Morning Walk Part 1

It was too early for the boys, and Anita was still asleep. A quick peek out the window and as predicted by the weatherman, the morning would be overcast. No chance of setting up the GoPro for the sunrise capture.

So, I bide my time and once the morning broke, I took my camera gear out and headed towards Lebuh Armenian. Nice breeze, although a blue sky would have been great. Due to the cloud cover, I decided to go telephoto. I attached the 56mm on the X-T1, switched on my GPS and started walking.

I walked from the hotel towards Penang Road via Lebuh Leith, reaching the intersection with Lebuh Chulia. Walked further down taking a left along Lebuh Kimberley, later turning north at Lebuh Carnavon to join Armenian Street.

There was plenty to concentrate on on this walk. With the lens, I mainly did close-up of the windows and building facade. Colourful, gorgeous architecture, a mix of the later 19th Century Chinese influence and a later Art Deco styling. Eclectic mix to be quite honest, wishing that I was better versed in the arts.

It was still early in the day and being Saturday, there was hardly many cars. Plenty of tourists though with their cameras on tow. Some of them already settled for breakfast at the cafe alongside the streets, outnumbering the locals.

At the end of Armenian Street I took a left turn up Lebuh Pantai and another left at Lebuh Ah Quee. Plenty more subjects and mural here.

More stories from this trip here.

Smitten

I managed to take the GR for a quick spin after work yesterday. Mind you I was on call. So, it was a quick escape while having dinner essentially.

Even on a 15 minutes spin, I could already see the potential. After my evening round, I went back to the apartment and downloaded the snaps onto my deskstop. I couldn't remember how many times I shook my head looking at the quality of the photos coming off the sensor.

There were a few observations though.

1) The camera tended to under expose. I disliked up the compensation by a third of a stop to get better exposure.

2) The on camera crop worked a treat. I programmed one of the function buttons to cycle through the standard 28mm, 35mm and 47mm zoom equivalent. A clever idea by Ricoh to build that feature in.

3) The jpeg capture was almost as good as the RAW provided that the underexposure was not too severe and could be corrected in post.

4) The black and white "filter" on camera was quite useful. I changed the setting to include some vignetting for better effect. It looked good.

On the whole, I still personally felt that snaps coming from my Fuji bodies were more pleasing colour wise. They also tended to get the white balance and skin tone more natural. The Ricoh may been some tweaking.

I was sure that there would be more snaps from this little gem in the coming fee days. Might take a couple of hours tomorrow afternoon to do a proper walk around Bukit Bintang may be.

KLPF 2014 Discoveries

The main part of the festival for me personally was the personal work exhibits scattered around the hall. I could always go to the shops to look at cameras, but for exhibits, it was not often I could see this many. There were so many talented photographers around, both in terms of idea and execution.

One thing which stuck on my mind was the quality of the printing. Some of them were pretty awesome but the size of the printouts were too small to be enjoyed. Maybe it was the cost. I understood from one of my friends who had his work shown, all his printing was sponsored by Fuji, but the size of the printed work would never make a gallery show. As if Fuji was not putting in the funding whole-heartedly. I would happily paid to see those work - the exhibition was free.

Presentation to listen to ....... and photos to see ...Subjects to photographAnother thing I noticed was a lack of sitting area. A cafe or two would have been nice. I don't think it was against the exhibition hall regulations since on the previous occasions I went there, there were cafe and stalls strewn across the area. After walking around for a couple of hours, I wouldn't mind having a sit down reading the handouts the stalls passed as I walked by.

On a more positive note, the amount of area dedicated for the exhibits should be lauded. The number of talks and topics covered were also pretty decent. I sat to listen to one of the speakers. Clearly he was enjoying his time on stage, taking us through his work. It was more a talk on motivation and inspiration than just technique.

Panasonic had their own stage - with great production value I must add - next to their booth. I wouldn't mind sitting through a talk about studio lighting, but unfortunately my timing was off.

One thing caught my eye was a portable flying camera system, controlled via remote. The camera would be mounted on a hovering craft, able to travel about 200 meters at a decent height. Was not exactly stealthy, but an interesting innovation ... It was selling for around RM4000.

Seen at Thai tourism boothFor the "Peeping Tom" in usNext year's date had been bookedDuring the walk, I bumped into old friends and we talked about how there festival was to them this time. Most agree that the gallery was good, but the vendors should have made more effort to really offer us something extra. Both in terms of deals and discovery of their new hardware. As it was, I felt like it was merely a glorified shop front. Minus any special offers ....

Still I would definitely be coming again to visit next year's chapter. I felt that it was my duty to keep shows like this going. The quality could have definitely be better and hopefully we would start to see exclusive products which were hard to find in the shops. Well, at least that was my wish .....

Here are my entries for the event in 2011 and 2012.

A Thing of Beauty

I called my usual camera store to inquire if they have a used Ricoh GR in store after having a look at it at KLPF. I can see it being my designated pocket camera. I was lucky.

They just had a four-month old unit just in from last weekend and it was going for half the original price. Sounds fishy. But I must have a look.

After work, I stopped by the shop on my way home and had a closer look. I was smitten. It came with all the original parts and documentation. Plus it still held Ricoh manufacturer warranty for another 8 months. Shutter count acceptable. A bit of smudge here and there but no big deal. It was an aluminum body after all.

I paid extra for an external charger and a memory card. It still had the original pouch, not that I would be using that. Took it round the block for some snaps. My mind was made up.

I went home happy with the GR in hand. Would need to familiarise with the unit before I could really get the best of it. Maybe a photo walk or two. It was light and small enough to slip into my trouser pocket, although a bit bigger than the Sony RX100 III.

I took a series of snap at the apartment during lunch time and processed the jpeg. I still need to get the colour tone to my liking but certainly it had potential. More experimentation then.

Litely Impressive

I read on the net about a new photography app on the iOS called Litely. Similar to VSCO to be honest, a filter to enhance your photo, to make them less digital, embracing that hipster feel, but not to the extend of lomographic fidelity which oftentimes may appear fake.

The filter were more subtle. In fact, it was kore like using different film emulation from the pre-digital days. The enhancement were impressive and the fact that there weren't that many dials to mess around with, using it was more straight forward.

This was snapped in very low light .... managed to keep the noise down pretty wellThere were a few problems though as the GPS location was not embedded into the JPEG files, necessitating some post-uploading changes on Flickr if you're into those kind of stuff - which I do.

I use the app to snap, do the enhancement and exported the JPEG files staring into camera+ app for cropping and addition of border. I then used Flickit Pro to upload to Flickr. Tedious but it appeared to be sound.

Quite literally in complete darknessCertainly the results appeared better compared to doing filtration on the computer as part of post-production when it came to effect. I ended up paying for the in-app enhancements for extra filters. The main app - downloaded for free only contain less than 10 filters. You could then purchase three batches of a dozen filter at around 2 USD to complete the collection. Trust me, they were worth it!

Would definitely be using the app in the coming weeks. GPS embedding would be a welcomed change. You can read more review on the app here.