Second "L" glass

I have most of my focal range covered now that I have got my long awaited general purpose lens, the Canon EF 24-70mm f2.8L. For a while, I was torn between the 24-70 and 24-105 but at the end, I decided to go for the slightly bigger brother. This lens has been around for for sometime now and is probably one of the most used general purpose "L" glass on the market despite weighing close to 1 kg. I have never tried the 24-105 before but from what I read online, these two are fairly similar, optically however, most people agree 24-70 has the edge and also not forgetting, it's a full-stop quicker. Going down from f4 to f2.8 means doubling the amount of light hitting camera sensor at any particular shutter speed. This coupled with high ISO could mean getting sharp images of moving objects, for example humans in low light, or blurred mess/ghosts unless that's your intention :) There is another difference between the 2 though, the 24-70 is unfortunately lack of image stabilizer (IS) but I guess if there is one, it will only land bigger blow to my hip pocket lol!

I did a rough test and the images shot are very good, sharpness and contrast are definitely better compare to those of EFS 17-85mm IS. However, it still doesn't beat my favourite prime, the mighty Canon 50mm f1.4 stopping down to f2.8!

If you need more info about this marvelous lens, click here!

Back to Reality

A two-weeks-and-a-bit was just too short for a trip to Europe. We spent 2 weeks in 3 cities and we were still running out of time, how those tours can do the whole Europe in a month is beyond me! We did have a few problems and hiccups along the way but overall, the whole trip was very enjoyable.

Will we go back? Of course we will, especially to Rome, I love the city. Our opinions were divided on Paris, no offense but most Parisians won't too friendly to us while we were there. They seem to have a chip on their shoulder and those subways were just filthy! Seeing beyond that, Paris is a beautiful city in its own right and as Jin said, a very romantic city :)

London to me is very similar to Melbourne, very clean and fashionable city. Chinatown is an absolute hit and the "dimsum" that could be sampled there is top-notch! All the musical performances are residents there and two thumbs up for the Lion King show, absolutely brilliant!

No doubt I will write more about our trip in my next few entries and perhaps more later, and may be some things to do and not to do there :)

Where has the time gone?

It's been more than a month since my last entry into my blog but the problem is, it felt like last week I just updated it. Am I going nuts or what? One good thing is, we are just one more week of sleeps away from our European trip!!

I know I am a little bit too late but for those who are here and didn't realise that yesterday us Chinese celebrated the Mid-Autumn Festival; well, happy belated Mid-Autumn Festival to everyone! ...btw, my brother is one of them lol! We were planning to have some mooncakes last night but we just couldn't stomach them after having 8 pizzas at Little Caesars in Mundaring for dinner (they were 7 of us btw...so kinda not too bad hehe!)

So here it is, we are having one for breakfast!!

An afternoon stroll in Freo

Kaiser Baas USB HDTV

As we don't watch a lot of TV shows, I tend not to spend (waste) too much on a digital set top box and yes, we still use analog tvs :) We bought a $99 DGTEC hd tv tuner about couple years ago for our bedroom and it lasted just that. So I decided to try something different (and even cheaper) this time round, a USB tv tuner for my bedroom pc. It was an amazing piece of technology I think for the price I paid for it at Harvey Norman. It is made by an OZ company who makes digital photo frames :) This USB stick is capable 1080i display and it allows typical PVR features such as schedule recording with EPG and time-shift for those emergency toilet breaks. It comes with a copy of PowerCinema 5 by Cyberlink which is rather pleasant to use. Setting up the device is a no-brainer, fully plug and play on XP and Vista. However, I was a little disappointed with the remote controller provided, the remote only works at direct line-of-sight only and I mean direct!! So if you plug this thingy at the back of your computer, the remote will have no use at all. Luckily my Logitech diNovo Mini never let me down :)

Logitech VX Nano Mouse

Got this little mouse today for my netbook. Well, the mouse is not really of nano size but the receiver is so remarkably small that you soon will forget that it is even there! Some might say that most of the new notebooks nowadays are equiped with bluetooth technology, wouldn't a BT mouse make more sense? The answer is yes of course but there is a big downside to it, BT mouse is usually less responsive and often lag behind. Logitech claims that the 2xAAA batteries inside can last up to one year (only if you remember to hit the tiny "off" button underneath the mouse when not in use I guess). Overall, the mouse feels solid and it even comes with a carrying pouch!

Love him or hate him

I've always been a great follower of Ken Rockwell's blog and a fan of his style of writing. Personally I don't know what sort of photographer he is or how good he is, but what I do love about him is his dry sense of humour. His collection of photos in his galleries are hardly inspirational to me but again, I hate to judge a book by its cover. He is just a regular guy who loves to write stuff about himself, his life and photographic equipments, just like most of us do on our blogs, except on a much, much, much and much bigger scale. Unfortunately, I do believe he has more haters around the world then people who like him.

Tonight I came across one of his page which was written a while back and I thought it was quite interesting. Check it out here - The Seven Levels of Photographers! While I don't agree with everything he said, but he did make a few valid points though.

"Bad rich amateurs think fuzzy B/W images of poor poeple are art" - Ken Rockwell :))

If you got more free time and would like to learn more about making great photos, here is another great page - How to Make Great Photographs. I have not undertaken any photography courses in the past and I am glad Ken is able to share his experience with us and help me to be a better photographer.

White Beauty

Got this from Harvey Norman last week, a vaio P series netbook (VGN P13GHW). It was their last display model and hence, we got a fairly good discount from them. It looks like a sport car on steroid, it is "beautiful"!

Yes...look without essence some might say, well, frankly I don't give a rat about what others said. The look alone is enough to justify the premium price although it has slower atom cpu, smaller hd and running on Vista, which slows it down further :)

Well, after all I am not intend to play game on it. The main reason I bought it is to travel with it so I can have occassional internet access and a place to save all my photos, and for that, this baby fits my criteria perfectly....and it can even fit into my pocket! All I need now is some spare batteries to go with it lol!

Update 26/7/9: This amazing netbook is great for watching movies/trailers in real HD on the go (720p/1080p) provided you use the correct software and codecs. For smooth HD playback, the best software to use is the Cyerlink PowerDVD 8 or Windows Media Classic HC (open source) with PowerDVD's playback filter. Playback using WMP is choppy and virtually unwatchable. I am also able to overclock this tiny Atom Z520 using setFSB from 1.33Ghz to 1.6Ghz without any problem, although I am struggling to find any real world improvement with it :)

USS George Washington (CVN73)

This Giant US Navy aircraft carrier was docked 3km off Fremantle Port this week and we were lucky to come across it on our way to Cottlesloe today.











Here are some facts about this amazing nuclear-powered carrier:
Displacement: Approximately 101,000 long tons
Length: 332.8m
Flight Deck Area: 4.5acres
Power: 2x nuclear reactors that permit the carrier to steam for almost 18 years before refueling
Range: Virtually unlimited! (I need a car with nuclear reactor!)
Speed: About 56+km/hr
Number of aircrafts: 75
Propellers: 4x five-bladed brass propellers weighing 30,000kg each
Anchors: Two, each weighing 30,000kg as well
Meals: 7 galleys serving 18,000 meals daily
Water distiller: 15,000L fresh water daily
Crew accommodations: 6,250

The first is teenage boy's wet dream, the sequel is just masturbation.

Well, there is nothing "naughty" about the stuff that I wrote here today. The above is a direct quotation from a critic from the Scorecard Review about the second installment of the Transformer: The Revenge of the Fallen. A quick check of the tomatometer, at 20%, it is considered by most movie critics around the globe as a utter disaster or a blockbuster flop. Well, I beg to think otherwise. True, the plot is getting thinner and the humour has grown a little tired but I still love those giant robots, those massive explosions and it's no doubt on par with the first. If you like the first Transformer movie, I think you are going to love this one. And guess what? In the packed movie theatre on last Tuesday night, I could confidently said Megan Fox was still the hottest chick in that room! Perhaps the biggest drawback about this second movie is that it is a tad too long, in fact, if it was about 30-60 minutes shorter, it would have been a perfect movie...yawn :)