The Boys are Back

So, their exams were over and the boys are now back to the apartment and were now in front of the PS4. Earlier, they were with their friends at the cinema watching Big Hero 6. I was attending a workshop this weekend, and was not able to join along. The movie was awesome according to the boys.

The room were in a mess now, not half an hour after they arrived. Prying them away from the console to hit the shower was a challenge. And I was not sure what time they would be sleeping tonight. Unfortunately I have a long day tomorrow. I would be starting my ward rounds early before hopping over to Saujana for the second day of the workshop. Hopefully I would be able to take them out for dinner after that.

The Zoom Samples

As highlighted by my previous entry, the main thing which struck me with the new 10-24mm Fujinon zoom was how much contrast generated by the glass. It was more than I could handle.

Add to that the tone generated by the deep colour, it could certainly exaggerate dull palate. Luckily during the day that I tested it, the sun was out - albeit a harsh one.

Can't wait to try the lens for architectural shot and really test the perspectives. So far, I couldn't detect any barreling or vignetting. Stopped down to f5.6 certainly improved the sharpness aplenty.

HomeDec 2014

Almost every weekend, there would be an exhibition or two in town. Last weekend, it was the second weekend of the Home Decoration Expo at KL Convention Centre. Yes, it was a second weekend, with different exhibits and theme over the couple of weekend.

The evening we went was more on home appliances and decorations - renovations being the theme in the previous weekend. Anita had a clear idea what we wanted to look for.

She wanted mattress for the main bedroom, a small bed for Irfan, preferably one convertible to a sofa. She also was looking for a dryer - the one now recently broke down - and an outdoor weatherproof sofa for the balcony.

The Serta mattress must come with the sheep, otherwise I would not be buying!Far too many sofa on showNot really sure how useful this would be ...Juicery ....The expo was huge. We only managed to cover less than half of the vendors. And we got to have a look at what we planned and much more.

We ended up with a couple of purchases and plenty of contacts. Anita bought a wall porcelain painting and an automatic self-opening garbage bin for the kitchen. Fun stuff.

The painting would be sent to the apartment next week, and I ended up hauling the bin home.

This one was quite interesting ...And the bin was ours ...Macam Baagus!Not really a fan of the fans ...This one was rather nice ...I also had a look at a portable HEPA filter for under RM 2K. Very reasonable I thought, especially with a prolonged warranty and cheap consumables. Might have a closer look at the vendor's showroom in the future. Could do with those for the lounge and Idlan's bedroom.

It was a fruitful outing on the whole and certainly one of the better expo I had been to. Best to come prepared for a long walk. We came well in the late afternoon and before long Anita was already starving. I had also had a long day at the office prior.

Revision Weekend

No outing this weekend since the boys were in the middle of their end-of-year exams. So, the home situation was rather tense, and my job was to ferry the food in.

Irfan wanted some Chinese and Idlan wanted some beef. Obliged. And still they were late to go to sleep last night. Getting them up for school this morning proved to be a challenge.

Will be on call today, so I won't be able to help out tonight. Best of luck boys ...

The New Zoom

I have a few zooms for my Canon DSLR. They were good, but when it comes to image quality, you just couldn't beat a prime. Another advantage of prime was the fact that you could get a fast wide aperture.

My favorite lens for the EOS 7D was the 50mm f1.4. But this being an APS-C camera, you would get an 80mm perspective with this lens. That's good if you plan to do portrait. But a pain to get architecture snaps. The 35mm f1.4 for Canon was just too expensive and heavy. But lately, Sigma and other third-party lens maker had come up with some gem of lenses.

But still, fast prime lens could still be bulky and limiting.

Then I discovered the X100. A small compact but with a 35mm f2.0 lens. I fell in love with Fuji ever since. I just love the palate of the jpg coming off the lens. After all, they had been the premier maker of film negatives before the digital age. They would know a thing or two about colour rendering I was sure.

Then the X-Pro 1 was released. Now I have also added on the X-T1. But the main attraction for me as far as the Fuji lineup was concerned was the selection of lens. More specifically the primes.

Despite their spec, they were highly portable. Now, I have 4 primes in the line-up. I have the 35mm f1.4 to start with - equivalent to 50mm in full frame term - then I added on the 18mm f2.0 which cover my favorite focal length, the magic 28mm. Shane Shame that the lens wasn't the sharpest.

Next came the much anticipated 23mm f1.4 - a 35mm equivalent.

Right around the release of this lens, I heard the announcement of more lenses on the pipeline. 4 lens caught my fancy. Fuji would be releasing a fast portrait lens, the 56mm f1.2, a wide angle zoom the 10-24mm f4 with OIS, the standard zoom 16-55mm f2.8 and the tele-zoom 50-140mm f2.8. The last two only coming out later this year or early 2015.

I bought the 56mm a couple of months ago and that was permanently attached to the X-T1 lately to compliment the GR which covered the 28mm perspective. The 56mm was very sharp even wide open at 1.2 at the risk of making the depth of field too narrow for comfort.

The recent walk in Pudu convinced me that I should explore the wide angle perspective even more. The idea of owning the 10-24mm zoom didn't seem too bad after all. A quick phone call to my usual dealer soon sorted that out. I picked up the lens last week.

I only managed a single outing with the zoom so far. It was at Pavilion in harsh early afternoon sunlight. And the contrast made me jump when in uploaded the snaps onto Aperture. I had to tone down the contrast, and despite being a zoom, the snaps were sharp wide open from edge to edge. The OIS helped with indoor snaps as the amount of light the lens had to gather at wide angle was enormous.

So, going out for photowalk may pose an issue from now on as I wasn't sure which lens to take with me ... It looked like it would be the 10-24 for the next few weeks though ...

More samples from this lens here and here.