ROBIN WONG

I bought the Panasonic Lumix LZ8 in 2009 (or was it 2010? Can't be 100% sure now) for construction site documentation use back in the days when I was still working as an engineer. Compared to the crappy cheap point and shoot compacts the company I worked for provided, the LZ8 had a few advantages to offer which were important to me - more zoom reach (5x zoom), full manual control (to accurately set the exposure) and improved image quality, with better resolution and dynamic range. As an engineer, high quality images were important for my site reports, and I purchased my own camera to fit these purposes. Fast forward to today, I still keep this camera round and it is still pretty much alive. I brought it out recently for some street shooting and I shared my experience here in my latest video (click). All the images show in this blog entry were taken with the same Lumix LZ8, but of course, more recently in Chow Kit, KL. 

I managed to get my hands on a loaned Sigma 30mm F1.4, and I thought it would be fun to attack the streets of Kuala Lumpur and grab some portraits of strangers. It is close to my favourite focal length 50mm equivalent to shoot on the streets, and the F1.4 bright aperture can create adequate shallow depth of field separation for my portraits. I mounted the Sigma 30mm F1.4 on my OM System OM-1 camera and did a POV street shooting video, which showed you what was happening around and in front of me before I clicked my shutter button for each shot. I thought the Sigma 30mm is a wonderful lens, great value for what it is and we do need more F1.4 lenses for Micro Four Thirds! Instead of making ridiculously expensive, and bulkier than necessary F1.2 lenses, I think F1.4 lenses make more sense in giving more advantage in light gathering, yet maintaining balance in size and weight. POV video can be found here (click). 

I decided to scratch my insect macro itch, so I went to the nearby park to grab some quick shots of whatever I can find there. Nothing out of the ordinary, just your usual garden bugs, if I wanted something more exotic I got to travel a lot further and deeper into the forest, which I did not intend to as I did not want to meet a mountain lion and get swallowed alive. Anyways, I brought the 7Artisans 60mm F2.8 Macro II lens and attached it onto my Olympus E-M1 Mark II, using my usual insect macro technique with wireless flash fired off camera and I had some shots that I was actually quite pleased with. I also made a video showcasing these shots, together with 5 tips for shooting awesome insect macro images, you can find the video here (click). 

The second lens that I purchased from Olympus was the Zuiko Digital 40-150mm F3.5-4.5 to accompany my kit lens for DSLR E-520. It was a versatile, budget telephoto zoom lens that I have used for many years, creating some wonderful shots. The lens has brighter than usual aperture of 3.5-4.5 versus the typical F4-5.6 options from other manufacturers when it comes to budget telephoto lenses, and I appreciate the ability to gather a little more light, negating the need to raise the ISO numbers unnecessarily. I still have the lens today, and I thought it would be fun to bring it out for another spin, this time mounting it on my OM System OM-1 camera. I went to the KL Bird Park to grab some cute bird photos! The AF was fast, bird AI subject detection tracking worked like a charm, the image quality still stands today, getting sharp, high contrast images, and I thought we should have a Micro Four Thirds update for this 40-150mm F3.5-4.5 budget lens! Video here (click), if you want to watch the whole shooting process.

I brought the 7Artisans 18mm F6.3 II body cap lens which I have purchased recently out for another spin during my shutter therapy session. I thought the almost 35mm equivalent focal length was quite a nice coverage for general street shooting. I have shared my early impressions on this lens before, so I am not going to repeat myself. I did dive in a little deeper in my latest video here (click). In short, I personally think 7Artisans outdid Olympus in their body cap lenses simply because they made them in full metal construction (Olympus had theirs in plastic) with full manual focusing ring which was so much easier to operate (versus Olympus variants having tiny lever for manual focus pull). I shall share some new images shot with the body cap lens on Olympus OM-D E-M10 (original) in this blog entry. 

I saw the Nikon ZF at the YL Photo Fair 2023, largest photo trade event in Malaysia and I asked the people from Futuromic (official distributor of Nikon, Malaysia) if I could have the ZF for a while on my own. They said yes! So I brought the Nikon ZF and Z 40mm F2 out for a quick test, and I managed to make a video to share some quick impressions on the camera (you can find the video here). I thought Nikon ZF will be a hit - they got everything right, nailing the retro inspired design, fitting in beefy specifications with AF system and processing power from their current flagship Z8, including powerful image stabilization which is optimized and linked to the AF target area and all this, in a package of asking price no more than the latest Micro Four Thirds cameras Panasonic G9 II and OM System OM-1. Yet the ZF is a full frame camera and I think this positions the camera extremely high in everyone's wishlist! Of course I cannot do a full review yet, as I only had the camera for less than an hour, and that is OK - it was good enough to convince me that Nikon is heading the right direction. This classic vintage camera design with modern specification strategy is clearly working - I almost, almost pre-ordered one myself. 

Last Tuesday (10 October 2023) I had the privilege to attend the YouTube Creator Day 2023 event at Google Office inside the Axiata Tower at KL Sentral. I thought it was not an everyday opportunity to get invited into the Google office and definitely a rare opportunity to connect to the key people at YouTube in person. It was a half day event, packed with dense information sharing about growing a channel, reading and better understaning the Analytics for strategy optimization purposes and there was also a panel speaker to share her tips and experience in growing her YouTube channel. Overall, it was like going back to class, sitting inside a lecture hall absorbing as much data as possible to be processed at a later date, and I wish they shared a little more on the monetization tips, but maybe next time they will. This was after all the first Creator Day after the pause due to the pandemic and lockdowns, and the last similar event I attended was in 2019. It was a fun experience, I did learn a thing or two and met some fellow Malaysian creators, none from the photography/camera crowd, but still cool to see everyone doing their own creative things!