Paper Cactus

The last of the set :) Have a fantastic weekend my friends!

Paper Cactus

This is the second one, the third one is coming :)










p/s taken with bounced light vs without (previous post)

Paper Cactus

Jin made this one from paper the other night, I thought it was rather amazing :)

Addicted to Coffee

One for me, one for her :)

Today is only Wednesday but you know it is a "long week" when it feels like a Thursday or even Friday today! Work was pretty flat out in the past couple of days following the long weekend and I think I am just about to have enough!

Now.....
wonder how I make those patterns on my coffee? Well, I am pretty new at this as well but I don't mind to share it with you if you are interested. First, you will need an espresso machine with a steam wand of course. Don't have to be a fancy one because mine isn't. Start with really cold milk in a stainless steel jug filled to about 1/3 full. Colder milk allows you to "stretch" the milk a little bit longer without "burning" the milk.

Start with the steam wand's tip just breaking the surface of the milk. This will help draw in more air into the milk and you know you are doing the right thing when you hear the occassional "hissing" sound. Be careful not to add too much volume to your milk, about 10-20% is sufficient I think. After that, lower the steam wand slightly into the milk and continue "whip" the milk around the jug with the steam until the jug is too hot for you hold in your hands. Turn off the steam but keep the milk moving in the jug to avoid separation of foam from milk. Pour about 2/3 of the milk gently toward the centre of your espresso shot in your cup, then start from the outer edge, swaying the milk from side to side while drawing the jug towards you. Then pour the reminder in a straight line back towards the outer edge.

What I have found is that you have to pour the milk gently but fast enough (but not too fast) to prevent the foam from leaving behind in the jug. Too much foam is no good, and nor does too little. It's all about striking the balance and to achieve that, keep drinking coffee and practicing every single damned day!! :)

At 10mm, things starting to look rather amazing!

Actually I was more interesting in getting the Canon 70-200mm f2.8 IS but Jin was trying to convince me into buying an ultra wide-angle lens first before our Europe trip this coming Spring. After reading what Ken Rockwell has said about the Sigma 10-20mm, I was a bit skeptical at first but after handling and trying on the lens at the Cameraland, I bought it without a second thought! It was indeed a very well-built lens with decent optic and quite a lot cheaper to my original choice, the Canon 10-22mm. What's more, the lens came with a free hood and a well-padded carrying bag for starter! The lens is fairly sharp at 10mm even wide open, CA is very minimal and barrel distortion is well controlled, something that I really hate at the widest end of my Canon 17-85mm. It uses standard 77mm filter.

As for the Canon 70-200mm f2.8 IS, well that will have to wait a little longer, may be just before we go to Europe (duty-free)...just may be... :)

Another cup?

Actually in this one I kinda cheated a little bit. Because the coffee grind that I used was not dark enough, I actually dusted my espresso shot with some cocoa powder first before I pour the milk. I quite like the effect and the milk foam actually tastes quite good as well!

For latte art, the rounded base coffee cup supposed to be the best because it allows milk foam to produce better swirls with the coffee shot....well, a decent set of coffee cups is certainly on my shopping list next time :)

My very own Rosetta :)

Well, it might not look like much but it meant a lot to me for the countless practice pours that I have done in the past 2 weeks. I know I still have a very long way to go to make a decent pour but for now, this would do for me :)

Have a great weekend everyone!

p/s: My favourite grind at the moment is the Bin 75 hazelnut from Gloria Jean. It's a very mild roast with a hint of hazelnut, simply superb. And best of all, you can get them is Woolies or Coles!

Have we a match?

Hymm...what do you reckon Wayne? :)

A Wedding

I wonder where the groom was getting all the hair from LOL!

Noisy or Shaky

Recently, I have been told that the iso I used for some of my shots were too high. Well, unless you are a brain surgoen or a guy who sleeps with tripod/monopod, camera shakes as a result of less than ideal shooting situation is always a big hurdle, even with IS/VR activated. Without any sort of image stabilization, I would always try to shoot at shutter speed of at least 1/60, preferably 1/100 or higher to double sure that my day would not be ruined by my shaky hands. I would trade a shaky shot for a noisy one any day and the world is never perfect anyway! But that is just my opinion :)





Lately I have worked a lot with the 50mm f/1.4 and what I have found is with the aperture wide open (1.4-1.8), images produced are very soft with a fair amount of bokeh chromatic abberation. Stopping down to f/2.8 or narrower produces much better results but increases the depth of field for portaiture work. Shooting landscape with the 50mm prime presents a bigger challenge as I found out during our trip to Sydney and Melbourne. During the whole trip, I sticked to my beloved 50mm prime while Jin has the zoom lens. Using f/13 and above produces softer images somehow when viewed at 100%. But of course, these situations vary with different lenses, some expensive zoom lens I believe are pretty sharp wide open but then I will have to save more money to find that out :P