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November 4, 2007

RF first timer

Came back from Tokyo with me first serious camera. Serious here means a minimalist rangefinder, slightly more than minimalist since strictly speaking it has a built in metering. I’m talking about the Leica M6 here, and I guess with the only RF lens I will ever probably need… A Summicron 35mm ASPH.
First thing first. And the first roll in today is an Ilford FP4+ since the sunlight is out in full today in Shanghai.

After a couple of shots, its not that easy to remember that what you see through the viewfinder is not what the film will capture. You have to remember to take off the lens cap before taking the photo. Focusing with triangulation is not something that is second nature. Although possible, I’m still not capturing the moment, still taking as though I am using an SLR. It’s a problem since my style has always been candid street, and with SLRs i need to lift the camera, focus quickly with my eye (no autofocus) and snap. With a rangefinder, when you look through the finder, everything looks sharp so my brain would be trying to compute this apparent phenomenon. I guess it will take practice to get used to it.

October 27, 2007November 24, 2018

Hong Kong in Pictures

Another trip back to Shanghai from Taipei via Hong Kong today. On the map, it looks like it would have taken not more than one and a half hours direct, but we had to transit in Hong Kong instead. Taking half a day. So what I usually do is to stop over in Hong Kong for a day trip eating and window shopping. This time it was strange. I was on the way to Ocean Terminal to look for a shop and hopped on the bus to Hung Hom Bay instead. What was I thinking? Darn GPS didn’t get any signal, and when I did pinpoint my location, I didn’t have enough points on my mapless eTrex Vista to know where I was, but at least I knew which direction to walk. Half an hour later I ended up at the KCR station tired. Hungry, so went for a standard rice with roast pork and steamed chicken. Hmmm… Nice. Photo below is a later snack at 5pm with a bowl of wontan noodle… Can never visit Hong Kong without having one.

After that lunch, there was no time to waste. Jumped into a HK Taxi at the KCR after having to go through a couple of propaganda from the Falun Dafa guys, hanging posters all over the taxi queue. It was time to go to Mongkok, time to look for some outdoor equipment (was in the market for Pacsafe’s security netting for backpacks) and Supreme Co for some 5.11 items again. Did find my netting, but nothing else. Almost walked away with a new Gore Tex jacket but I think I can survive in the cold and wet well enough with my current jacket. So it was a No Go.

The tip of Tsim Tsa Tsui was next. Had to stop over at my favourite Tin Cheung Camera shop at Carnavon St, accessible a short walk away from exit A from TTT MTR station. Had to stop over to look at some used Leica cameras. The prices there are too high to buy, and I guess I realised why. When I was there the shop was full of mainland chinese. There were this two old men looking at new Leica lenses and Billingham bags. As usual, the tactic in China is to complain that everything is expensive and that the shop next door is cheaper. Then they would go on asking for the price of another item and the same reaction. But these guys were definitely one of the ones with money to spare, and they had shopping bags full of luxury goods. Why would a couple of old septuagenarian be holding paper bags from popular handbag brands? However, they did walk away with a Leica D-Lux and a Billingham bag. I enquired the price of an M7, MP, and a 35mm Summicron ASPH and left.

Then it was time for a last noodle before going to Peninsula Hotel to take the K3 bus back to the Airport Express train back to HKIA. On the shuttle bus I came across this strange sight. Essentially, in a construction site, the engineers seemed to have uprooted a tree, placed it on a high platform and continued construction.

October 22, 2007November 24, 2018

More Taipei Night Market

Subject of the current trip is to visit the largest night market in Taipei. And usually what that means is narrow corridors with tons of people squeezed into impossible-to-move spaces. And for that the Shihlin market does not disappoint. I cannot recall if the size of this market is bigger than the Longhua market that I went to during my last visit, but surely this beats any market in terms of impossibility of moving.

The layout is the same as most asian markets. During the day you have normal shops, and when the evening comes, stalls spring up on the road and sidewalks and the customers walk on the road. By now the shops would have been concealed unless you know which and where to go.

Continue reading “More Taipei Night Market”

October 20, 2007

Early Morning Run

Did an early morning run today along the Keelung River in Taipei. Staying in a new hotel on the Neihu side. I cannot do long distances anymore so a typical run is now about 3km at the most. Standard equipment would be my Polar S625X which I cannot run without, mainly for the need to keep a log of my routines. I run about 2-3 times a week and I do keep a record of where I run. The river is surrounded by huge flood control walls, and you have to get up and down 2 storey stairs. It was a cool 25C morning, and the only runners were an expat couple and some mountain bikers. Other than that it was just me and the morning breeze and light sunlight from the east. Nice way to start the day.

October 17, 2007November 24, 2018

Taipei 102

In Taipei this week. The land of the scooters, buzzing like mosquitoes all over the place. Nothing new here, just gloomy weather. No earthquake yet. As usual, on the flight from PVG-HKG someone took my seat again. And again, there’s a lot of people that just refuses to sit down during boarding and prefering to block the aisle when everyone is trying to get to theirs. And again, even on Dragonair and Cathay Pacific, its advisable to do the online check-in so that you avoid the queues. When I got to Pudong Airport, within 15mins I was already at the waiting gate. Ok, the 7am time is partly the reason.

Also heard on a podcast this morning (Google for ‘TWIT’) that frequent travellers pack their bag at the last minute. I do that all the time! At least someone’s validating that this is the most efficient way to pack. If you pack too early, you will always have items that you will need to pack later, and chances are you’ll forget it. I pack usually the night before the flight.

Otherwise, nothing special on this trip to Taipei. My third in 2007, and numerous in a lifetime. Here are some photos during the trip. Most of the time I’m in the office working, otherwise I’m looking for some Taiwanese food on the street. Most of them I can’t find outside of Taiwan at all, so that’s definitely interesting.

And here’s one of the waiting room at the Taipei Main Train Station where most people are, I assume, waiting to get their tickets since the booths are directly in front of them.

As usual, my hard working Ricoh GR Digital at work, sometimes with the 21mm wide angle adaptor, and sometimes without.

October 15, 2007

LFI Magazine

Got my first issue of LFI today. That’s Leica Fotografie International for all you Leica illiterates out there. A relatively thin magazine and sparsely populated with advertisements. It arrived in a cardboard envelope from Germany on standard air snail mail, padded apparently to prevent it being crumpled like salted vegetables (kiam chye: in Hokkien dialect). But whatever the intentions were, my LFI got crumpled anyway.
Will be spending the night reading it, looks like one of those publications where you can go from cover to cover. I might get some past issues from Taipei/Hong Kong over the coming days.

October 13, 2007

Another transit in Singapore

Just finished spending 2 weeks in Kuching. Now back thru Singapore Changi Airport on the way back to Shanghai. Spent the time doing daytrips into jungles, and doing orchid shots around the house. Came back with a lot of gear, tripods, selections of lenses, on-shoe flash, R1C1 flash system and took close to 500 pictures, maybe 600. Will need to go thru them back in Shanghai to sort out the shots. Found my sweetspot on the flower shots. I tend to like to keep the background darker and the flowers with enough lighting (typically -1.7EV but depending on the colour of course). Found that to have that dark background effect, I need to set the camera on center weighted exposure (since most flowers are on the focus point), the camera dialed with -2EV compensation to get the dark background, but not really black, and the SU800 on about -0.3 or 0EV to expose the flowers in brighter light than the background. The 70-180mm Micro lens was ideal for flower shoots. Even brought it with me into the jungle. But in the jungle I had to move swift, so it was D2H, 70-180 and an SB800 flash. In the garden around the house it was D2H, 70-180, R1C1 and on a Gitzo tripod. Tripod is necessary, since a flower shot will require at least f16 all the way to f32 on the micro lens to get enough of the flowers sharp enough. Anyway, I’ll post the pictures and some essay if I remember after going thru the photos. Also took 3 rolls of b&w film on the FM2 during the trip. Been fun. Posts will come later….

September 29, 2007

Transit shopping in Singapore

Got in my possession one of the first iPod Touch to be released in Singapore. It was supposed to be out yesterday but not all shops received the stock. There’s this shop in Funan that had a few and I bought it right away. Got just the 8gb version for S$498 which is list price here minus about S$25 in GST refund when I leave tomorrow.
Other than the iPod, bought a couple of accessories for my photo stuff, and a mid sized backpack for my future chinese adventures. Cathay photo was selling the Epson R2400 printer for just S$1599 but its too big for me to smuggle back to Shanghai. Anyways, the Chinese customs are kings at imposing duties on new and used printers and scanners.

September 29, 2007

Tip to skip queues at airline check in

Used it this morning at Shanghai Pudong airport. Internet check in is not for nothing anymore. After printing out your boarding pass on your home printer, at least Singapore airlines has a separate 2 check in counters for internet check-in and they serve first internet check-in customers first and then normal customers. The beauty of this is that almost no one was using internet check-in this morning. The normal queue was 50 persons long, while i just strut to the front of the internet line to deposit my bag!
Don’t remember this trick being of too much help in europe where its common to do kiosk check-in anyway.

September 23, 2007

Sorting photos from the last 3 weeks…

Been busy going through about 1000 photos, at least 80% of them from the Ricoh GR Digital, which I brought to Taipei, Hong Kong and Beijing and the rest from my Nikon D2H used only in Beijing. Sorting is quite simple, I go through them and if they dont hit me the first time I see it or if the shot looks too touristy (flat and no emotion) it goes away. After that process, kept about 600 photos, and out of that, I’d say half is relatively flat but I’ll keep for nostalgic reasons.
Then its time to tag the photos so that it can be searchable in Adobe Lightroom. But since I put each shoot in a separate folder which I label according to date I upload and location, actually it doesn’t really require tagging, but why not? So the sorting took me 2-3 days to go thru. And I’m glad to say that now I can start uploading the photos up to the site. Hong Kong comes first. Taipei later since there are more pictures. I didn’t write any article for Beijing, but I guess I’ll just put photos plus a little commentary later on.