Me and Specks

Me and Specks, originally uploaded by Haris Abdul Rahman.

Spent the whole day yesterday sorting things out for the audit in the afternoon. The auditors came and went, and they are pretty pleased with things, which is great. I am sure those of you who had to endure an audit before would testify that it can be an ordeal. This particular one was for an anticoagulant study I have been conducting for the past couple of years. The auditors were from France, Korea and Taiwan. The lady from Taiwan was particularly menacing, but her boss, the Parisian guy was pretty steady and complementary. It may be just a French thing I think.

Lanyau and the othersPavillion in the evening!Anyhow, in the evening after work, I had dinner with Specks, one of my old buddy from school. He is now working for a Pharmaceutical company in London and is just back for a couple of weeks. He brought with him a couple of friends, an actor from Bristol and his girlfriend, a Medical Microbiologist from Cardiff. We had dinner at Madam Kwan in Pavillion, and we were graced by the presence of Madam Kwan herself! They had some Char Koey Teow, and so did I. Another old Terendakian also came with us, Lanyau. They are off to Cherating tomorrow morning having just got back from a weekend in Langkawi. I can see that they were all sporting a tan!

Yes! I Got Myself the LX3

After a good few month eyeing this camera and I finally got it today. First impression, it is bulkier than I thought, but the weight felt right in the hand. Took a few pics on the way back home, via Pavilion since I went to the bank there. And these are the pics.

The interface were intuitive, menu were pretty straight-forward. There is a button to indicate record and playback, and the rest is as expected. What is interesting is the Ai mode which automatically predicts the theme that you are likely to need - eg: night mode, slow sync flash, sports with higher shutter speed. It will also control the ISO sensitivity. Basically it is a 'dummy' mode which is quite smart.

I used the P mode since it allows me to capture in RAW format. Coming back home, I noticed that my CS4 cannot read the file. Looking through the net, it is time to update my RAW conversion file. Then walla!

The conversion worked a treat. The pictures were sharp and the colour was just nice. The RAW conversion looks much better compared to the jpeg file the camera generates should you wish the camera to do so. Definitely worth going RAW in this one for the time being. Maybe there is a way to change the settings on the camera to allow a better jpeg picture generation without needing to go through the trouble of converting the RAW file.

I shall spend some more time during the weekend getting a feel of the camera. Definitely will need to try the video mode since it can generate HD quality clips. So watch this space. In the meantime, time to read the forums.