X-Mini

X-mini Max 2 to be precise, is a piece of rather impressive capsule-shaped gadget I must say. I have never even heard of these miniature speakers until Wayne showed me his X-mini 2. These stereo pairs cost around $60 is definitely a steal and would be a great gift idea for this festive season.

The two modules can be joined and held together at their magnetized bases for the ease of transport and the built quality is very impressive. The one I have here is black with elegant matted finish, which is far better than the cheap shiny plastic that you get with most, well, cheap stuff nowadays. Audio connection is via a 3.5mm headphone jack which is compatible with most portable audio devices and each of these speaker can be daisy chained together by as many X-mini speakers as you can afford to produce HUGE sound! Each speaker has a "Base Xpansion System" which can add extra volume to the speaker for better lower frequency performance.

Each powered by a built-in rechargeable battery, according to the manufacturer will give you more 10 hours of continuous use from a 2.5-hours charge via USB. The sound produces by these speakers is loud and crisp with noticeable distortion only at the upper limit of the volume. Overall, a very impressive ultra portable audio system and would make a great travel companion for both music lovers and gamers.

Good Bye Crumpler

Hello Billingham! It's hard to envisage how the idea of such a beautifully crafted camera bag was originated from humble fishing bags. I have always wanted the Billingham 307 since "Kai" from DigitalRev TV introduced their range on their website. At first look at the bag, you know that it is not just "another" camera bag, it is something special that you would like to have as part of your camera accessories, just like a good "L" lens from Canon! You know that its sturdy construction and heavy padding will help to shield your expensive camera equipments from damage and drops, heaven forbid!

I don't think I need to say much about this awesome bag; if you want to know more about Martin Billingham's wonderful range of bags, please check them out here. Camera Electronics, Perth sells them if you want one :)

Thank you my dear for this wonderful birthday present!

Perfect Stand

We were looking for an ipad folder/holder which will not only provide it with some protection but also be able to support the pad in both vertical and landscape orientations. "Cloak" by Quirky was the closest and the best Jin has found that will fit the purpose until we saw the stand by Griffin in DJ. Although the stand does not offer any physical protections, it does provide rigid support to ipad in all 3 orientations; vertical, landscape and typing positions. The stand itself is made of quality brushed aluminium that will definitely compliment the look of the ipad. The biggest minus is in fact the cost, at $79.95rrp, it is definitely not cheap!

Photo session with i-family :)

i-love Apple...

Beautiful Sam

My brother's new pride and joy :)

Another New Toy

Oh...I mean "tool" :) On Sunday, we went to Myer in city to take another look at those iPads because Jin was very interested in getting one. However, we both agreed at the end that and an iMac would make better sense and more useful than an iPad, although the price difference between them was rather astronomical in comparison. So we ended up with a 27" iMac i5 2.8Ghz but the problem was, we parked all the way back at the far end of Northbridge and the sky was starting to spit. It thorough explains why my whole upper body was aching like no tomorrow the next day!

Setting up the iMac was a breeze and pleasantly surprised since this is the first Apple I have ever owned. I must say powering up the iMac was eerily silence in comparison to my PC, which sounds like a rocket ship is about to take off every time I press the power up button. However, I was having a few issues while trying to connect to my 802.11n home network at full speed. Apparently it is a fairly common problem but nevertheless, it was fixed now with a simple tweak on my Netgear router.

Looking at the screen, it is definitely worth every single penny that we paid! The color reproduction and the 2560x1440 resolution are light years ahead of my current PC display. It's simply awesome! And yes Wayne, you are right, photos do look way better on iMac, even lousy photos lol!

Movie News

Well, not much of a news really. Last week we watched the much anticipated "the Last Airbender" (no no...not the original cartoon series which is brilliant by the way).
As I have suspected, it was mediocre bordering a total blockbuster flop. That's nearly 2 hours of my life wasted that I will never claw back. If given a choice again, I would rather chose to sit on my ass reading my boring pharmacy journals that are piling up on my desk for instance!

Reasons?
1. A western kid as Avatar?
2. Fire Nation from India? really?
3. $150 million?
---> Please check out the brilliantly made "Monsters" on a budget of just $15,000!
4. just poor acting
5. if I continue the list, I might get sued by the movie producer or worse, being called a racist!

The Big Brother of f1.2

Today I added another "red ring" to my lens collection, the renowned Canon EF 85mm f1.2L II. First impression was its weight, it is surprisingly heavy and chunky for a piece of short telephoto glass. Apart from the 50mm f1.2, it has the biggest aperture of all the lenses that are currently manufactured by Canon. The depth of field is razor thin at f1.2 and focusing obviously will be the biggest challenge of using this lens.

The biggest advantage of having such a huge aperture is it's ability to send everything not in focus into beautifully diffused blur or bokeh. Of course, big aperture also comes in extremely handy in low light conditions.

However, it's not all good news unfortunately. The biggest problem which I encountered so far with this monster is serious chromatic aberration when shooting wide open. The purple/pink fringing is particular noticeable on high contrast or shiny objects. It's kind of disappointing considering I almost have to literally sell one of my kidney to buy it! The second problem is of course slightly slower AF system comparing to my other Canon lenses. It also tends to hunt a bit more whenever there is a slight light falling directly onto the lens during focusing. ...and what's with that dodgy "electronic" manual focusing ring at the front of the lens?? BUT, I am willing to overlook all these shortcomings and thorough fall in love with this piece of glass as soon as I press the shutter button and watch the background disappears into beautiful BOKEH!

Oh...did I mention I love the BOKEH?

Right to Photograph

After lunch at Mal's house, we stayed and chatted for a good few hours about various topics from photography to environmental issues :) Apparently there was a protest in Sydney yesterday about the right for photographers. Details of the protest can be found here.

How ridiculous it would be if you are required to purchase a license/permit to photograph at any of the public location/building! I know these "restrictions" mainly apply to commercial photographers but how are they going to police it? How are they going to know if I am not a commercial photographer or does it mean if someone wants to buy a right to one of my photo, it would be illegal for me to sell my work because I am not commercially motivated?

Here is a quote from the article itself:

"The Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority requires commercial photographers to pay a minimum $150 AUD ($141 Cdn) per session if more than 10 crew are involved. That's in addition to $65 an hour for a site co-ordinator, $65 an hour for security and an additional $65 an hour for cleaning. Each of those services must be paid a minimum four hours."

Seriously, if you were going to shoot a wedding at outside of the Opera House, do you need a site co-ordinator just in case you lost your mind or a security guard just in case if you were attacked by a mad dog. And, $65 an hour for cleaning? You cannot be serious!

Stop making photographers feel like criminals!!

Inception

Inception is a rather long and complicated movie to watch and digest.

I said long because it did feel that way to me unfortunately. Don't get me wrong though, it is really not a bad movie to watch but does it worth the movie ticket you pay for? You will have to decide it yourself I am afraid. May be because there is no real villains or heroes in this movie and because of that, I failed to figure out which character to get behind.

Basically the plot takes place in a world where a person can enter another person's dream by mean of "injection" containing powerful chemicals and sedatives. It is just like entering the "Matrix" except without the fuss of super computers and cellphones! Even better, unlike Matrix, if you die in your dream, you simply just wake up to reality! Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) has a special ability to enter people's dream to extract and steal their secret. He was being wrongly accused of killing his wife and hence, unable to return to US to see his two children. Saito (Ken Watanabe), a rich Japanese businessman asked Cobb to plant (termed "inception") instead of stealing, an idea into his biggest business competitor's heir Robert Fischer (Cillian Murphy). The idea was so Fischer would breakdown and destroy his own company, and in return, Saito promised to see Cobb back to his children. Inception was considered impossible but Cobb has done it before, he did it to his wife which subsequently lead to her demise.

Jin was complaining of a headache after watching the movie simply because she had to concentrate so hard to understand the movie. While I did enjoy the spectacular CGI and the fast action, the movie did leave me with lots of questions to ponder.

Will I watch it again? I don't think so but the movie will sure make a great discussion topic with those of your friends who have watched it as well!