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 :)