ROBIN WONG

Malaysia has just recorded all time high Covid-19 new daily cases today at 9353. The numbers just keep going up. After 2 months plus of lockdown and being confined in my miserable room, we are nowhere near recovery, that light at the end of the tunnel might be just a train heading straight for us. I now have the Olympus M.Zuiko 8-25mm F4 PRO with me, which I can't do much testing (nothing fun to shoot around here), but we do have a neighborhood cat that is a bit too friendly. I thought, why not? Since there really is nothing else to do. I am sure the spider in my room is bored of me talking to him, so time to torture another creature instead. The spider could use some rest. 

I was very pleased to report that the Olympus 8-25mm lens is incredibly sharp, based on my initial, brief testing. Nothing conclusive yet, I still need to do more extensive shoots but for now, I am happy with what I see from the images that came out from this lens. I only shared this one shot of the cat, because the other images I got were 1) my messy bedroom 2) the ugly buildings near my apartment 3) the boring parking space in the basement with lousy lighting 4) ugly sky that was about to rain 5) myself naked. Ok, maybe I made up the last item, or... did I not? You have to understand, being stuck in a room for more than 2 months, it does things to you. 

I was not joking when I told you guys in my previous articles (and also in video) that photography and videography, both commercial and non-commercial were banned during the current lockdown in Malaysia. However, I was surprised to find out that the production that was carried out indoor, in a private space, that involved no crew or anyone except the owner of the said space, shooting food and products, was also prohibited. In the article published today the government agency/authority FINAS (The National Film Development Corporation Malaysia) raided a commercial studio that was allegedly doing a small scale shooting indoor. Unfortunately, I cannot find any articles in English. 

From my understanding, the general rule being mandated by the government during the lockdown is - no economy or social activities are allowed with minor exceptions for essential services such as healthcare, supplies and food. Photography and videography, or any commercial productions are strictly banned. Not only you are banned from shooting outdoor, now it seems clear that you cannot even do anything indoor, inside your private property. No questions here, any form of activity that is non essential (photography and video included) cannot be performed ANYWHERE in Malaysia. 

They also have specifically banned outdoor photography under the category of social activities, but I will not repeat what I have said in my previous article here. 

How the heck are we going to survive this? How does shooting food in a studio environment cause any virus infection? This does not make any sense at all. I understand that we are not allowed to move or do anything outdoor, but why can't we do anything indoor, in the private space to at least be able to earn whatever little cash possible? Struggling small business owners, photographers and videographers especially are dying out there. This is so unfair, and honestly quite unnecessary. 

I am not even sure which category "filming for YouTube" falls into. I wonder if that is wrong too. 

Well, if you don't hear anything from me, if I sudden disappear, I guess you know what happens. I am fighting as hard as I can to weather this storm, but it seems like even the government is against me, instead of helping us who are already suffering massive loss of income. 

The lockdown has been doing on for 2 months now (since beginning of May) and cases are not going down, in fact, it started to rise again. From the looks of things, I can kiss 2021 goodbye at this point. And I sure have little hope for 2022 too.