I do travel rather frequently for work, as well as back to my hometown Kuching from Kuala Lumpur and I absolutely cannot survive anywhere without good audio. I have had some good headphones with me, but the experience of listening to music over the air in the openness is a joy that I must have. However, having spent quite a fair bit on headphones, I thought I should look at budget-friendly portable speakers that can still pack a punch and deliver powerful sound that I desperately need. After much Google-ing around, I found Thonet & Vander, a German brand that specializes in consumer audio equipment. The particular speakers I was looking at was Thonet & Vander Frei.



Hey beautiful Kuching people!

My friend Hameer Zawawi, a local singer-songwriter is currently in the midst of his "Plug Out The Machines Tour" around Malaysia and guess what, the next stop will be in Kuching! He will be performing at the ground floor of Haus Kuching alongside some awesome local bands such as Nading Rhapsody. Event starts at 730pm till late. 

I have known Hameer for several years now, following his gigs around KL before he made it to the US and disappeared for a year. I fell in love with his non-mainstream yet still totally relate-able music, featuring his hauntingly powerful and soulful vocals. He has songs about TV shows, zombies and video games! Honestly, I have missed Hameer's live performance so much because he went on tour to the US for a year and was just back to KL very recently. It was indeed so refreshing to hear Hameer perform on stage again, and wow, now in a full band!
You may have seen Carmen on my review entries before, especially when I was testing new lenses or cameras. Carmen has always been generous to volunteer as my test subject for the new equipment that I was reviewing, and put up with my noobness in portrait photography. She always did her best and eventually has helped many of my reviews significantly over the years. When we (her friends) heard of the news that she is leaving Malaysia soon, we decided to do a surprise farewell dinner for her.

Carmen in my recent Olympus OM-D E-M10 Mark III review. Image shot with the Olympus M.Zuiko 75mm F1.8 lens. 

I have been playing with colors all the time recently in all my images that somehow it felt that I have neglected black and white photography. I do love shooting black and white, just that I seem to appreciate colors more these days. However, when I saw the opportunity to create a black and white portrait of a friend yesterday while encountering dramatic lighting by the window, how could I resist? Sometimes, all you have to do to find inspiration is to observe how the light falls in place.

Portrait of a friend. 
Robert Evangelista (he is also an avid Olympus enthusiast)

This portrait shot was taken with the Motorola G5S Plus. There was not much post-processing done, except to boost contrast and deepen the shadows. The available light was working great to create a dramatic effect on Robert, highlighting the side profile of his face. 

Now I know what my mission is for my next shutter therapy session. To see everything in black and white. I shall even set the EVF/Live View monitor to fully black and white view (switching the picture mode to black and white) and compose my images without the presence of colors. Some images, especially the one portrait of Robert shown above, just stood out particularly well in black and white. 
Tomorrow, I will be conducting my first ever post-processing workshop for Olympus RAW files using specifically the Olympus Viewer 3 software. I am both extremely excited and nervous at the same time, as I have not done this before, and I am showing my own RAW images in the live demonstration on how I achieve the "Robin Wong" look for the first time to an audience.

Selected RAW images for the Post-Processing workshop demonstration


I acknowledge the Olympus Viewer 3 is not the most user friendly software and it is so sluggish that it makes any grown man cry after using this software just for a little while. I would not recommend Olympus Viewer 3 for serious professional use, as it is resource hungry and it is just too slow for anything productive, especially dealing with a huge batch of images (wedding/event or sports shooters). I am not sure why Olympus could not make it any more efficient, it is surely just some programming optimization and even the fastest computer now will struggle with the use of Olympus Viewer 3, doing something so basic such as white balance tweaking.

So why the post-processing workshop with Olympus Viewer 3? The software ihas basically the same JPEG engine built into Olympus cameras, the Truepic engine, which renders the magical Olympus colors which I have worked with all these years, producing beautiful, life like colors and pleasing skin tones. Furthermore, having fully automated lens technical flaw controls (CA, distortion, etc), sharpness and details optimization as well as excellent built in noise reduction for high ISO images, I have not really found any other software that can get so much out of Olympus RAW files. The magic sauce that everyone is asking me all these years, how to achieve the kind of look in my images? The answer has always been openly obvious, I did most of my post-processing work with Olympus RAW files on Olympus Viewer 3.

If only we can somehow get Olympus to significantly improve the Viewer 3's operational speed and performance, at least good enough for commercial use.... One can only dream.


Thank goodness for beautiful weather in my hometown Kuching when I was back there a few days ago, and I managed to get some quick shooting done, further testing the newly acquired Motorola G5S Plus. I met up with local Kuching photographers, Jee and Lance, whom I had my street photography exhibitions with last year and together we attacked Kuching. The sky was blue, the light was fantastic and I was just so happy to be home and breathing the fresh air of Borneo, away from overly polluted metropolitan Kuala Lumpur.

Lets start with a hearty bowl of Sarawak Kolo Mee, which we had for breakfast. I know I have said this before, but I cannot over emhpashize that any resemblance or clone variant of Kolok Mee found in West Malaysia should be avoided like a plague at all costs. The only real Sarawak Kolo Mee comes from Sarawak. Do not try it elsewhere. 
So it is the season again to hunt and showcase night sky photographs, and my social media feeds are filled with milky way shots from all over Malaysia. Unfortunately, my recent attempt to get a milky way image was a failure due to cloudy sky and also excessive light pollution. With nothing to show, being desperate, I dug out my old milky way photos from yesteryears and shared them, for the fear of missing out. All jokes aside, it was fun to find the older milky way shots I have done while I was reviewing the OM-D E-M5 Mark II and the 7-14mm F2.8 PRO lens several years ago!


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