ROBIN WONG

While I had too much fun playing with wide angle compositions during the Pak Peng Arcade job, I was also required to shoot the event like a normal event. To document what actually happened, wide angle lens was not sufficient, often times longer lenses are needed. In this situation, many photographers would prefer the use of zoom lenses for flexibility and convenience, but I chose primes instead. My lenses I used for this shoot were Panasonic 9mm f1.7, Panasonic 15mm F1.7, Olympus 25mm F1.8 and 45mm F1.8. I did bring along the Olympus 75mm F1.8 and used it for several shots. I used my main camera, the Olympus E-M1 Mark II, still rocking on even after almost 10 years now! Since I have showed mostly wide angle shots in my previous Part 1 and 2 of Pak Peng Arcade series, all the images in this blog entry will be from non-wide angle lens. 

The Olympus 60mm F2.8 Macro lens is one of the best macro lenses ever made, and also perhaps the most misunderstood one. The shortcut 1:1 dial on the lens is a convenient feature to have, it allows you to quickly jump to full magnification the lens is capable of. However, many people do not understand how the 1:1 dial works and they wish it to be a function that is impossible to be implemented - they want the full magnification to stay at full magnification while they move the lens and camera around. I am clearing up this confusion, and hope to make you see that the 1:1 shortcut is actually a brilliant, useful feature that can help you to achieve great macro results. I made a video to explain all this, you can check it out here (click). 

I mentioned in my previous blog entry that I was shooting a job for Pak Peng Arcade, a mini festival take-over of the old Pak Peng building in downtown Kuala Lumpur, and I was using the Panasonic 9mm F1.7 for wide angle shots. I have had the Panasonic 9mm F1.7 for several years now and I did bring it to all my jobs but I did not find many use of wide angle for the kind of photography that I normally do. I shoot events, stage and portraits, majority of my shots require medium telephoto or longer focal lengths to create good results. Wide angle lens was used for establishing location shots and some tight group portraits, nothing fancy, and I use it for less than 5% of my delivered shots for each job. This particular shoot at Pak Peng Arcade was different, I had more than 50% of wide angle shots in my deliverables, and they were all shot on the Panasonic 9mm F1.7! Not an every day opportunity to work this amazing lens!

I had a really exciting job last weekend, shooting Pak Peng Arcade at downtown Kuala Lumpur. Pak Peng is an old building, a semi-abandoned shopping mall that has seen better days. A community of local artists took over two floors of the building for two days and turned it into a mini festival. I was thrilled to shoot this event because the interiors of the building has very tight spaces and narrow walkways, which necessitate the use of super wide angle most of the time. I took this opportunity to utilize the amazing Panasonic 9mm F1.7, and boy oh boy that lens was a lifesaver! It is so small, light and sharp, it delivers fantastic results. Of course I used other lenses as well for the full day event coverage (mostly Olympus 25mm and 45mm F1.8), but I specifically selected wide angle shots taken with the Panasonic 9mm F1.7 for this blog entry. I made a video to talk about why I love the Panasonic 9mm F1.7 so much, you can view it here (click). 

The enjoyable thing about doing street photography in different locations is finding both the differences and similarities with the usual street hunting grounds. Bangkok can look so different, they have smaller network of alleyways and backstreets that are interconnected and you can basically get lost walking in it, this is something you cannot find in Kuala Lumpur. Yet the same warm smile, the typical South East Asian lighting and textured background all tell very similar heritage and stories, though we are not that far apart. I enjoy walking around and just feasting my eyes with what I can see at the streets of Bangkok, to truly experience it you have to walk the grounds. Whatever I can capture with my camera is just bonus!

I mostly explored around the Chinatown area of Bangkok, Thailand for my street photography. Most images were shot around Song Wat and Yaowarat area, alongside the Chao Praya river. I did venture into the Flower Market, which I intend to visit again more extensively in the future, this time it was mostly passing by and quick snaps while walking along the locations. I miss shooting at Hua Lamphong Bangkok Central Train station, while that place still exists, it isn't as busy as it was back in the day and has lost its charm for street photography. Nevertheless, Bangkok is such a huge place, there are opportunities everywhere, you just have to keep your eyes open! People there are also super friendly, perhaps even more approachable than Malaysians! I had so much time shooting on the streets there. 

I find it really strange every time someone asks me if I shoot in JPEG or RAW. Honestly, the correct answer is - it does not matter. Even if I did shoot in RAW, my postprocessing done was so minimal the images look like they come straight out of camera anyway. I prefer the natural, true to life look, something more realistic, rather than over-processed, or images with exaggerated color biases. I have no problem shooting JPEG too, in fact, whenever I feel lazy, when I don't want to do any editing, I just set the camera to JPEG and fired away. This latest session I did just that, and I recorded everything in video as evidence (so people cannot accuse me of lying or cheating, you can see my camera screen - it isn't set to RAW). You can check the video here (click), I also share my camera JPEG settings there. 

Of course, the one thing I must do when I was in Bangkok was to shoot on the streets. Trust me, it is street photography heaven there! I had my Panasonic GM1 with me and I used the Olympus 25mm F1.8 most of the time. It was just a casual stroll around just capturing anything that caught my attention. One of the days I was guided by the amazing Jojo (IG @jjsupasit), a prominent photographer who resides in Bangkok. Special thanks to Jojo I found some new places to shoot and I must make a point to return again one day in the future, just to shoot more on these awesome locations! 

One the final day before flying off from Bangkok, my travel partner and I decided to just chill and not wander too far away from our hotel. There was this Cafe restaurant, just outside our hotel that we have to pass by every time we walk out to the main streets. The place looks spacious and decent, and there is always a crowd too. It is called the coffee club, and we made the right call to have our final meals here before heading to the airport to catch our flight back to Kuala Lumpur! As far as the last food to eat in Bangkok goes, this is quite an amazing one! Yes we ate too much food, but can you really blame us?

I found this amazing place near the hotel that I was staying at, LonLon Local Diner, or sometimes it is called The Local Canteen depending on where you found it on the web. They serve fusion Thai and Western food, but many of their menu items are based on Thai cuisines. I went in wanting to have some typical Thai dishes, namely Tom Yum soup, fried rice and grilled pork, then maybe a Mango Sticky Rice for dessert. That place did not disappoint, they had everything I have hoped for and more, and boy oh boy, the food was amazing! Though on the spicier and definitely pricier side of things, the food was so worth it. 

The Monochrome Profile was introduced in Olympus PEN-F, and subsequently made available in the E-P7 and OM System OM-3 cameras. It allows control over various color filters options that can dramatically improve black and white images. This exact same Monochrome Profile can be applied to almost any Olympus and OM System cameras (has to be newer than the PEN-F) by shooting in RAW and applying the Monochrome Profile using OM System Workspace software. If you have not tried this, do give it a go, it is not only so powerful, but fun to play with too! I made a video to demonstrate how this works (click here), and also did some POV shooting, of course, this time all in black and white!

Recently I have been shooting more and more with the Olympus E-620, which I bought just to relive the nostalgia of my early day photography adventures with my first DSLR Olympus E-520. The handling the camera, the turn of the dials, the button presses, the click of the shutter button, the sound of the mirror-slapping and shutter clacking, all brought back sweet memories of me fumbling around my way learning the basics of photography so many years ago. Yet the Olympus E-620 is still a capable shooting machine, while being outdate now in terms of tech and imaging capabilities, it still can deliver great results. There is just something satisfying looking through an optical viewfinder (though I would rather have the safety and assurance of electronic viewfinder for serious work these days), and loud shutter sounds reaffirming that the shots have been taken. These portraits were taken on the same day as the previous blog entry, all on Olympus 50mm F2 Macro lens. These older cameras and lenses sure have some charm to them!

I was truly fortunate to have Jojo as my friend and guide in Bangkok, Thailand. Not only he brought me around the streets of Bangkok and showed me his favourite street hunting grounds, he also brought me to some of the best locations for food! Oh how we feasted. In the few days I had in Bangkok I must have gained so much weight, but all was good. I live to eat, food is one way to enjoy life, I don't care if you disagree with me. Glorious food is meant to be consumed and enjoyed! Bangkok indeed is food paradise, every corner you turn to, there is some amazing street food! 

I recently brought the old Olympus E-620 out to do some portraits shooting. Many of you who have followed me from the beginning would know that I started exploring photography more seriously with my first DSLR, the Olympus E-520. Obviously the E-520 has died many years ago after enduring my abuse, well, that only shows I really did use the camera extensively. A few years ago I found the E-620 and I just could not resist the low price in the used marketplace, so I bought it just to relive the nostalgia of my early days of photography journey. The E-620 is still going strong, I paired it with the Olympus 50mm F2 Macro and shot some portraits of my beautiful friend Ivani (IG @ivani_leang). I also made a video to talk about why I prefer to shoot with an older camera like the dinosaur DSLR Olympus E-620 over any modern smartphones, you can check out the video here (click). 

I recently travelled to Bangkok, Thailand for a short holiday. It was a much needed break after the Kuala Lumpur Photography Workshop which I conducted with Peter Forsgard and Matti Sulanto about 2-3 weeks ago. I only have 3 things in mind for this trip to Bangkok - rest, a bit of street shooting and EAT. Yes, food was at the top of my priority. I went with my travel partner, Spencer and we attacked whatever food that came across our paths. We started with something easy and nearby our hotel, BIB which stood for Break in Bangkok, a Thai Contemporary Cafe restaurant. The food there is a fusion of traditional Thai dishes mixed with modern, western influences, and the food there was so good, we had to return for more!