Part 7 Capital Cafe

Some of the group members stopped at Starbucks at Maju Junction. We on the other hand decided to take a slightly more traditional lunch. We stopped at Capital Cafe or Kedai Makan Capital, right opposite Maju Junction.

It came highly recommended by one of my photographer friend, who for the past seven years had turned vegetarian. And he could still remember the taste of the food there.

Capital Cafe had a long and storied past. It had been around since before Merdeka and the building certainly showed its age. The top floor used to be a motel, but that had long been closed. The owner and workers stayed there now.

Not only that the food there as tasty, the restaurant was also rather unique. There were three main tenants at the front entrance. To the left, there was nasi padang, the middle was pasembor and the right was the magical Uncle with his magical wok who cooked a mean mee hailam.

We arrived there just after noon, and we already had to wait for a table. And according to my friend, the frenzy won't stop until 4 pm.

I ordered rojak pasembor. Not the main highlight on the menu I must say. I should have gone for the mee hailam which my friend had. But the company was good, and we chatted away for at least 45 minutes, when the urge to get on for more photograph returned. Onwards!

More about the walk here.

Walks of Yesteryears

I thought it would be neat to dial back the years and put the links of the previous Scott Kelby walks I participated in in the past few years. So, here goes ....

It all started for me back in 2009.

I helped organise the 2010 walks, and I was actually busy doing the reccing but did not enjoy the actual day as it was more of making sure that things went according to plan. Oh well! The links are here and here. I also had a slideshow of the snaps here.

I enjoyed the 2011 walk more, and I created a link for the walk.

Looking forward to plenty of snaps tomorrow .....

The links on the 2013 walk here.

Photowalk Tomorrow

Setting off during the 2009 walkSo, if things fell into place, we would be embarking on another chapter of the Scott Kelby Worldwide Photowalk tomorrow morning. The first one I joined was on the second chapter in 2009. A great day out it was, and we explored the wet market of Chow Kit that fine morning.

I helped organised the walk in 2010, and the route I picked was around Central Market towards the old KL KTM Station. 2011 was around Masjid Jamek. Ripi helped organised that, and he will be doing the same again tomorrow, but this time we would be back to Chow Kit.

Ripi helped organise the walk in the last couple of years, and he is doing the honours again tomorrowA common theme during all the walks. Food. And plenty of them!This was snapped at the beginning of the 2010 walk which I helped organiseWeather does play a big role. And I hope tomorrow would be a nice one ....I couldn't join last year's walk due to work. It was around Pavilion, but it was interrupted by heavy rain. Praying for good weather tomorrow.

I have cancelled the morning clinic, and would be starting my ward round very early. We were talking around 7 am. I would then hopefully be able to join the walk from the start by 9 am. Parking would be a challenge and I might end up having to park at Pavilion and take the Monorail across town, which in itself was a journey. Better set off extra early then …..

Entries on the 2013 walk here.

iPhone 5S snaps slideshow

The snaps was taken on the weekend that I got hold of the phone. I was still familiarising myself with the quirks that came with the iPhone and the snaps may not reflect the true capability of the cameraphone. Anyhow, I found the output satisfactory enough to be shared.

Comparison 5

iPhone 5S - 1/1642 f2.2 ISO32HTC One - 1/6410s f2.0 ISO125I was really surprised to see how differently these two snaps came out. Both snaps were ported into my laptop as jpg staright off the photostream without any on the phone manipulation. The snaps were then processed into Aperture, then exported out after the file name and metadata was changed, and borders were added. No change to the levels or exposure was done.

The HTC One actually exposed the for the highlights and the snap was again tainted with a rather harsh overall tone. The iPhone on the other hand produced a more pleasing snap, with some preservation of the shadows. Again not perfect, but in terms of overall tone and palatte, I personally prefered the iPhone.

That being said, I think there was a pattern emerging here. I found that the iPhone coped better in the bright sunlight and outdoors snap, but struggled with underexposure indoors. It rendered skin tone better, but getting the right exposure may need some tweaking.

The HTC One on the other made for an excellent "on the fly" snapper. Street photography came out better on the HTC as there wasn't any shutter lag during snapping. The camera was also chunkier to hold and easier to focus as the screen was a touch bigger.

On a personal level, the jury was still out between these two cameraphones. They were both capable, but at the end of the day, what you can do with the snaps may dictate your preferance. Obviously, the Android took advanatge of its "open source" tag and sharing snaps was more straight forward on the HTC, but it didn't have a good post-processing app such as Camera+ to help with the final output. Snapseed was OK, but the fact that I couldn't even get a proper border out of it frustrated me.

So, the choice is yours, and I would be more than happy to continue to carry these two phones in my pockets.