The Meeting Point

I have been to Pudu Plaza a few times but not really familiar with the area. I was always intimidated driving to the area since traffic was usually bad, and there were too many cars parked on the side of the street. Manoeuvring could be a challenge. Most of the time, I parked inside the complex, but never ventured around on foot.

For the photowalk, I parked at the plaza, and walked across the street to get to the meeting point, Ali Food Corner. I was greeted by the usual faces, friends I get to meet once a year during the photowalk. Happy faces.

Said hi to everybody, took my seat and ordered my breakfast. Plenty of new faces. The number of walker exceeded 50 which was great.

The meeting proper then started with Ripi - the walk leader for the past 3 years - gave us a briefing on what to see and some pointers, followed by the customary group photo. Best to do it first thing as before long, everybody would be walking at their own pace and get spread out. Walkers would reach the end point at their own time and some may not meet again.

Group photo done. Time to move ....

Early Start

Trying to avoid the traffic, I left Gombak early as usual. I ended up sitting at Doctor's lounge well before 8 am, after seeing my couple of patients in the ward. My clinic this morning would be at Park City, plus I have another patient coming to Day Care.

So, I ended up chatting at the lounge while waiting for the restaurant to open to have a quick breakfast before the drive across town.

Weather also looked a bit dull. Might as well just chill at the lounge then. Happy working!

Sunday Afternoon

We arrived back to Gombak to be greeted with the news that the water supply had been cut. Not much notice were given out as the cut was due to some contamination issue at the treatment plant. Some diesel seeped through rendering the water unsafe for use. What a bummer!

We contemplated repacking and head back to apartment but that would be too much of a hassle.

After sorting out the children's homework and settled them down, Anita and I went out. Bukit Bintang today as Anita wanted to shop for some dress there. That gave me the chance to venture into Low Yat. The mission that afternoon was to look for a Bluetooth earset for my phone.

Tough luck. Not many good models available. Most of them were made by Jabra and I have already got an old unit I could still use. Nothing much on show that day. Even iPhone 6 ran out of stock .... a slow weekend for them I guessed.

We parked the car at Pavilion and after Anita was done with her shopping, we were caught in heavy rain to get back to the car. We ended up stopping for some coffee at Lot 10 instead.

After half an hour or so, we decided to walk through the rain, but on second thought, bought an umbrella from one of the street peddler there - for RM10! But it did its job. We got to the car and started driving home before getting drench. The rain that afternoon was torrential, with flash flooding in a few places in KL. We got home just in time ....

Doing the Post

After the walk yesterday, we all spent the night at the apartment. Partly for the boys to play with their PS4 and Anita to do some cleaning. But for me, it was all about the post-production work and posting of the photos I took during the Scott Kelby Photowalk - #WWPW2014# - yesterday. All together, between the GR and X-T1, I got almost 400 snaps, but it boiled down to around 255 post-sorting out and editing.

They were all grouped into five segments, and were already up on Flickr, Facebook and SmugMug for my record. I would be blogging about it after I get some breather.

Exiting ApertureUploading onto SmugMugThe boys were up past midnight playing their console, while I woke up early - always a morning person - to finish things out, do the uploading and then off for my morning ward rounds.

Next would be lunch before returning to Gombak. I might pop out to Low Yat in the afternoon since I need to get a new Bluetooth handsfree unit for my phone. The last one gave up on me last year and never got around to be replaced.

More blogging later then ....

Low Light Express

I must say I was expecting way thick from the iPhone 6 camera. The day I got my 6 Plus I took it to Pavilion to do some testing. Not in daylight but right after sunset. I really wanted to know how good it was.

There were plenty of people and more than enough subject keep me going. The lantern show was still on, and mixed with the lights at the fountain, it was quite a spectacle.

I got snapping straight away, alternating between the iPhone and the GR. The results? It was better than I expected. And the main reason was the optical image stabiliser. The shots looked crisp and the noise level was more than just acceptable. Not as good as the GR, but certainly no slouch.

Would it replace the GR in my pocket? Unlikely. Was it any better than the 5S. I wager to say that, it was not as big a jump between the 4 and the 4S. The main reason why the shots were successful was the image stabilisation system. You'd never be able to get the same shot on the 5S due the low shutter speed.

The image on the 6 Plus also appeared less contrasty as compared to the 5S. It was certainly easily rectified with apps such as Camera+. Otherwise the camera retained the 8MP sensor size, but I was sure much of the update happened under the hood at the software level.

Shooting speed was reasonable although the bigger size of the phone felt cluncky in my hands. If felt too big for me to position the shots freely, unlike the older iPhone or even my GR.

All in all, the iPhone 6 Plus still carried the reasonably good camera and with the addition of some software magic, the output still was among the best compared to other phones. I felt it better than the Oppo. From what I heard, the Lumia was still the King, and this latest Apple offering did little to knock the Windows phone off its perch.