ROBIN WONG

About a month plus ago my friend Kieron, the Leica Ambassador (IG @kieronlong72) was visiting Kuala Lumpur and we did a short casual portrait shooting session with the awesome model friend, Wendy. The location was Tamarind Square, and I brought along the Canon 5D original with a cheap USD20 lens mounted on it, the old 50mm F1.8 II. There was nothing to write home about the lens, the build quality is bad, feels plasticky, the AF hunts, image quality was ok, not super sharp and optically it comes with some flaws like distortion, corner softness and purple fringing. You get what you pay for, and for a cheap lens, the nifty fifty delivered really good results, and I actually enjoyed shooting with it! I won't recommend this for serious professional use, but for a fun casual shoot, why not? I did a POV video here (click) for the session. I am sharing the images in this blog entry!

Many, many years ago I purchased the Panasonic GM1, loved the camera but sold it off to fund for the Olympus PEN E-P5, which was in every way an upgrade, except for compactness in size and weight. I did regret that decision, I genuinely loved having an incredibly small camera that houses full size Micro Four Thirds image sensor and can take all my lenses with no issue. Very recently I found a used unit in the marketplace and at a price I just cannot refuse! Boy oh boy, was I so excited to reacquire the GM1, and I could not wait to do some shutter therapy with it. 

I did a POV street shooting video with the GM1 here (click). 

I recently purchased a cheap Yongnuo 35mm F2 for about USD40. I wanted a 50mm equivalent lens for my Nikon D50, because 50mm is my favourite focal length for street photography. I brought the D50 and Yongnuo 35mm to Malacca streets over one weekend and did some street shooting there. I also recorded a POV video to show you what happened around and in front of me as I clicked the shutter button. You can find the POV video here (click). 

The most common obsession I have observed among photographers is to get clean high ISO shooting, and using Micro Four Thirds system is not exactly giving the best results as we know, full frame systems are superior when it comes to low light shooting. I am here to say this - do not let the limitation stop you or restrict your ability to capture great images. With or without noise, the images are more than just pixels and grains, what truly matters in photography are the subject content in the images, the expression and emotions and ultimately in many situations, the strong decisive moment. If you have all these even though your images are plagued with high ISO noise, you still deliver great results. 

Finally after a long search I found a used Olympus PEN E-P1 and I am loving it! It came with the Panasonic 25mm F1.7, which I did not need but the seller refused to sell the camera and lens separately. I thought this would be a great opportunity to shoot with the E-P1, and then explore the Panasonic 25mm which some of my audience have been asking me to. I brought the E-P1 to the Pudu Market in Kuala Lumpur, which is my favourite street hunting ground and did a POV video to show how I capture my shots. The video has been published, you can find it here (click). 

While testing the OM System 20mm F1.4 PRO for my review, I went to the part and did a casual lifestyle portrait shoot. The beautiful talent was Melanie, whom was such a joy to work with and the whole session was arranged by dear friend and Leica Ambassador, Kieron Long. I took this opportunity to do a POV video as well to show a bit of what happened behind the scenes, what's in front and around my camera and bits and pieces of my small interactions with the model during the shoot. You can find the POV video here (click). As for the rest of this blog entry, I shall just spam the portrait images I have shot with the OM System 20mm F1.4 PRO on my own OM-D E-M1 Mark III camera. 

I always say that I prefer 50mm equivalent focal length for street photography or anything longer for portraits, but whenever I am not doing street or anything too serious, as a casual shooting lens I'd like something wider. Hence the hunt for a wider lens/camera combo began some time ago, starting with Fuji XF10 (28mm equiv lens), then there was Fuji X100F (35mm equiv) and a few other experimentations along the way. I recently found myself loving the Canon EF 35mm F2 on the dinosaur Canon 5D. Nothing to write home about this combo, but it just works. The images came out looking beautiful, the full frame produces just enough shallow depth of field to isolate my subjects yet maintaining a rather wide angle composition, and the prime lens kept the camera setup still relatively small and manageable. 

I went to Kuantan over a weekend which I have vlogged here (Part 1 and Part 2). For this blog entry, I am sharing some casual, random snapshots I took from the Canon 35mm lens! Nothing beats no-stress, spontaneous shutter clicking action from time tot time.