It has been a weekend full of camera actions for me, but that did not stop just at Malacca itself. Unfortunately due to work obligations Frederick had to be on duty the entire Sunday, hence I made my return to KL early in the morning, on a 8.30am bus. I arrived at KL and took a direct train back to my place, and got into my room even before 11am. And so I thought to myself, shall I take a quick, hot shower, bite some junk food and jump right into bed? Or should I grab that DVD or some other downloaded movies which I have not watched and have a mini movie/drama marathon throughout the afternoon? Perhaps just lock myself in my room, pull in the thick curtains and blast my speakers out of their boxes with depressing emo music and drink iced milo as if it was wine?

Knowing full well what monster I have become, you guys can tell the answer was none of the above.

Instead, I took a quick shower, repacked my ever ready gears into a smaller sling bag and stormed out of the house into the open, expecting more shutter therapy sessions. I was well aware of the two events happening on that particular afternoon. One would be the model search final round organized by Philips Malaysia at One Utama, which is not very convenient for me to get to via public transport. Therefore, I chose the second option, to Times Square since there was a Dance competition by Astro, and fast shutter action did entice me. As I have arrived at Times Square, it was discouraging to see that the event has already started, and the crowd has covered the dance platform, which I had some difficulty in penetrating through. Great, an opportunity busted. I was not disheartened, since I was already out with my gears.

As usual, I looked into the sky, and this time I was pleased with it. It was clear, though not as deep in blue as I had loved, but that was good enough. So I thought to myself, why not just walk and walk and walk and then snap and snap and snap? I am not exactly a street shooter myself, nor did I plan to do street shooting there-on. However, I have wanted to further try out the panorama photo-stitching technique and for this to happen, I need more photographs especially those taken outdoors. I commenced my walk from Times Square, and went through all the small streets, wandering around the faces of KL city, passing by some uncle pimps who offered me China ladies, and a 50 something year old beggar who looked me into the eye and called me “uncle” three freaking times to ask for money. I would have shot that 50 year old beggar dead if I was holding a riffle instead of a camera.

The condition was not ideal for urban scape photography, and the right time would be before, during and after sunset, with the scene being rendered in more dramatic depth in terms of colours and contrast. I intended to arrive home early to have enough rest for the coming working day, thus I only flew by the streets of KL in the hot afternoon sun. I tried a few varieties of shots, and from the photos being displayed on this entry, you can see my attempt in fitting as much wide space as I could into a frame. Some photos consisted of no less than 10 images being stitched together to form a wide panoramic view. Do not be mistaken by the usual panorama reference of stitching two to three shots horizontally to form a super long photograph. Yes, I agree that is the universally agreed form of panorama photograph, but why restrict yourself to just horizontal stitching? Softwares and computing powers these days allow for much more flexibility, and you can stitch your series of photos in whichever direction you like, not only side to side, but also top to bottom. Three quarters of the photographs here are panorama stitched photographs.

Here are some reasons and advantages why I am starting to fall in love with panorama photos:

1) Breaking the MegaPixel barrier

Most standard zoom kit lenses that come in bundle with the original entry level DSLR sets are made of lower grade lenses. The lens may be suitable for general usage, but when it comes to wide angle end of shots, especially on landscapes and scenery; it will not be effective to gather enough details to produce a pleasingly sharp image. Panorama option can break this limitation, because by stitching more than one photograph together, you already pushed in more pixels into a frame. I had a few photos with 12 original, separate photographs being stitched together, and formed a humungous 24 MegaPixels photograph (each photos have been resized, and overlapped, hence direct maths may not be representative in total numbers of MegaPixels). This is a superb advantage, with such densely packed pixels, I did not have to apply any sharpening at all and the photographs came out looking very popping realistic. Zoomed in further, the finest details captured were astounding.


2) Wider, more interesting Perspective

The more photographs you fit into a frame, the wider angle you can gain, pushing the limit of the wide angle end of the cheapo kit lens. If you were crazy enough like some dudes around the world, you can make 360 degrees panorama shots, covering scenes all around you in one single photograph. The output can be mind blowing, if the photograph was done right. The stitching software allows for perspective control, which was not entirely effective I would say, and also depending on the proper execution of the series of photographs being captured. Distortion was present but can be corrected, but I left some of the edge distortion in tact to show the defect, which can be comical at times. The softwares these days even allow for fisheye effect conversion, and I have displayed in one of the photographs of the Times Square.

3) Flexibility in Composition

I find that being able to fit extra space of the foreground does make a hell lot of difference in improving compositions of a photograph. Fitting in the extra stretch of details from the front without sacrificing by chopping off the top or side of the photograph added deeper sense of space and creates a feeling of being loose from tight constraints.


4) Best of all, it costs nothing.

That is right. By using what you already have, all you need to do is to try out alternative ways to create variety to your shots, and panorama just requires a little few extra steps. OK I admit I am broke and I cannot afford that uber-cool ultra wide angle lens. All I can do now is to maximize the potentials of my current set of lenses, with very limited options.

Of course, I acknowledge the fact that panorama can never take the place of a true ultra wide angle lens.

I am still terribly new to panorama techniques. These are my series of experiments, and each and every time I do it, I find bits and pieces of improvements to be made. I did all the shots handheld, and this was not really favourable because there would be some issues when it comes to merging parts that includes straight lines. Time can be spent in editing the photographs, and correcting the overlapping mistakes, but time is something that I do not have. You can observe the defects very visibly on some of the photographs if you are careful enough. Like a car losing some wheels, or the street lamp having disjointed pole. This problem can easily be solved by using tripod, and yes, I was lazy to lug it around. Maybe I should bring it next time, so I can use it to impale the 50 something year old beggar who dared to call me “uncle” three times.

I guess the photographs would have been nicer with blue waters, green mountains, and colourful flowers and open wide fields of stunningly fresh green grass. Too bad I am stuck in the jungle made of concrete, and all I have here are city scapes which are not that interesting to begin with. I walked from Times Square, and made my way through some random streets and ended at KLCC. I did not go shutter frenzy on KLCC for obvious reasons, I have shot it like a dozen times, and it is starting to lose its appeal. The total walking distance according to Google Map was approximately 5km. I felt like I have walked more than twice the distance just for shooting with my trusty compact camera once upon a time in a land far, far away called Perth.

Ending this entry with a self-camwhoring photograph. It has been a while since I last plaster this blog with photos of myself. I could not help it but look at the refection with approaching sunset as I was waiting for the next train home. On another note, people have always told me that the camera almost looked non-existent being held with both my hands. Looking at that last photograph, I got to say Olympus makes one hell of a small DSLR.

I can't wait for another weekend of shutter therapy sessions already !!

Side Note: All photographs were processed on my friend’s computer, thus there may be a little inconsistencies in regards of colour balance and exposure. Nonetheless, there was not much editing done, and just minor corrections were applied.

It was on one uneventful Friday that I suddenly made a really unexpected decision to take a super brief trip down to a place I no longer feel alien to, and must have visited more than half a dozen times since my working life started in KL. The place is none other than the historical town of Malacca. I must say my visit was not entirely aimless, I needed to sort out a few important errands: to retrieve official work related documentations, and also to hand deliver essential goods which I have helped a friend to purchase from KL.

FIRED WITH SINGLE WIRELESS FLASH (Off camera)

I arrived at Malacca on Friday night, and there and then I met up with dear friend Frederick. We both had really itchy hands and were eager to had our hands for full on shutter therapy for the weekend. I am really looking forward for this particular weekend because for the past few weeks I have been swamped with work and even had to stay back on weekends, thus having this much treasured free time I must fully utilize it. Frederick has just got himself a set of extension tubes, and he has not tried them on yet. That can only mean one thing in the end, the shutter therapy is full-on macro photography. Since I have taken just a few shots of macro photos in the riverfall outing last week, I am dying for more, and now, with a friend, I quenched my thirst for macro.

FIRED WITH TWIN WIRELESS FLASH (Off camera)

My macro shots have been getting very mundane and repetitive lately, thus I have formed a few new tricks in mind, with Frederick to try out during this particular macro outing. For those of you who have not been following my macro progress, my current style of shooting macro can be summarized in the list as below:

1) Full manual focus on the lens, and moving closer in and further away from the subject to fine tune the focus accuracy.

2) Engage wireless TTL-flash, supported by the in-flash trigger, being fired off camera

3) Holding the camera on one hand, and the external flash on another hand angled at various direction depending on situations

As much improvements as I have made for my macro attempts over the time, I still feel that my macro outputs are lacking in quite a few terms. One of them is being the wireless flash off camera, fired at one direction, casting strong illumination from one single side to the subject, and leaving the opposite side completely dark, and this creates unwanted shadow clippings and undesirably uneven exposures to the entire frame. For avid macro shooters, there are a couple of ways to overcome this issue. One would be using the famous ring flash attached in front of the lens to cast a superbly even lighting all around the subject eliminating any shadows and providing an almost studio like appearance, which is ideal for most cases. Alternatively, there is the use of twin flash, fired at two separate sides to light up the subject more evenly, and this method works relatively well to minimize shadows. In this particular session, I was privillaged to try out the later alternative.

NON MACRO STUFF

Twin flash method is usually performed by mounting two external flash units supported on a specially designed bracket connected to the tripod mount on the camera. Unfortunately the mentioned bracket itself costs as much as my macro lens, and is not feasible since I am just shooting macro for leisure and mostly, personal fun. Nonetheless, fully utilizing Olympus’s strength and their technologies, Fred and I have used the wireless TTL-Flash by controlling his external flash unit, and mine, two in total, by firing off my camera, one placed at the left and one supporting flash at the right (or opposite directions, depending on where the subject is facing) to improve the exposure output. It only took us a few rounds of trials to get the settings right, and the results were fantastic !! Great thanks to Fred for holding the flash for me, and with that I can almost eliminate unwanted one sided darkness on my subject. This is truly something new for me, and I was really glad it worked out especially for those tiny little creatures.

SNAKE EYES

Our choice of macro hunt was none other than the Butterfy Park, and boy, it was surely the wrong timing to go now because there were half a dozen of school buses lined up outside the park as we arrived !!! I have to tell you, kids are EVIL. They destroy every single photo opportunity you have, by bumping into you while you were intensely into getting the right focus, or abruptly chasing your tinu creatures away as they merrily flew pass you in such sadistic motions. They blardy grab the butterflies by their hands and CRUSHED it OMGGGGGG. Or step the butterflies on the floor… No wonder the population of butterflies in the butterfly park is getting lesser and lesser. Kids should be prohibited to enter such a place I tell you. Or they should have their brains being shot out of their head. I am serious.

BIRDY

Alright, minus a few mishaps due to the devilish children from hell, I still managed to salvaged some good shots. Too bad we were not exactly interested in butterflies, but more towards the insects inhabiting the whole park. We thought, if the whole area was sustainable for butterflies to grow, it should be suitable for other tiny bug’s survivability. We did find some interesting stuff, but not as many as what I would have originally intended. KL butterfly park has waaaay more varieties of creepy crawlies to hunt for. We did what we could, Fred had great fun trying out his extension tubes on his 50mm lens, and I of course, for the first time, used the twin flash technique via wireless TTL method. All win-win situations.

simplyROBIN in ACTION

Notes: Here are some rare photographs of yours truly in shutter therapy mode.

There was an entirely separate session, adjoining to the butterfly farm that houses a huge range of reptile collection, especially snakes. In addition to that, there were also birds of many sorts, some pretty colourful ones. From macro we moved on to some animal shooting, and boy was I happy to be able to use my most favourite lens, the Zuiko 40-150mm F3.5-4.5 tele-zoom lens.

I do feel entirely refreshed coming back to my favorite shooting of macro. There are still tones to improve on my shots, especially in terms of composition and more importantly, the lighting, but hey, step by step, and one day, I will be there. I am loving what I am doing now, and you just have no idea the joy of seeing those tiny little bugs being displayed on my monitor, and being zoomed in to see the finest details that our normal naked human eyes cannot see. The feeling is just something magnificent, and somehow, it does help me to realize, and appreciate the smaller things in life.

There it was, after months of macro photography draught, and weeks of shutter therapy deprivation, finally, I had one full on day out for just photo-shooting. So what cool things have you done this weekend?