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.

Super Macro

Since I bought my Canon 100mm f2.8 lens, it totally changed to way I look at things around us. All the time, I thought Macro lens is simply a "magnifying glass" for SLR camera but I was totally wrong. If you visit my Flickr photostream, you will know what I mean. Not only does it make things bigger, it allows me to "play" with light and compose shots from different perspectives. Insects, flowers and leaves have never looked this good to me before! I have reviewed a fair bit about the lens in my previous post, so I won't dwell too much in this area today.

What I wanted to share with you today was a technique which I have come to love in macro photography. That's to shoot "super macro" combining the 100mm with a reversed medium telephoto lens, such as a 50mm prime lens, a cheapo Canon 50mm f1.8 will be a fantastic prime to experiment with. The trick is to focus both lens to infinity and held together tightly, in my case, by hand :) In this set up, I can get even closer to action and a much higher magnification value without spending anything substantial. The downside is of course, you would not be able to use the AF function of the lens and so the only way to focus is to move the whole thing back and forth. A word of warning though, I am not sure if there is any other easier way but if you do the way I explained above, it's definitely not for the faint-hearted :)) Working with extremely narrow DOF or smaller aperture with limited ambience light is always going to be a challenge in macro photography, well, for me anyway. Persistance and patience will help you a long way!! :))

P/S Thank you Arturo for showing me the secret!!

Christmas comes early :)

Introducing the newest addition to our family : Betty :))

Betty is a budgie, a small Australian parakeets given to us as a Christmas present by KC, one of the pharmacy assistant at work.

Because she is only a baby right now, we are trying hard to train her as much as possible so she will not be afraid of handling by human. Apparent like certain species of parrot, budgie can learn how to talk as well!

Today, we got her a brand new home and a hanging stand!! When she has become more domesticated, I will bring her out to shoot more photos and post them on my flickr page. But at the moment, Betty is pretty much confined to her cage :)

Josh Groban AWAKE Tour (Perth)

Josh Groban burst on to the international music scene in 2001 with the release of his self-titled debut album featuring the hit single, "To Where You Are." His follow up CD "Closer" with the smash hit "You Raise Me Up" brought enormous success to the young singing sensation. "Awake" was his third studio album which was release late in 2006.

Perth was his last stop of the Awake Tour around Australia. The concert was held at Challenge Stadium on 14/10, which lasted about 90mins. There is only one word to describe his concert : SENSATIONAL!! He performed brilliantly throughout the concert and has proved that he is a musician of many talents! What I meant was, he can sing (did I mention he CAN sing?), cracking jokes every so often, a brilliant pianist and as a drummer, he rocks! Well, how do you know a concert is good?....easy, it is when you get goose-bumps during the concert hehe!

He performed most of the songs from his lastest alhum AWAKE, which includes my favs, You are loved (don't give up), February Song, So She Dances and Un Giorno Per Noi. He also threw in quite a few of my favourite old numbers from his previous albums which include my all time favourites, Remember When It Rained and You Raise Me Up.

If you still haven't heard of Josh Groban, you haven't heard a music at all!!!

The only complaint I have about this concert was those ass-killer seats! Yes, it was cheapo hard plastic seat which was not the most comfortable on earth....but in the end, it was well worth the effort :))

Is incompetence a "norm" in pharmacy service nowadays?

Sorry for the lack of updates to my blog recently. I have been spending literally too much time on Flickr and I think I might take a break from it soon =P It is kind of addictive, I mean in a good way because I have learnt so much by surfing through hundreds of photos everyday and I have met some brilliant photographers and great friends.

I feel compelled to complain something today to get it off my chest! We just updated our Point of Sale (POS) system in the pharmacy in hope that it will provide us with better inventory control and sales reports. And what did we get? A system that totally stuffed up our inventory during the conversion process, stocks level is out by miles and most of our sales figures are totally out of whack! According to our system, we have actually sold 350 boxes of Panadeine tablets (48) last month...what are we? A Chemist Warehouse? When we run into problems, the software company generally takes 2 - 3 days to response, and most of our queries/problems are tagged urgent response needed! I am not going to name and shame here just in case they get angry at us, then we might get no service at all in the future :)

Another thing that upsets me is the level of service offered by one of our pharmaceutical wholesaler, Sigma. They have appalling customer service and is getting worse by the day! On a typical phone call to their customer service, the average waiting time will be around 5-10 minutes and that's on a good day! "Your phone calls are important to us, please hold and our next available...." do I need to continue? :) Now they want us to pay $12 per month for the Pharmax ordering service that we don't use at all! We made numerous phone calls to query about the charge and to cancel it, we were directed back and forth at least 4 times between Perth and Melbourne customer services and no one seems to know what's going on. Then one of them said to us, that $12 is not the charge for the ordering service, it's the standard charge for using their customer service!! Pay while you wait for service...that's something new you don't hear everyday :) No wonder they are going broke, for your info, their share prices have plummeted more than 50% in the last 6 months! I wonder why.

New addition to my family

Canon 100mm f/2.8 macro EF USM! Got this lens last Saturday from Plaza Imaging in North Bridge.

First of all, I am really impressed with the capability of this lens, the images captured are pin-sharp in details and colours are great. Focusing mechanism is internal (USM), hence it's fast, quiet, accurate and most importantly, allowing manual overide with the focusing rim in AF mode. The length of the lens is fixed and will not extend during focusing, this is great when focusing at 1x subject distance. Build quality is great and is on par with my other Canon 17-85mm IS lens.

However, using this baby in macro photography is a totally different ball game altogether. First is camera shake and frustrating out of focus images. At this focal length doing 1:1 macro shot, any tiny shake will translate to totally blurred images. I guess missing the images stabilizer (IS) in this lens does not do much favour. Another problem that I am experiencing is the control of DOF. Having a narrow DOF, while can produce fantastic looking background/foreground blur, it also means a tiny camera shift can result in out of focus shot! Well... I guess I will just keep shooting, hopefully practice does make perfect :)

Warning!! There are other downsides for buying this lens....as I shamelessly quote from Bryan's review. "You will find yourself looking for little things to use for subjects - which are everywhere. No bug is safe. You will find you neck hurting from looking down all the time. You will discover a world you never knew existed." Macro photography is great fun!

Food for thought

While I was having a quick lunch yesterday at work, I skimmed across SWAPS August newsletter which is aptly titled "What's in a name?". If you work in a drug store, you are probably trying to push the sale of so called "home brand" or chemist own products through the roof and hopefully making lots of profit in return. If you are a consumer going to a chemist to buy a product, chances are you will probably be talked into buying one of those "home brand" alternative as well.

This is all well and good but one problem. The problem is when a customer comes in and asks for a branded line because they have used it successfully before, or they have seen it advertised on TV, and then they are "talked into" a different product, sometimes you can win and sometimes you can lose. You can win because you are probably making a much bigger margin on the sale, you can lose because the customer may not be satisfied with the results and guess what, they may not come back and tell you that. In fact, they may just not return at all.

Home brands and brand substitution when it comes to healthcare is a totally different ball game all together. Unlike supermarket where you have the option of choosing a home brand cookies and if they are no good, you just bin them. Healthcare is a very sensitive issue and consumers are aware of that and are taking it much more seriously than, let say, choosing a box of cookies.

Provide a "value" service, because at the end of the day, that's what matters to customers, not the cheapest, but the best perceived value. After all, those companies who own those big brand products are the ones who are spending big money advertising and driving consumers to your pharmacy. Don't try and beat the supermarkets at their own game!

An afternoon around Freo

Another do nothing achieve nothing day :) Woke up late, then we have a very "healthy breaky" at Hungry Jack (Burger King) before going to Ikea because Jin wanted to look at some wall shelf unit. After lunch, I grabbed my Canon and we went down to Freo for an afternoon stroll around the market. Morning started out very cloudy but afternoon has turned up to be a rather pleasant day, it will be a sin to stay at home I think :)

I took some sunset photos at the Coogee Beach Holiday Park and I have posted a couple at Flickr. I have never been to this part of the beach in Freo before, there is a jetty on the beach as well but it is no way as long as the one in Woodman Point. So I guess if you are looking for a fishing spot, just drive down another 10km or so to Woodman Point.

The following 2 photos were taken earlier this morning...just mucking around with my lighting.

Here is a photo of some dried flowers which we bought from a craft show in Guildford.

Vivitar DF200

For most people, Vivitar is probably recognised as a manufacturer of cheapo point and shoot cameras sold on supermarket shelves. Well, rather contrary to that, it is a fairly well-known manufacturer of photographic and optical equipments based in California.

The company is probably better known for their high quality no-frills flash guns that are quite popular among photograhers. Last week I purchase a Vivitar DF200 digital slave flash gun from ebay. I reckon I got a good deal, the whole thing only cost me a mere $61 and it came with a mini tripod as well as an adaptor for attachment onto normal camera tripod. As you can see in the photo, the Vivitar is significantly bigger than my Canon speedlite.

The flash from this Vivitar is extremely powerful and will definitely help me in various photographic applications. Now I just need to get a difuser to fit on... back to ebay soon :) The flash is wireless and it works by detecting flash from another source and fires its flash at the same time. The only downside to that technology is that the flash may get confused if they are others using flash nearby. Below is a result of an earlier experiment with the flash in a 90 degree arrangement with my Canon speedlite. Despite a slight over-exposure, overall the result was quite satisfactory I think :)

Summary of the week :)

I haven't been updating my blog as often as I would like...reason...just being lazy and spending the bulk of my free time practising photoshop and photography. Last weekend we discovered a great picnic area next to the Swan River near Swan valley, less than 20 mins drive from the city.

This place is very tranquil and relaxing, definitely a stark contrast from those regular weekend "hang out" areas such as South Perth or Kings Park which are frequented by parents and their screaming children. It is situated just off the second bridge alone Swan Valley drive from Great Eastern Hwy. After the picnic, we went to our favourite winery, the Fish Tail and got ourselves a dozen of Rose :)

Last Tuesday, we went to watch the much anticipated 5th installment of the popular Harry Potter movies. Well, this time for the first time I couldn't even bother to write a review for the movie. It's just a mixed bag, CG is getting a whole lot better with great eye candy but apart from that, the story is very weak. I nearly fall asleep during the first half of the movie! The biggest let down is the ending...what a disappointment! .....so what was all the hype?! But don't let me stop you from going to that movie...I am no fan of Harry anyway!

During the past few days, I have been taking many photos again. Most of my good posts can be found on my Flickr website.