When the Super Tree WENT WRONG

This is what happens when my iPad meets the SUPER TREE:

Conclusion:
Sometimes, handshakes aren't that bad for photos:)

A day with Canon S100 @ Malacca

Oh yeah, thanks to my lovely girlfriend who lend to me her Canon S100, I managed to play with this DSLR-ish compact camera during my free timeJ Let’s find out what it is capable of.

Despite of having fixed lens, we all know that this little fellow can give the user full controls of aperture size, shutter speed, ISO, exposure and even manual focus, making it similar to a professional DSLR.

The first thing I noticed was its big aperture (F2.0), Bokehlicious!

Portraits

The first challenge was to do portrait photography with this camera. Oh well, I was alone at the A Famosa and it was kind of awkward to do it with a stranger. So I was a little distracted to take the architecture of A Famosa with this camera:

Finally, I’ve found a good subject for portraits! 

I must say that I’m quite impressed by its high dynamic range! With some optical zoom however, the sky appeared to be over exposed. 

It took me quite some time to get used to its built-in light meter by the way.

Here is another portrait I did inside:

and yes, you’re welcome:) 50 cents gone.

I found a worker sweeping dried leafs on a steep slope that was about 50m away, so I used the maximum optical zoom to frame him down. The image shown was cropped because the 5x optical zoom couldn’t even make him fit into 1/3 of the frame. I realized that image’s sharpness degrades with the maximum zoom. As usual “vintage” effect was used to fake its quality:p

oh, how about “portrait” for golden horses:)?

Macro shots

Being alone in the public, I guess it would be too hard for me to do portraits; it’s time for me to move on to macro shots. 

I used its predefined macro mode to make these shots:

For this one, I got this effect by accident when I was adjusting its color temperature:p

tiny leafs

I would say that this camera is really good for macro shots! By using the biggest aperture and bringing the camera close to the subject, you will get interesting shots from the tiny world.

However, the macro mode didn’t work well when I need to photograph a subject that was even smaller. I tried to photograph ants but most of the time its auto-focus in macro mode didn’t work as desired. Hence, I had to use manual focus mode, making sure that the subject is properly focused.

Unfortunately, ants are still too small to be handled by this camera. The photo has to be cropped quite a bit to direct viewer’s attention to the ants. The process of getting it focused was such a pain because of the use of F2.0. A small movement of the ants would blur them out easily. This is the best shot I got so far, I wish it could be better:(

Landscapes

Alright, it’s time for some landscape photography.

I’m not too sure what kind of setting I should use for these high contrast sceneries, so I used “HDR mode” to capture them. I was able to see the details on the sky and on the ground. Ironically, I made the entire picture underexposed in order to make the color of the sky to be more obvious. As a result, we could only see silhouettes, which is an interesting effect as well. 

the pixel dusk:p?

One disadvantage of doing this is that the noise level will be more obvious in the picture.

More shots taken on the same day:

tilt shift!

Playing with Lights

It's time to play with some lights, artificially

Finally, I tried something different at home, which is light painting. This camera can handle light painting with its slowest shutter speed of 15 seconds, which is enough to draw something with a weak light source:)

 Here's what I get:

Shutter Speed: Freezing the Moments!

Freeze!

The shutter speed of the DSLR plays a major role to freeze fast motions. Sometimes things happened so quickly that our human brain failed to perceive its beauty.

For fast motions such as water splashes(outdoor), any shutter speed above 1/1000 should be able to freeze the water. Shutter speed of 1/8000 was used in Aperture Priority mode for the picture above because I wanted to get a good focus of the girl with big aperture.

It is always interesting to photograph water splash because it can create some interesting patterns:)

The choice of shutter speed varies according to the speed of the motion too. For the photo above, I used only 1/400 and yet there isn't much motion blur except for their legs:p

Well, it doesn't mean that you must freeze fast motions all the time. Sometimes some motion blur will increase the impact visually as well. 

And of course, don't forget to do jump shots at the beach:)

Night Photography in Singapore

Night photography! We meet again! After I learned some lessons from the night photography in Malacca, I'm giving myself another chance to try it out again:)

 Alright, this time with lower ISO, which is around 400, I was able to avoid getting noise at the darker region of the photo. The original photo was way too colorful and none of the color stood out, so I've decided to made it black and white:)

 For the above picture, I attempted to use the tilt shift effect so that the trees will look miniaturized.

Yes, I've made it black and white again for the same reason:)

How about some vintage effect instead of black and white? Let me know what you think about it:)

Garden's by the Bay! It's very different from the usual night photography here because the super tree itself is bright. Without proper exposure control, the top region of the super tree would appear to be over exposed. Since its reflection on the water were weaker compared to its actual brightness, a filter was used to lower  down the brightness of the actual super tree. 

Alright, I know what you're thinking, the super tree was overexposed right? Yes you are right, and that's just how difficult to find the right balance between all the settings. Furthermore, I did not bring a timer to perform bulb mode again(sigh). So all the shots taken were below 30 seconds of shutter speed:( 

Voila! a closer shot of the super tree! Thanks to the 16-35mm wide angle lens that I brought along, I was able to capture it when I was directly under the super tree!

The lesson: Please bring along a timer to try out bulb mode next time:p