ROBIN WONG

I am happy to see that OM Digital Solutions included the Animal AI Subject Detection Autofocus in their latest camera OM System PEN. I thought this would be a great opportunity to visit a cat cafe - the Monster A Garden Cafe in Petaling Street area. Why not? There was good coffee and plenty of cute and friendly cats waiting for their adorable portraits to be taken, and of course, some tummy rubs too. It was not exactly a stress test, the cats were moving very slowly, you can get good shots without the AI Subject Detection AF, but it just made things a lot simpler and quicker. The AF subject detection worked well locking onto the cat's eyes and sticked on them, giving me very high hit rates. I made a video to show you behind the scenes, POV style, recording of the camera screen as I captured those cute cat images! The video is here (click). 

During my initial tests of the OM System PEN, I quickly found out that the AF performance has been dramatically improved, the first test I did to realize this was insect macro shooting. I revisited insect macro to recreate the same scenario which I found the AF to be so much quicker and confident, even more efficient than higher level OM System cameras like OM-1/OM-3, I am not joking. So I did a new video to test the AF performance of OM-1 vs PEN side by side using Olympus 60mm F2.8 Macro shooting extremely close up. The result is obvious, the PEN wins hands down. In that same video (click), I also did a POV showing how I captured some fresh insect macro shots. 

Here is a surprise - 1 have a photograph exhibited in the Spring Shopping Mall, Kuching, under the WAK Festival X Canon Malaysia "Celebrating Malaysia and Wild About Nature". The exhibition is running from 1st to 30th October 2026. I only have one photo there, taken a few years ago at Lebuh Ampang, showing an environmental portrait of a man selling bananas. I used a Canon 5D original and a Canon 35mm F2 lens. I was asked by my friend Allen Ang to submit something, so to show support to my fellow friends and community in Kuching, I chose this lone image, and it got selected! If you happen to be at the Spring, do check out the exhibition! As always, proud to be a Sarawakian. 

I brought the OM System PEN out around the city area of Kuala Lumpur to shoot some night scenes for my initial review of the camera. I intentionally wanted to test the 5-Axis Image Stabilization of the camera. OM Digital Solutions claimed 5.5EV stops effectiveness at the center and 4.5EV stops at the corners, and they numbers are quite conservative. I could easily hand-hold the camera down to 4 seconds shutter speeds and get away with sharp results consistently, shooting at wide angle (9mm and 14mm). To be honest anything more than 1-2 seconds shutter speed I'd rather just use a tripod for long exposure works, but the powerful stabilization helps to boost confidence in nailing the shots taken at, say 1/30 second, or even down to 1/2 second shutter speeds. To me, I cannot live without the image stabilization these days, definitely a must have feature in a modern camera. 

After all the hype and noise surrounding the new OM System PEN camera, it is time for a detox, and I thought what better way to do that by shooting with an old compact camera from the early digicam days. I brought the Olympus C-740 which I found in the used market at such a good condition for some shutter therapy. It only has 3.2MP CCD image sensor with a generous 10x zoom lens. Many of us (me included) get caught up with obsessing over the latest gear, but sometimes it isn't about the number of megapixels, or high ISO, or dynamic range and AF performance. Photography should be much simpler than that, we can choose to enjoy the process of making images by going back to basics. Sometimes, all you need is an old digital point and shoot camera!

This is a continuation from the previous blog entry about shooting low light stage photography using the Olympus E-M1 Original from 2013. I did share some tips on managing low light environment using Micro Four Thirds in my latest video (click). I use mainly prime lenses, Olympus 25mm F1.8, 45mm F1.8 and 75mm F1.8 to maximize the amount of light gathered, hence enabling faster shutter speeds without increasing ISO numbers unnecessarily. I shot mostly ISO1600 and below in this session, which was perfectly fine for the E-M1 original to handle, and some dimmer shots I used ISO3200. I also relied on the powerful 5-Axis Image Stabilization for scenes with little or no movement, slowing down the shutter speeds to 1/30 or 1/15, still getting tack sharp images while getting away with much lower ISO numbers. In fast action sequences, I would not hesitate to ramp up my ISO numbers to achieve fast enough shutter speeds to freeze action, and I emphasized the importance of capturing the moments over anything else. Moments matter more than technical perfection. High ISO noise is not the end of the world! Also, I talked about how moving around as much as you can will get you better, more dynamic framing and composition opportunities than being lazy staying still at one spot. Stage photography is fun, sometimes a bit more difficult than usual due to low light but still super exciting to shoot!

Last Friday, I was invited by OM System Malayia to speak at YL Photo Fair, sharing my experience using their latest OM System PEN camera. I chose to talk about street photography with the PEN, since that was a topic I was most comfortable with. It was a Friday, a working day, in the afternoon 2pm close to Muslim prayer time, so I did not expect a crowd. However, the turnout was bigger than anticipated, the room was filled and there were people even standing all the way at the back! I saw many familiar faces, friends who came all the way to show support, for that I am truly grateful. I feel blessed with the love and support shown. This was my first time speaking for OM System ever, and I hope for more future collaborations and opportunities with OM System Malaysia. It was fun to be on stage again, both nerve-racking, but at the same time it was also very fulfilling, feeding off the energy of the lively crowd! All images taken by Andrew (IG @andrew_hsien), used with permission