ROBIN WONG

When someone adds the title "expert" to what they do, that places that person in a higher regard, and an almost dangerous position to be scrutinized more closely. That also leaves less room for error. It is interesting to observe how many "experts" popping up out of nowhere, and when the information that they share are nothing more than just half-truths and twisted facts that were modified so meticulously to serve their own agenda or push their own narrative, I just have this itch to write something down here. Strangely, I have more and more things to say recently, the up surge of blog articles certainly proves that. In this entry, I want to talk about a person whom I will not name (and shame), and how I find his sharing misleading and can be to a certain degree, damaging to the community.

Less than a week ago, OM Digital Solution released their latest flagship camera - the OM System OM-1 Mark II, which effectively superseded the original OM-1 which was launched just about 2 years ago. I am not here to comment much about the product, a lot has been said already online everywhere, whether positive or negative reaction, I believe most of them are valid, it depends on which camp you belong to, and your reasons for supporting or going against the OM-1 Mark II's product strategy. I am less interested to explore this divisive topic, but I do want to share an interesting observation about the launch of the OM-1 Mark II itself with the lack of online coverage, both from the usual mainstream photography media and independent content creators. This I believe, points to a larger issue that the company, OM Digital Solutions is facing, and not working with the media and independent photographers was a huge, huge mistake. 

Last weekend, I was out and about with some friends, on my last street photography outing before I take a long break for the Chinese New Year holidays. I am flying home to Kuching, Borneo for about two weeks, and I won't be doing much photography there, it will be prioritized for family and friends, especially for dear mum. In this final outing, I brought out a cheap old compact camera I got from the local buy-sell marketplace, and there is always that risk of the camera dying, and it just did! The camera can turn on and all, but every image it took was over-exposed. It could be due to faulty shutter mechanism, or aperture blades being stuck, I had no idea what happened, but the bottom-line was - the camera was no use. I put the camera back in its bag and whipped out my smartphone instead. And I continued snapping away. 

The main YouTube Channel has just surpassed 75,000 subscribers count, and this is a good reason for celebration! When I started the channel 4 years ago, it seemed like reaching big numbers like 100k was almost impossible. Now that we are three quarters along the way, suddenly 100k seems like an attainable number! It is amazing to look back, as I started writing about my adventures in photography here in this blog more than 10 years ago, which transitioned to me making YouTube videos in 2019, and now the channel is growing steadily, with consistent influx of audience coming in watching every single week, I would never have imagined myself having such a platform to engage with an audience. 

So thank you so much, whoever you are, reading this blog, watching my videos on YouTube, you have just made my day! 

Nothing much will change moving forward. I am still a full time photographer first, and content creator second. I earn a living by shooting paid jobs for my clients, and with my spare time I make videos to share about my passion on all things photography, and also I write here whenever I can. As long as I am passionate about shooting, and doing my shutter therapy, I will continue to speak and share as much as I can!

I recently swapped 50mm lenses with my friend Jackie - he took my Nikon 50mm F1.8 D, and I took his Nikon 50mm F1.4 D. When I saw the 50mm F1.4, I was actually surprised at how small it was, the size was about the same as the F1.8 version. If they can make such small lenses back then, why are the newer 50mm lenses on modern mirrorless cameras, such as Panasonic S 50mm F1.8 and Nikon Z 50mm F1.8 so monstrous in size? I thought they could have been at least half in size and weight! Some may argue that we need better, sharper optics for modern image sensor higher demands, but that is just crazy, 50mm is supposed to be a small and fun lens to carry around! Anyways, I went to Pudu, KL with the 50mm F1.4 on my Nikon D600 and did some POV street shooting. This was the last POV video I recorded on my DJI Action 2, before I sold it off. Any future POV videos will be shot on my new DJI Pocket 3. You can check out the POV video here (click). In this blog, I am just sharing some fun street images from the Nikon 50mm F1.4, which I think is the right size for a 50mm lens!

My birthday was on 26 December, but everyone was crazy busy so the celebration with friends got delayed by almost a month. To me, I am so thankful that my friends so still remember, care and to take some of their time to celebrate with me. The older I get, the more I realize that the most valuable thing you can give someone is your time. We went to a BBQ Korean restaurant and had a feast, which consisted of what Jason called it "meat, meat and MORE meat". I have turned 39, it s the end of one decade for me, and honestly I am not sure how to feel when I turn 40 in less than a year! Whatever that has happened, I am truly thankful to be alive, and I am excited to continue on this journey of discovering myself, and growing to be a better person. I have so much more to do, and I felt like my life has just begun. Special thanks to Spencer, Jason and Gan for the awesome, sinful dinner. I have probably gained 10kg from that one seating alone. Time to hit the gym harder, maybe next week. I have also vlogged about this partcular celebration outing, you can check out the video here (click). 

I recently acquired the Panasonic Lumix 100-300mm F4-5.6 lens for a specific job that required me to shoot from quite a distance. The lens performed well and I got some satisfactory shots which I have delivered to my client. I thought I'd take this opportunity to do a little more with the lens and share some thoughts I had about the budget super telephoto zoom lens from Panasonic. Obviously I cannot share the shots from my job, it would be unethical for me to do so, this is a situation where the client does appreciate some privacy. So I went to the Kuala Lumpur Bird Park, as usual with any long lenses and grabbed some cute bird shots with the lens. I also did a video to share some quick thoughts, you can find the video here (click).