ROBIN WONG

During my last week's Live Stream on YouTube, I shared a short compilation of my favorite images shot in the year 2024. Many of the images were sample images taken while testing cameras or lenses for reviews. It is strange that these images made it into my favorite list, because the usual test images are dry and uninteresting. I always do my best to use whatever camera or lens that I am testing for reviews in the best way possible, shooting

It is my birthday today, and I officially have turned 40. That sounds so surreal, I really cannot believe I am hitting 40 already. In the midst of all the tornado of busy activities happening around me, I'd like to take a small moment to just commemorate this mini milestone in my life. I feel blessed and extremely fortunate to be alive, being surrounded by amazing and kind people all the time, for that I cannot ask for more in life.

Merry Christmas and happy holidays to all you awesome people!Life has been a tornado lately, with back-to-back projects and shoots. It was a miracle that I managed to keep my deadlines and still deliver everything in time. On top of the usual photography jobs, making YouTube videos and doing Live Streams, I am currently also taking on more sponsored content on my YouTube channel as well as collaboration projects with local camera distributors. Some of these details I cannot share yet

There is a super awesome exhibition featuring 12 local Malaysian artists happening now at Sasana Kijang (Bank Negara Malaysia) titled - JIWA MEMBUMI. The official translation of the title to English is "the soul of the land". The exhibition is comprised of mixed media presentation, digital projection, sculpture pieces, paintings and a majority of the exhibits are of course, photography prints! Both my good friends Azul Adnan and Grace Ho (whom I have talked about previously) are also highlighting this show,

My friend Kevin from Australia gifted me a circular fisheye lens, the 7Artisans 4mm F2.8 for Micro Four Thirds, so I took this opportunity to get out of my comfort zone and go insanely wide with my latest street outing session. The 7Artisans 4mm gives an extremely wide coverage of 225 degrees field of view, that is more than 180 degrees vertically and horizontally. That was an extremely challenging setup, trying to compose with such wide angle frame, I accidentally fitted

Continuing from previous post, as I was still playing with the Panasonic 14-140mm F4-5.8, this time I brought it out on a street outing. It was an outing organized and hosted by the celebrity crazy famous local photographer, Abeden Mung, and I was merely participating. We had over 200 people showing up for this mini gathering, so I was just wandering around doing my own things. I think street photography is personal and I just pointing the lens at anything that

I attended a KLPAC (Kuala Lumpur Performing Arts Center) show several months ago titled RWD/FWD as an audience, with a fixed seating, but I still wanted to work the camera to grab some shots. I figured the best solution would be a superzoom, the wide focal length coverage from wide angle to telephoto allowed me to do more with just one lens. And let's face it, this was not a job, I could not be bothered with the hassle of changing

The second part of my test with the NiSi 49mnm Close Up lens was using it on my own Olympus 60mm F2.8 Macro. The Olympus 60mm macro lens alone can achieve 100% magnification, and by quick ruler measurement, by attaching the NiSi 49mm Close Up Lens, I can take the magnification further to a whooping 158%, which was incredible! I took this opportunity to shoot smaller critters, or go even closer to the bugs revealing more details on their eyes, and

NiSi contacted me and asked if I were interested in testing their Close Up Lens and I immediately said yes. It is not an every day opportunity to collaborate with a company doing insect macro photography, something I am quite passionate about. I did tell them that if I don't like the product, I will continue with the review, but it turned out that I was quite impressed by what the  Close Up Lens can do. Basically, the NiSi Close Up

One of the amazing things about Micro Four Thirds system is the collection of really awesome compact sized, portable lenses that are excellent in optics design and can deliver great results. Sometimes it still puzzles me how something so tiny-ly built can render astoundingly sharp and beautiful results. Even the lowlist kit lens from Micro Four Thirds is no slouch either, they are impressively sharp. I compiled a list of 5 best budget lenses for Micro Four Thirds system under USD150

I have been on YouTube space for over 5 years now, making new videos week after week, but I don't see myself as a videographer. Yes, I am a content creator, or YouTuber, that part is very true as I share videos of me talking about photography related topics, but that does not qualify me as a videographer. It is strange that many people immediately associate YouTubers as videographers, which I believe are two completely different animals. I am a photographer,

I see so many people chasing after latest and greatest gear and obsessing over technical perfection in their images. I personally believe that if you cannot get good images with your current gear, even if you upgrade to the next best camera, your images won't improve even a bit. You should upgrade your skills first before upgrading your gear. I also believe that using older, cheaper gear can help make you a better photographer. Going back to basics with simpler controls

Olympus OM-D E-M5 original was a legendary camera that paved the way to mirrorless revolution. I think that camera is still an awesome camera today and is great for street photography. It has built in EVF, tiltable LCD screen, fast AF, built in 5-Axis image stabilization, is weather-sealed, has magnesium allow build, handles like a mini DSLR with efficient dual command dials control, and produces excellent image quality. In the used market today, since the E-M5 original was released 12 years

I have never actually owned the Olympus M.Zuiko 60mm F2.8 Macro lens before. Previously, I had one for long term loan from Olympus when I was involved with them as an Olympus Visionary (a fancy name for ambassador). Since I left, I have returned the macro lens together with a selection of other amazing lenses, and I never looked to purchase one for myself because macro photography was not what I was doing for a living. Fast forward many years to

I bought a new wireless microphone set - the Hollyland Lark M2. I bought this to replace my old Sennheiser XSW-D Portable Wireless Microphone which has dying batteries, and they could barely last me 30 minutes of recording time in a single charge. The Sennheiser wireless setup has served me so well over the past few years, it had zero hiccup, super reliable and I still think the audio quality from the lavalier microphone in unmatched by any newer microphone offerings

This was probably the only time this happened so far, instead of the manufacturer approaching me to review a lens, it was the other way around, I requested a review sample of the 17mm F1.7 from Yongnuo. I did so because I was curious about how the new 17mm alternative lens performed and if it can do better than Olympus 17mm F1.8 which I openly talked about how much I disliked its rendering. Yongnuo sent me the lens and I did

I was at Malacca for a few days last week for a quick shoot, so of course, I took this opportunity to do some street shooting and filled my stomach with amazing Malacca food. It is so interesting to note that just by driving 2 hours away from Kuala Lumpur, we get a different selection of food, some we can't find in Kuala Lumpur, and even if they have it here, the taste and quality would not be as good as

TTArtisan sent me their 75mm F2 AF lens for Nikon Z mirrorless full frame mount cameras. I tested the lens on my own Nikon Z5, and boy oh boy, was I surprised. The lens performs incredibly well despite its compact form factor and light weight, and for the asking price of merely USD178, I thought this is too good to be true! I have also brought this lens to shoot several paid jobs, though I can't share my images from my

I saw the moon floating around in the sky just outside my bedroom window and my hands got a bit itchy. So I grabbed the Olympus OM-D E-M1 Mark II with M.Zuiko 75-300mm II lens and mounted them on a tripod, and took a shot of the moon using the tripod high res shot, yielding an effective 50MP output. This was JPEG, I could not be bothered with processing a RAW file since this was not going to be delivered to

I managed to get my hands on a demo unit of the newly launched Fujifilm X-M5 at a touch and try session happening inside the Artishutter X N4 camera store last Saturday. I am genuinely curious about this camera, an entry level camera with advanced features that is made into a truly compact and lightweight body in the year 2024, and selling for under USD1000 price tag, is it too good to be true? Since I only had the camera inside

My dear friend Bihzhu celebrated her 41st birthday recently, and she had quite an unusual celebration - she held a mini party happening right at a waterfall. The location was Lata Beringin, and I went with my friend Spencer. There were plenty of amazing people, all of whom were Bihzhu's close friends, and we were surrounded with so much laughter and love. We had delicious food filling our tummies and went for a dip in the cool waters, just chilling. This

Last Saturday, I attended the wedding luncheon of Ivan and Chin Lay at Chow Kit hotel in downtown KL. Ivan is an old friend whom I have known since forever! We were classmates in secondary school, and we still kept in close contact until this very day. I am so happy for you Ivan, congratulations to you and I wish you abundant happiness, love and blessings for your marriage life. Of course, my itchy hands brought along my camera, but I

I was experimenting with an interesting technique to shoot birds with my smartphone, purely out of curiosity and fun recently. I attached the Olympus 75-300mm II super telephoto zoom lens onto my smartphone, Poco X6 Pro, well, technically the Olympus 75-300mm II lens was mounted on Olympus Air, a camera module that was then connected to the smartphone wirelessly. I thought this method was quite fun, and it worked really well. I went to Kuala Lumpur Bird Park to get some

I know I have been quite harsh in my previous post commenting on the Olympus E-M1X being a mistake, but I did review that camera, and it was a fairly capable Micro Four Thirds camera, perhaps the best performing during its launch. I was in an Olympus Visionary trip to South Africa, so I managed to use the E-M1X with long lenses to shoot some wildlife images, and I supplemented those with even more sample images taken all around Kuala Lumpur

Olympus OM-D E-M1X was released in 2019, it became the first camera to break away from the Micro Four Thirds principles of making small, portable cameras yet delivering high performance. In fact, the E-M1X was larger and heavier than most cameras, whether DSLR or mirrorless. It was a daring attempt by Olympus to target a separate user group altogether, and it could have worked with the intended vision of what E-M1X was designed for, but somehow it fell short. Consequently, the

Old CCD compact cameras are all the rage now, and that can be seen with the increasingly ridiculously high selling prices in the used market. I personally think these old compacts are super fun and can deliver great results, if you know what you are doing. There is something about using a truly small, pocketable camera with minimalist control and simplicity that encourages more fun while shooting images. After all photography isn't all about technical obsession, if you can put aside

I must confess an uncomfortable truth, I bought the Olympus PEN E-PL1 due to peer pressure back then, I was asked to join an Olympus PEN group to help out and I did. The qualification to become a member? You have to own an Olympus PEN camera. What a mistake I have done, and a hard lesson that I have learned. Of course, nothing good came out of caving into peer pressure and trying to please people around me, I know

I admit, I have been browsing Wotancraft's website for several years now, looking at their various beautiful camera bags, but I never hit the purchase buttons. I already have several well functioning bags that served their purposes very well, and I see no need to splurge on another bag. When Wotancraft reached out and asked if I wanted to try one of their bags, I immediately said yes! They sent me their Pilot 7L bag, which is a shoulder/messenger styled camera

The biggest mistake Micro Four Thirds players did was trying to beat the full frame big boys by making larger, heavier, ridiculously overpriced cameras with bloated tech and features that 98% of the consumers do not even use or need. Everyone is fighting the latest and greatest tech war, better AI computational features, faster burst rate, faster sensor readout, global shutter, advanced pro video features like internal RAW recording, which honestly do not make much of a difference for an average

I have had the Olympus PEN Mini E-PM1 and I enjoyed using that camera quite a bit for my street shooting sessions, so when I found a used E-PM2 at such a good price in good condition, I just could not resist. The PEN Mini camera was the smallest Micro Four Thirds camera made by Olympus, sits at the lowest entry level to the PEN series, with stripped down features and capabilities, made to be extremely compact, minimalist and easy to

I have had tremendously busy weekends for the past month. I had 3 separate visitors from my hometown Kuching for every last weekend which I gladly hosted and brought around Kuala Lumpur for meals and catch up sessions. Between that and a few photography jobs, making new content for my YouTube channel and also making myself available to support a few friends having exhibitions, attending camera trade fairs, going to photography festivals and events happening around town all at the same

One of the go-to places to bring my friends for a meal when they are visiting outside of Kuala Lumpur, is Kanbe Ramen. This Japanese Ramen restaurant was opened merely few years ago and has risen to fame, much loved by ramen lovers locally here to a point where many have claimed Kanbe to be the best Ramen place in Malaysia. I have tried many, many Ramen restaurants in KL and I got to say, Kanbe is a league of its

TTArtisan sent me their 56mm F1.8 lens for Sony E-mount, and I tested it on my old Sony NEX-6 camera. Full disclaimer - I do get to keep this lens after review, but I made it clear to TTArtisan that I get to be 100% honest about my opinion written here (as well as in my YouTube video). For $129 that TTArtisan is a lot of bang for the buck, and a stellar performer. I shall share what I like and

Happy Malaysia Day to all my fellow Malaysians! To commemorate this special occasion, I am breaking my own strict monochromatic dress code just for one day. Instead of mostly black and white from top to bottom, today, I wear splashes of red and blue to match the mini Malaysian flag I am bearing on my chest. I am proud to be a Malaysian, saya anak Malaysia! This portrait shot of mine was shot by my good friend Van Ligutom (IG @vanligutom)

It has almost become a ritual for me and the boys to meet up and have brunch at a new hipster cafe location every once in a while, and this time we went to the Grumpy Bagels, situated just a little bit off the new TRX Mall. It seems like bagel is all the rage now and there are several new places serving bagels with a variation of fillings. The cool thing about this particular bagel place - it was originally

I visited my friends Azul and Grace's exhibition at Stadium Merdeka again and this time I brought more friends to go see it. I thought I'd make myself useful and started shooting behind the scenes images while both Azul and Grace did their short presentation sharing their shooting process for the exhibition images. I do make a bulk of my income from shooting event coverage, many behind the scenes images for my clients, and I want to share some tips on

Initially, I intended to film a new video for my main photography channel yesterday. I was being a little ambitious, I also wanted to do a second video for my vlog channel, showing behind the scenes of how I set up my shoot and capture the whole process from start to finish, making a video. I thought some would find that fascinating and beneficial. However, the weather did not agree with my plans, as my shoot depended on the sky conditions

About two weeks ago, I attended a mini concert at KLPAC, and it was their 5th installment of Yesterday Once More, indulging in music from yesteryears. I was an audience this time, and was not hired to shoot, so I attended the actual show instead of the dress rehearsal, and seated at the crowd section. I still intended to grab some shots for myself, so I brought along the most convenient setup I can think of - the E-M1 Original and

Olympus M.Zuiko 45mm F1.8 has been my favourite Micro Four Thirds lens since its launch back in 2011. This tiny gem weighs only 116g, yet it delivers excellent results, rendering sharp images with plenty of fine details, good contrast and beautiful bokeh. I have done countless photography jobs with this lens shooting portraits, weddings, events, stage coverage and product photography over the years. In my latest adventure with the Olympus 45mm F1.8. I was shooting the beautiful Ivani Leang (IG @ivani_leang)

My friends Azul Adnan (IG @azuladnan) and Grace Ho (IG @grace_.ho) have an on-going exhibition happening at the newly refurbished and reopened historic Stadium Merdeka. Both photographers are extremely talented and they were shooting for the project "Under the Shadow of Merdeka" which will be made into a photobook. The current exhibition has been extended to 16 September 2024, so if you are in KL please do swing by Stadium Merdeka and check out both the exhibition and the stadium itself,