I attended my friend Bihzhu's latest mini concert about a month ago, going as an audience with a fixed seated position, so I thought I'd bring a minimal setup to grab some quick shots. I had with me the humble Olympus E-M10 original and 40-150mm F4-5.6 R, and I thought this combo performed incredibly well. We often think that we need the latest and greatest and most expensive gear to achieve great results, the truth is, knowing how to use your gear, shooting discipline and understanding the game are far more important than having the best gear. I got some shots from this session that I am quite happy with. I made a video to talk more about this (click). I am sharing the shots from that mini concert here. 

I miss shooting tennis. It has been years since I last caught a tournament live, and I am glad I shot the KL Open 2025, using this opportunity to test the new OM System 50-200mm F2.8 IS PRO. I find it strange that many reviewers or content creators tested this lens for wildlife photography. Not that the lens isn't suitable for wildlife, I thought it was also an awesome lens that can perform incredibly well shooting sports. It did deliver great results from the tennis sessions, and I got some keeper shots I was quite satisfied with. Continuing from the previous blog post (click), I am sharing more images taken with the OM System 50-200mm F2.8 PRO on my OM-1 in this entry. 

Special thanks to OM System Malaysia, I got the loaner OM System 50-200mm F2.8 IS PRO lens to play with over the weekend. Coincidentally, there was a local tennis tournament happening, so I brought the OM System 50-200mm PRO mounted on my OM-1 to shoot some sports action at the Kuala Lumpur Open 2025. With versatile zoom range, long focal length that reaches 200mm, constant F2.8 aperture and powerful stabilization, I find this to be an awesome lens for sports photography! I have also made a video about this session; you can check it out here (click). 

 People often overlook and underestimate what a kit lens can do, but I believe they are versatile and fully capable in delivering awesome results. Here is the harsh truth - even if you upgrade to the sharper, more expensive, higher PRO grade lens, it won't improve your photography a bit. The kit lens is often more than sufficient in most shooting scenarios, and I am proving that it can shoot beautiful images with my recent shutter therapy outings, using the Olympus M.Zuiko 12-50mm F3.5-6.3 on my Olympus OM-D E-M1 Original. I have also made a video to share my thoughts here (click). 

 The adventures with the fun toy camera, Kodak Charmera continues! This time, I brought it out to shoot some nice portraits of my friend, Lily and I thought it would be fun to try out the black and white feature this time. While the images do appear very low in resolution due to the 1.6MP sensor used in the Kodak Charmera, image quality isn't the priority of the session. I intentionally added coarse grain in post-processing to take off some of the artificial digital smearing of details, rendering less plasticky looking results. The unexpected outcome was that these images look like they were cut out from newspaper! Another day, another fun outing with the Kodak Charmera!

Olympus used to make some really unusual and useful attachments for their hotshoe accessory port back in the earlier days of Micro Four Thirds (as far back as E-P2). One of such products was the Macro Arm Light MAL-1, which has two flexible arms with adjustable LED light for small subject illumination. I recently found one and I just could not resist testing it for my usual macro shooting session. I found that the idea of the macro arm light was practical and helpful for macro shooting - flexible arms for precise lighting placement, two separate directional lighting sources with selectable brightness, no need for battery or charging as the power is drawn from the camera via hotshoe mount, and the overall package being so small and light, easy to carry and setup for use. However, it has one big flaw - the light is just not powerful enough for meaningful macro work that requires large magnification and deeper DOF, eg insect macro. Nevertheless, I did have fun shooting with it, and I am sharing some sample shots taken with the Olympus E-M1 OG, 60mm F2.8 Macro together with the Macro Arm Light MAL-1. I have also made a video on this topic here (click). 

I really cannot imagine myself buying and using a new Kodak camera in 2025, but here I am, with their latest release, the Kodak Charmera. This is a retro-styled plastic tiny toy camera that shoots a mere 1.6MP resolution images, in other words, Lo-Fi photography! Since the price was fairly cheap and I thought I could use the detox from all the gear technical obsession, I bpought the Kodak Charmera and thought it would be fun to bring it out on the streets for some shutter therapy. It was nice to just leave behind all the obsession on camera settings and getting the best results, and just snap away some Lo-Fi images that would make any pixel-peeper's eyes bleed. The images came out quite interesting, and I am sharing them in this blog entry. I made a video too, with POV view on the streets I was shooting, you can view it here (click).

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