ISO of up to 1600. Although it goes all the way up to ISO 12800, things start to get a bit too grainy for my taste above ISO 3200. Another important plus is the maximum shutter speed of 1/8000 seconds, which allows the use of bigger aperture in bright daylight for portrait work without the need to use ND filters. Oh yes, did I say the 3" HR LCD screen is a godsend? It's just amazing that Canon can pack the resolution of a standard VGA monitor into a 3" screen!

The photo of this beautiful singer was taken at ISO 1250 with minimal lighting at Bistro38, Joondalup Resort. She performed for nearly 3 hours continuously while we were feasting on the buffet. Just in case you are thinking about having your next all-you-can-eat round there, my advice is you are more likely to get your money worth at the Jetty Restaurant at the Hillary Boat Habour. The buffet is worse or on par with the Atrium Restaurant in Burswood and you will be paying through your nose!

Zoom Zoom!

I usually spend countless hours in front of my monitor surfing the web when I run out of things to do or photo to shoot. I came across this image which I thought was quite funny and like to share with you guys....an ultimate Nikon freak! or...may be something my dear friend Wayne would admire lol!

As a Canon user, I found some interesting stats for a similarly rediculous lens made by Canon and since has been discontinued in 2005. Of course, to showcase a lens of this calibre would be absurd not to include a hot chick like those exortic cars at the expo right?












The lens is a Canon EF 1200mm f5.6L USM and it costs a whopping US$99,000; it's 84cm in length, weighs in excess of 16kg and comes with the heavy duty tripod! Go figures!

Two slices of heaven

Well, we went back to our favourite pizza place again in Mundaring last Friday and it was again fantastic! The first of the two pizzas we tried was aptly named smashing pumpkins and the other was some sort of seafood pizza with huge succulent prawns (sorry...forgot it's name). Smashing pumpkins was the pick of the two, it was indeed the first slice of heaven for the week :)








The Second slice of heaven was found at the King Street Cafe in the city. I am a great fan of everything made from banana and the guys there at the cafe bake one of the best I have come across! They have two sorts of banana cakes, the regular banana cake and the baked banana cheesecake. The later one is the one to die for...trust me :)

A fun weekend or not...

Yesterday night, we attended the Rio Tinto Christmas party at the Adventure World with my niece and nephew. Overall, it was not too bad at all if not because of my pounding headache. I have never been to Adventure World before and because I have heard so much great things about the park, I went to the park carrying high expectations.

To my disappointment, I was suprise to find out how small the actual fun park is. Moreover, the facilities and equipments there are fairly old and ill maintained considering the astronomical entry fee per person that the park demands. The last check on the board, for $45/adult, $37/child and $39/pensioner or concession card holder, it is not cheap by any standard! Nevertheless, it was still a fun night out with the kids. Will I go back again?....well, definitely not as a paying patron :)

A gift for my birthday

This year I got one of the best present ever from Jin, a Canon 50mm f1.4 prime lens as I mentioned earlier. Although not exactly a surprise because we have already discussed about the purchase few days earlier, it has still more than made my day :))

It may not be as sharp as the 100mm f2.8 but it produces some of the best bokeh I have ever seen.

Today we went to Mandurah with Jin for a "photo session" and undoubtly it is a superb lens for portraiture, producing reasonably sharp images even at the maximum aperture of f1.4. In my opinion, the Canon 100mm f2.8 is still the best medium telephoto lens for portrait work but I think this little baby is pretty close to it. Well at least with this little prime, I don't have to walk back 10m or so for a full body shot :)

Coffee Break!

"The bad news is that the All Ords fell by 200 points. The good news is that I didn't know there were 200 points left." - Compareshares.com.au :))

Lake Monger Reserve

Today was just another typical non-eventful day, having to work yesterday and again tomorrow, the weekend just wasn't long enough by any standard. Jin was struggling with curtain in the morning (yes, she is making new curtains for our lounge room) while I was trying to filter through news from the rotten financial markets around the globe to find any sign of reprieve. While all this is bad news for those average investors stubborn enough to hold on to their investment portfolio they started some 6 years ago, subsequent drops in interest rates from our reserved bank is much welcomed by most of us mortgage holders. Which means that at last, we can breath a little easier and I might not have to wait too long for my next camera upgrade...I am looking at may be a 50D next year sometime :))

Anyhow, we decided to go out for a walk in the afternoon. After all, today's weather was too nice for us to be locked up at home anyway. After I dropped something to my brother in Wembly Down, we went to the nearby Lake Monger Reserve. I haven't been to the reserve since I finished my college and I was totally stunned by how tranquil and beautiful the surrounding areas are. Luscious greens with scores of wild birds and black swams, it is just awesome!

Yorkshire Pudding

Yorkshire pudding is a dish that originated in Yorkshire but attained wider popularity. It is made from batter and most often served with roast beef, chicken, or any meal in which there is gravy served with it, or on its own. Gravy is often served alongside. It is often claimed that the purpose of the dish was to provide a cheap way to fill the diners - the Yorkshire pudding being much cheaper than the other constituents of the meal - thus stretching a lesser amount of the more expensive ingredients as the Yorkshire pudding was traditionally served first. (Source: Wikipedia)

Well, I guess it serves a similar purpose to rice or potatoes but to my surprise, they actually taste quite nice! Here is the recipe which I used to prepare ours last night :) The more complicated part was to get our roast beef done, which nearly cought fire in our oven hehe!

We had the puddings with roast beef, served with creamy mashed potatoes and steamed cauliflower with tons of gravy....yum!!!

Big Gun No Brain

Video game turned movie or movie turned video game, I couldn't really think of any truely successful incarnations except may be Resident Evil and Tomb Raider. Max Payne is one of the latest video game turned movie title that hit our big screen lately.

I am a big fan of Max Payne game series and the use of "bullet-time" in the gameplay was nothing short of revolutionary at the time! This was also one of the main reason why I had convinced Jin to watch it with me a couple days ago. To cut a long story short, the movie definitely wasn't worth any cents of your hard earned $15 and the 100mins in life that you will never get back!

The movie is a little "too dark" to my taste and all the characters inside, including Max Payne have failed to connect with the audience in my opinion. At the end, I couldn't care less about what actually happened to any of them. The movie is not only lack of substance but also blatantly boring right through till the end.

The plot is fairly simple, Max Payne (Mark Wahlberg) is cop who is still trying to get over the death of his wife and baby while investigating several murders, while Mona Sax (Mila Kunis) costars as an assassin desperate for her own revenge of her sister. However, it's not all bad, the movie still manages to pull out some rather impressive visual effects and mindless big gun fires!

My advice - safe the $15 bucks. If you haven't played the game before, go and get yourself a copy of Max Payne or Max Payne 2 which should only cost you a couple of dollars by now :)

Back to Rottnest

With only less than 2 weeks to go before Yeong heads back to Korea, we thought it would only be fair enough that we showed her to our only island escape paradise in Perth, the Rottnest Island :)

We went there on last Saturday by catching the Rottness Express ferry off C Shed at Fremantle Port. The day started really cloudy and managed to spit a little, but as the day progressed, it turned out to be a fantastic day on the island with really mild temperature and plenty of refreshing sea breeze.

However it's not all fun and games, Yeong somehow managed to drop her prescription glasses into the ocean and lost them! So the rest of the day, she would just have to be content with her non-prescription sunnies :)

Of course, there are only a few ways you can get around to explore the island and in my opinion, the best way will be on the bikes. So we rented a bike each as soon as we arrived on the island in the morning. However, the only down side of riding these rental bikes is the "pain in the arse" at the end of the day - for those who have been there and done that would know exactly what I meant LOL! For me, it was the fifth time I have been through this and every single time it nearly killed me :)

Through camera lens

Ever wonder why sometimes photos look different from realities? Well, I am not talking about the result of acne/mole touch up using PS but through perspective distortion by your camera lens. The distortion is most apparent if the object being photographed is placed too close a wide-angle lens. This is also the very reason why wide angle lenses and long telephoto lenses do not make ideal portrait lenses. Objects closer to wide-angle lens will almost always appear larger and disproportionate to the rest of the objects away from the lens (big nose??). In contrary, objects will always appear a bit flatter if a really long telephoto lens is used. Personally, I find that my 100mm macro lens is a very capable portrait lens and I will keep saving up money for my dream portrait lens, Canon 85mm f/1.2L :)

Public Art

Found this a few weeks ago behind my workplace :)

School holiday = trouble time

Want to share some "art" work on my fence with all of you. Haven't these idiots got better things to do?

Six months later - another new car :)

Ok Ok...we are now officially broke but we are happy :) Introduce the new car for Jin, a Ford Focus 2.0 with all the bells and whistles such as alloy wheels, cruise control, trip computer, semi-automatic transmission, electric everything and leather-clad steering wheel. We traded in her aging Holden Barina which we bought about 2 years ago from the City Holden. That Barina was a total nightmare in the last 6 months and had gone through one repair after another, costing us in excess of $2k in total. Saying that, we did not just buy a cheap second off the street, it was a $11k car we bought from a reputable Holden dealer and for that price, you would expect to get at least a few more years out of it right? WRONG! In fact, way wrong! In the end, it's just another lemon from Holden (anything new?).

Anyway, gone is the trouble :) Jin is overjoyed with her new car and with 107kw of power at her disposure, it's a far cry from a useless and gutless 1.4 thrash in the Barina. The car is smooth to drive and the 4 speed semi-automatic works flawlessly in peak hour city traffic as well as on the freeway. We got the car from John Hughes Park Ford in Victoria Park and was delivered this morning. The staff at the dealer are really friendly and helpful and purchasing the Focus from them was a delightful experience. So there you go, if you are looking to upgrade to a new Ford, head down to Park Ford and you will know what I mean.

Gudget of the Month!

From my previous post, I explained about my new upgraded desktop computer. But do you ever think about what are you going to do with all those old obsolete parts each time you upgrade your PC? In my case, they are still perfectly working and reasonably capable E6400 Intel chip and mobo. Well, I have built myself a fully function HTPC in our bedroom :)) It's main function is not really for movie watching but more like for listening to music while surfing the net in my doona on Sunday morning hehe! A typical remote control for a media PC will not even come close to what a keyboard and mouse combo is capable of.

This is when my gudget of the month comes in! A diNovo Mini by Logitech.

This little keyboard remote control is an truely amazing piece of technology! The diNovo Mini 's sleek construction, functional design and ease of use is extraordinary. And because it uses Bluetooth technology, it also has an amazing working range of more than 9m!

The whole keypad is no bigger than the size of my palm but it has a fully functional keyboard and a touchpad built in! And this is more than enough to control a fully fletched PC from the comfort of your sofa or in my case, my bed :)

It comes with a rechargable battery much like your mobile phone. Once fully charged, it will last for a least a month or so, or at least what they claim to last. So...if you are tired of your gigantic keyboard and mouse combo with limited range, then it's time to get yourself one of these little babies, you will not be dissappointed!

A brief look back

Sorry about the lack of updates lately, life goes on as usual (and sucks at time)... I have not been taking photos for a while now and hence, sort of "retired" from the Flickr at the moment. I am still toying with the ideas purchasing a second camera body and the Canon 50mm f1.4 prime lens though. However, at the moment, we have to start saving up money for another new car for Jin as her Holden Barina is a little long in tooth.... c'mon Sat Lotto!!!

I have upgraded my old computer E6400 to a better budget quadcore photoshop/gaming rig :)

Q9450@3.0Ghz (fsb375,vcore1.23) + P5kpro + Zalman CNPS7700
Corsair XMS2 6400C4 @1000mhz 4-4-4-12 (4x1Gb)
ATI HD3870 512MbDDR4(820/1230)

Although far from the "extreme" version for those deep pocket nerds, this Q9450 really pack a punch and everything seems to work a whole lot faster and smoother.

Completed Crysis on the above system, although the framerate with all settings maxed out are barely playable still! Crysis is the only game I have purchased since Neverwinter Nights 2 earlier last year and I must say, it is one of the best looking game I have ever seen and played! So there you go, if you only buy one game per year, this is the one to get if you haven't already done so....but you will have to make sure your gaming rig can handle it :)

Seen Iron Man at the movie last Tuesday...well, it's not as good as I would hope for but may be my expectation was too high after reading all the raving reviews on the net. However, I truely enjoyed watching the Iron Man character portrayed by the alter ego and ultra sarcastic Downey jr. The casts were excellent! However, Transformer is still my favourite :)

Last but not least, cought a nasty cold couple days ago and I am still as sick as a dog right now....

New Ikea Super Store!

Really, before I begin, this is not about any IKEA promotion so please don't worry LOL! A good buddy of mine, Waynus mentioned once in his blog that one of his friend is afraid of mimes and apparently there was one in the new IKEA store. So we decided to check it out yesterday morning, which was indeed a beautiful morning until we got there at the store.

Getting there was a breeze from the Mitchell Freeway, you won't miss the imposing sign of IKEA on the Cedric Street exit. This gargantuan superstore don't get the title as the biggest store in the southern hemisphere for nothing, it is huge indeed...but again...to get that sort of title in the southern hemisphere is not entirely that hard anyway :)

To find a parking spot in a sea of cars was a daunting experience, so I decided to park on the giant uncovered parking field next to the store, which was covered with soft yellow sands. Even then, the makeshift parking was pretty much full! So, as you have probably guessed, my poor Toyota was bogged down before we even started our "adventure". After I tried digging the front wheels out with my four paws to no avail, we decided to beg for help from the ever so helpful IKEA staffs.

After running up and down, one of the IKEA staff said to us: "that parking area is NOT an IKEA's property, so it is not our responsibility that your car is bogged down there". Inside of me, I was fuming but I managed to ignore what he said because, after all, I was the one buried in deep shit and in need of help at the time. What are we? I thought we are loyal IKEA's customers and they are supposed to look after their patrons? After all, nearly 15-20% of our bits and pieces at home sport the IKEA tags!

Luckily one of the more helpful staff agreed to sacrifice a few minutes of his time and give us a hand. However, after a few trials, the nose of my car was officially resting on the dirt as the front wheels frantically scratched for traction (traction control I heard?) I phoned RAC (Royal Automobile Club) of which I was a member for the past 15 years I was driving but they doubted their mechanics were going get me out of this sticky situation, so they suggested I call a tow truck. Luckily, while we were their, another guy rocked up in his great Holden Ute and his rear shinny allow wheels were seriously bogged behind us as well. Tell you what?! It's nice to have a "mate" in the same sticky situation LOL!

As our hope and patience were running thin, he flagged down a guy in his Toyota landcruiser who, thanks heaven, was able to give us a much needed pulling hand! I should have asked for your name but if you ever come across my blog, you have my sincere thank you and I will forever remember you as our saviour!! ....and long live Toyota landcruiser!!

To IKEA!! Your reputation is merely saved by one of your more helpful staff! Perhaps you should erect a sign near the entrance of that parking area "for 4WD only or enter at your own peril"! Perhaps you should build the biggest proper carpark in the southern hemisphere. Perhaps you should train their staffs to be more reasonable and helpful.

Perhaps...we should have gone to FREEDOM instead! One thing for sure, we won't be going back to the store in a hurry!

Happy Chinese New Year!!

This is my first post in 2008 and what?? it's already February for crying out loud! Time just flew by and I felt like I am still living in 2007 for some reason :) Tomorrow is Lunar Chinese New Year and if I were in Malaysia, I would still be with my family and counting down to midnight firecrackers madness instead of sitting here updating my blog.

The first 3 weeks of January were pretty hectic because my parents-in-law came to visit us from Korea. I drove them around to show them country WA and done nearly 3000km on the odometer. We had a really great time together actually and I have plenty of great photos to share with you all on my flickr page in the next few months. I haven't been updating my Flickr page for a good 2 months now but one thing for sure, I have never stopped clicking my trusty Canon :)

I have got myself a great present in this new year!! Guess what?? ...well...not a Canon 40D, 5D or 1D...although I would love to get my hand on all of them...nah...it's way better than those!!

Well, the photos would have already given away the clue. It's a new Toyota Aurion and it drives like a dream; and it's easily twice the car the Camry Altise I used to drive! Quiet ride, smooth and effortless power from a 200kw V6, combined with modern gadgets like auto headlight, ABS with BA, VSC, traction control, 6-speed sequential semi-automatic, 6 airbags and heaps more...I am totally thrilled with the purchase! We drove it to Scarborough beach for a photo session the day we picked up our baby :) It's dressed in metallic Caribbean blue.

This Toyota is also sold as Camry in other parts of the world although with slightly different configurations and smaller engines. In Australia, the new Camry has a slightly different design to differentiate it from the Aurion.