Lumix GF3

While I was at Mid Valley the other day, I stopped over at Key Color, the place where I got my LX3 and 7D previously. I was actually inquiring about the Fuji X100, but they did not have any in stock.

Looking around for what was hot in the market, my eyes landed on the rather slimmed down Lumix GF3. That thing was tiny. Seriously tiny. Coupled with the stock zoom lens it came with, it really felt awkward and front heavy. But the small body complimented the 14mm pancake lens very well. The zoom had a built-in image stabiliser, but the pancake lens did not.

The body plus the pancake lens was RM1999, and with the EOS 1100D kit selling at around RM200 less, it would be a serious investment.

I got a few images saved onto my memory card. The ISO went up to 6400. So, here are the sample. Unfortunately I was not let loose with the unit.

1/80 f3.5 ISO4001/60 f3.5 ISO160 flash on1/60 f5.6 ISO800 at full zoom 42mm1/160 f4.0 ISO 3200So what were my first impressions? The unit is tiny, and being metallic, rather slippery as there were no rubberised grip surface. The autofocus were damn fast, either by using the shutter button, or tapping on the LCD screen. Grip is awkward with the zoom lens attached. Nice red colour - Puan Anita would definite loved that. The high ISO captures showed unbelievable lack of noice - definitely better than my old EOS 400D.

With an M-mount four-thirds lens converter, I can see potential in putting of those Leica M lens on these baby! LOL! 5 minutes was not enough to just the the product I was afraid, but I can see it as a potential street photography device with the pancake lens attached on it. Let's wait for the X100 first before I can make a judgement on what I should get to replace my trusty old LX3.

Project for The Week

It looks like I may have just get on with some project I have been scratching my head on. I have always wanted to dabble on a bit of still life at home, using either natural light or a simple strobe setup. While I was out earlier, I picked up a couple a few A1 papers as background, dust off a couple of my camera tripods and went to work.

After the rig was set, I picked up some of my boys colorful toys, my pen and other gadgets, and started photographing them. May be I need to work a bit more on the lights and subject matter as the actual photographs seemed to come out OK from the camera. The editing part appeared to be more time-consuming than I realised, but I got somewhere in the end.

The background being folded backI may need to invest on another light source but for time being, this would do. Better make sure that my boys were occupied as they love to "help".

The Evening Before

The excitement was clearly palpable when I arrived at Padang Astaka. The place was slowly transforming into a carnival site, with props being put up and bands doing their sounchecks. All the tents appeared to be in place, with most of the wiring and electricals in place. The damp weather clearly has not dampen the spirit off the crews. Bumped into a few people I have known from before also involved at some capacity or the other. Many friendly faces, with some of them looking at puzzled, staring at my UM tag around my neck. 

We did some on site reccy and finalising what to put up first thing tomorrow morning. Even though it was about to drizzle, the weather was still kinda muggy, reminding to take plenty of fluids tomorrow. A quick look at the weather forecast - showers, with chance of thunderstorm, but with clear, sunny intervals. I think it would be pouring first thing in the morning, but things would clear up by lunchtime. Looking forward to the party then

Bunkface doing their soundcheck

The crew pass in my bag, most of the technical staff as far as twitter and facebook were concerned for the competitions tomorrow had been sorted out. The problem I had was the limited bandwidth I was getting on my iPhone through Celcom. My Galaxy S2 seemed to be nippier on DiGi. It looked like we would have to bring along the P1 terminals and my wiggy modem just to be on the safe side, even thoughTM promised blanket Unifi coverage. Not very optimistic if the speed would hold if everybody were to log onto the network at the same time.

Just sorting out things to take to the site firs thing tomorrow morning. I would just be bringing my Mac Air alone, not the MacBook Pro as there would be a bit of a walk from the carpark to the tent, and I don’t want to be worried about leaving the laptop. I can always carry the MacAir with me everywhere I go. So, looking forward for tomorrow!

KLickr Photo Hunt for Urbanscapes

COMPETITION UPLOAD PERIOD FOR ALL FOUR HUNTS ARE EXTENDED TO 6PM SUNDAY! PLEASE UPLOAD YOUR MASTERPIECES VIA TWITTER USING #klickr TO ENTER THE COMPETITION.

KLickr. Flickr. Urbanscapes. Competition. You do the math. We have been brewing the four words at the beginning. We wanted a competition, with people at Urbanscapes taking pictures, And we what it to be about accessibility, not who was carrying the most expensive gear. It was about being at the right moment at the right time. So we came up with the KLickr Photo Hunts!

It will be a series of four hunts during the day. The hunters - that you, the Urbanscapes dwellers armed preferably with your mobile phones - would be given a theme, and a set period of time to take photos and upload them via twitter with a hashtag #klickr. You can use any of the photo sharing fascilities - twitpic, lockerz, owly, posterous, even instagram. Through a sophisticated network of programming and raw computer power - re my iPhone and my MacBook Air - the tagged photos would then be transferred onto our Facebook Competition Page where all those expressions of arts and beauty would be showcased.

Prior to Urbanscapes, KLickr had run a couple of other competitions and the winners of these competitions will come on board as guest judges for the Hunts. We would then deliberate on the winners - and as one of the KLickr judges would be a lawyer, don't even try to street demo us into picking your pics. The winners would get vouchers and A YEAR SUBSCRIPTION TO FLICKR PRO.

These are the themes and the period the photos should be uploaded via twitter - balloons from 1330 to 1500 hrs, colourful dresses from 1600 to 1700 hrs, music from 1800 to 1900 and the main one, lights from 2000 hrs on the Saturday and the photo can be uploaded for the competition up to 1800 hrs the next day, Sunday 17th July.

Theme 1 - balloonsTheme 2 - flowery dressesTheme 3 - musicTheme 4 - lights - pic courtesy of ShazPlease click on the links above or the photos to go straight to the Facebook Page of the competition. Happy Hunting!

HarisPhotoBlog.com Migration

With the recent fanfare over the announcement of iCloud and iOS 5, the rumors finally came through. The era MobileMe as we knew it was coming to an end, and it was a long time coming. Being a subscriber of MobileMe since 2004 during it's .mac days - haven't I told you that I'm a Mac fanboy? - the webmail service and other utilities it offered - iDisc especially was pretty cumbersome. And worst of all was iWeb. It was a closed platform and it was only possible to update the site from a single computer! Even if you were to used another Mac and log into the system, you would not be able to enter iWeb. It was a closed - and doomed - platform.

My previous attempt at starting a blog using the iWeb platform were abandoned not once, twice, but three times. I just couldn't cope with the interface. I can't customise the blog, nor can I update it on the fly. That really defeated the purpose of it being a mobile platform. I finally got my act together to start this blog and I have been active since its inception in March 2009 - this was the first entry. I have since had close to 800 blog entries, and the main reason for its longevity if you could call it that was the brilliant web hosting service from SquareSpace. I couldn't speak highly enough of the platform. I can update the blog directly of any web browser, iPhone, iPad, or just through a plain old email.

The longest surviving site I maintained on an iWeb platform was harisphotoblog.com. It was mainly a flash portal from my SmugMug storage. It just needed maintaining every few weeks or so, but even then, I felt the pain every time an update was needed. The upload failure rate was also rather high, and options were limited. I was not able to inject too much code into the system at all.

From next June, iWeb would cease to exist. I therefore decided to bail out, and opened another SquareSpace site. The difference was spectacular. I was able to post the photos and slideshows at HD size. The site was more customisable and the analytics were more thorough. Have a look at the site. You might find it a hard squeeze if you were browsing in a laptop or a mobile device ........