XX changed blogskin inspires me

Not until Lorjean informed me, I never know XX changed her blog skins. Now with all the girly girly stuff going on there, pinkish pinkish and dick VS vick (purposely spell wrongly) all about XX for life. Its super no life watching her blog already. Anyway, her design was better than the previous one, however some of her picture looked dreadfully blondy. But still, she had inspired me to "upgrade" my blog skin. Using default skin for the time being.

Anyway, I had an insomnia yesterday night, probably due to all the late night over the weekend. My weekend wasn't awesome but wasn't bad either. Went to critic food again, and I start feeling like a spendthrift already. Too much money had been spent impulsively over unavailing items. This kind of mentality must stop already.

Australian had been bashing Indian over at Melburne. Will they bash up the chinese?? I got a feeling that chinese are invading them slowly like how China Republic Citizen had been invading us slowly. More and more Singaporeans are migrating to Australia, so probably they already see us pain in the neck. Why must all my trip ends like that sia. Thailand trip that time was cancelled also. Now H1N1 virus in Australia is on the rise. Currency had growing bigger for them, smaller for us, so is there anything to devastate me somemore?

Anyway, visa approved but lodging had not been settled yet. Tired to do anything...

Fujifilm S1500 picture sample

Miranda relentlessly psycho me not to buy second hand. Now I brought a brand new set liao. Happy already??? (nevertheless I still thinks second hand are more worthy). Reason for buying new one not because I had been convinced to, but because I really find some good deal on new set.


Proudly present, Fujifilm Finepix S1500, prosumer camera which comes between point and shoot and DSLR. More manual setting compare to "Sa Kua Ji" but len not as define as DSLR.

I am considerated amatuer photographer, neither am I very passionate to go into digital arts but the fact that I always like to try out new things precursored me to buying such expensive ($388) all inclusive camera.

Fujifilm S1500 although made in china, but among its class, it offers the lowest budget with much option to play around with. My majority interest was it mega zoom ability.

With its 12x optical plus 5.7x digital zoom, typically a good range for me. Anymore zooming is not practical as picture taken sure blur unless you use a tripod. Len fully zoom almost longer than my erection -_-'''

So without further ado, let's see what I had taken for the past 2 days. All pictures below will be taken with Finepix S1500 resizing to 600 x 400 for width band consideration. Reso taken at 5mp unless otherwise stated.

First see protrait... Me and Hari... we looks like the "Dua ah peh" and "Di ah peh" I turning whiter and whiter since working at Changi, and slightly fatter also.

Chinese corner.. Shan Feng on the back and Zhang Hao at the fore front. Then yandao in the center :)

One thing I find very useful is when you need to zoom in to better focus on your object. You see the tiny Winny red box. With 12x zoom you get this:

Of course if you like, you still can focus in some more using digital zoom with some pixel compensation. Well far or not, you judge for yourself.

Okie, funny thing. You don't want what you can find at the construction site.

What's all this yellow things on the floor, zoom in a little....


"What lah. Can't see... Zoom in some more can?"

Is this fucking close enough? Okie it is taken with super marco. Basically you can take 0cm away from the len. Am I so lucky to find DIY beads at the construction site. Of course free, so let's get to work and see what can I made out of construction resources???

WAH LAU!!!!! Si Not BAD de LaH.... Help my blog promote a bit. End product looks like a hand phone strip or a key chain. Really very nice lah.

Day shoot of course the camera handled like breeze, but more tricky when comes to the night shot. You need to do a little bit setting before you can get a vivid bright night shoot.

Though the len doesn't have really good field of depth, like making the object really stands out from the background which you can easily achieved by using DSLR. Prosumer camera do give some entry level tweak that makes your picture stand out a little bit more compared to point and shoot.

One technique I was exploring is the slow shutter panning. You uses slow shutter to blur background while panning on a object to try to achieve a sharper focus. Like that one below.

Its hard to get the cyclist focused cause you have to pan precisely with the cyclist speed.

Or like this one where the focusing was on the lorry and background deliberately made blur to stimulate object on the move.

Very slow shutter speed like this one I uses 6 sec to create clear night mode without the interference of moving car, cause the car is too fast to be captured on camera due to long shutter.

Last but not least, tweaking aperture and focus point.

p/s: my mother watching funshion on my laptop..... till I polish up my photographic skill, I shall post again.

Best camera from different class

So vexed about which camera to buy for Australia trip. I tried YS Powershot S5 IS. A middle class ultra zoom of 12x, too much option for operation, driving me crazy. Fine, so I decided.. Go for point and shoot camera better, auto setting is the easiest to use. However I would like to leave my manual setting option open, in additional I would like to have it running on AA battery.

Filter, filter ......

Canon Powershot A2100, with 6x optical zoom... okie lah...

Okie, camera chosen. Shall we come back to mobile camera... *roll eye*

Tala~ Presenting the best 5mp till date, outbid even some 8mp phone (self proclaiming)

Still my lovely N82. My passion of love grew exponentially, day after day. Bring on any 5mp phone and do a shot comparison, I shall knock you out before you your len locks a focus. No lah, on a serious note, I really can't find a better 5mp phone. Because I would already be changing to that if I can find. However, SE is coming out with a cybershoot C901 which offers 5mp plus a xenon flash. No carrier in Singapore yet.. But I might go buy once it release because my contact ending soon.

C901 demo (1:03)

Hmmm, however if you are looking for elite 3.2mp camera phone. Let me guide you with my experiences. Go for K800i or K810i ($110 and $140) respectively on Ebay. Looking for best overall 3.2mp performance go for Nokia 6500 slide, $160 on Ebay. Why Nokia 6500... Solid build, loud ringtone, decent battery life, very good camera with double led light plus sleek and professional looking. Best review for 3.2mp phone, go gsmarena.com for review if you doubt me.


C905 kicks in 8.1mp phone top chart due to its interface and xenon flash.

Oh in case you want to know the best 2.0mp phone. I tell you its SE k750i. Really very very good 3 years back.

Ya, as fast as I can recall that's all the top notch camera phone from different class. Exclude 1.3mp and 0.3mp as I think no one bothered to know anyway.

p/s: Noted that T3 magazine rate N82 at 5th position below zn5 which stands at 3rd place. Here

Which camera should I buy?

I plus noodle, $3.00
My mother ordered normal, $2.50

I don't think there is a big difference except one more 'wan tan' and 3 pieces of 'char siew'. The store auntie previous life must be a cat. Sibei niao eh leh.


So long never see my Spark 135 liao right..

Money hard to earn, work like a dog, with only $500 a month. And this month I going to spend it on camera. Sure not enough, somemore must top up a bit one.

I going oversea, Bendigo soon. I don't often go oversea, so that's a rare opportunity definitely. I hope to capture all the nice moment on digital. Thou my N82 will be nice plus, but it serve only as a point and shoot.

I going to skip compact point and shoot digital cam. N82 aptly perform to my expectation. My friend, please advice me on what type of camera to buy.

Middle class super zoom camera? (zoom to 12x optical) lens cannot be replaced..

or

Digital SLR (better quality) but need to carry a lot of stuff..

Advise

Prawn fishing at Bishan Park

After researching from the internet for best location to prawning, Li ping and I decided to go Bishan park. Or rather I am the only one who was making the decision.


Hai Bin U Enterprise
Prawn Fishing in Bishan Singapore
603, Sin Ming Avenue
Singapore 575735
Tel/Fax: +65-6554-1986

$15 - 1hr
$25 - 2hr
$30 - 3hr

Bus numbers 130, 410, 162, 52 stop along Sin Ming Ave
Bus numbers 13, 74, 88, 130, 851, 852 stop along Marymount Rd.

I virgin prawning experience last night was fun and sian at the same time, because if the prawn hook your bait, you are happy. Otherwise its sian. You have to literally stare blankly at the float. A dip into the water tells you that prawn is nibbling on your bait, and you have to 'shoot' at the right timing.
The whole 6 hours you will have nothing that interest you, except the dip of the floater. Even with so many pretty girl, they failed in grabbing any of my attention. I want my monster prawn tonight!

Basically we were both inexperience, the caught rate was fucking pathetic. After one hour plus before we bait our first prawn, by the look of my face you would tell that I wasn't rather impressed by my catch. ikan bilis -_-'''

Slowly only we got a little experience, the caught rate increased a bit. A kind 'Ali' came and taught us tactic on how to catch the prawn. He came in like, "you see ar.. you this this this, you that that that" tala... he caught one lah. Like only 2 minutes including all his lecturing and demonstrating.

Our first 3 hours session, we managed to catch around 12 maybe, didn't really count it. But on another note, I catch a monster prawn. How should I say, eh... I think maybe 16 - 20 cm.

Had a tough fight with it, the prawn keep using its pincer to 'kiap' me. Pain!!

Li Ping the whole night didn't manage to unhook the bait from the prawn after the catch. She scare of pincer and the prawn flick made her scream and run to the back of the chair. Now drawing all the people attention to us.

We booked 2 session, total 6 hours. The last 3 hours catch was worst, like maybe 5 or 6 small prawn only. We were both tired cause our session ended at 3:50am in the morning!

For animal lovers, you are advised to skip the allowing. Or you can read on for more details on how I torture the innocent looking prawn. Pay back time!!! ( for pinching my hand )

We proceeded to wash the prawn with fresh water and prepare some satay sticks. You seizure the prawn firmly in your palm like how you hold a tennis racket. Be cautious of the amount of pressure you apply, too much you see the prawn starts puking bubbles at its mouth. You don't want to kill it before it's placed onto the BBQ mesh. You wants it to be in its 'freshest' stage.

Pick up a satay stick can poke its candy ass all the way through till you hit the skull of the prawn. If you can't find the candy ass, you can poke anywhere you like, the groin, the stomach, the back but ending you just have to go all the way into the head. This is to prevent the prawn from dancing DDR on the BBQ mesh. After poking, apply salt to increase its pain to the max. Okie lah, the people told us its for freshness of the meat, but I don't know how applying salt on wound can increase freshness.

1 prawn done.

Repeat as many time until you sian, you can start to try poking its head first, working your way back to the candy ass.


Place all prawn onto the mesh, they still moving lah. But we took unusually long time to cook the prawn, oh the charcoal not hot yet lah. How cumbersome, you mean you have to work on the fire first? Oh!!!

So we left the half cook, half alive prawn aside. We start the charcol first.

The pit is hot with the radiating fire, we took about 15 minutes to heat up the charcoal, meanwhile some of the prawn still wondering why half of its body is turning red color.

Now with enough heat, BBQing is done as quickly as possible to minimize the suffering. Excluding the 15 minute of wrong demonstration.

Monster prawn is now cooked.

Proudly present my biggest monster prawn to records. Plus the pincer, its twice as big as my over sized N82.

I am very good, I share my monster prawn with Li Ping. She doesn't looks happy eating her small prawn.. Wah. I cannot describe, sibei succulent ar.

Some other alternate prawn fishing location

• Punggol Prawning
• Jurong Hill Prawn Fishing & Beer Garden
• Bishan Hai Bin Enterprise

p/s: ** Pictures for this post is taken with Li Ping's zn5, because she didn't charge up my N82 :(

zn5 vs n82, who better??

Tonight there will be a fight out between 2 top notch mobile claiming to be pioneer mobile producer. Motorola zn5 vs Nokia N82. Both company were among the first to reproduce handphone years ago.

Accredit to Chin Liping for generously lending her new brought for me to compare between my N82. Her K810i obviously would only try to chase my tail light was now out of the whole picture. Really compare with K810i really no kick.

Before we start off our one on one, I would like to point out that both camera was really really good. Both have their strong points and bad points. zn5 was its unbelievable shutter focus, shot to shot less than 0.5 sec. Shot to shot I mean from time taken to focus to the next shot. N82 was basically good and vibrant color be it day shoot and night shoot but then, focusing to shot to save about 2 - 3 sec. But still very fast if you compare to other model of Nokia.

Marco Shoot with flash fight 15cm


N82 takes very good marco, color was vibrant and sharp through a bit over saturated. Xenon flash was very well spread and picture was not over exposed by its flash.

zn5 marco loss out a little on this field. Although color was natural without much deviant from the actual stuff, but flash was more concentrated at a particular section.

p/s: to take note that the picture object difference in material, one is mat while one is shiny, so you can't really compare as there might be reflection interference.

N82 Marco with flash

zn5 Marco with flash

ZN5 flash sometime will get overexposed when in marco.. sometime only

Marco Shoot without flash 15cm
n82

zn5

Very close Marco, less then 5cm
n82
zn5

Flash shoot

N82
zn5
under low light without flash, both is good, but zn5 seems a little little noiser. 100% crop

Food moderate distance
n82, I like its takes nicer food picture
zn5, not bad but i think it losses to N82

n82 100% cropzn5 food 100% crop

Total darkness indoor shoot




N82 take total darkness like breeze, it effective lit up a whole bedroom

zn5 flash was a bit too high, it looks like it was taken in the day. Pro and Con depending on your situation. I guess it do a equally well job.

It easy to compare how both these phone handle low light condition by zooming it to 100%. This is the actual size zoomed at 100%. zn5 on the right won by displaying lesser noise to N82 on the left.

Low night without flash light

n82 handle low light without flash better.

zn5 low light wasn't as bright as n82

N82 low light without flash 100% crop

zn5 low light without flash 100% crop

n82 lost in this one due to out of focus..

zn5 winner but I think a bit no point also

Document

n82

zn5

Night mode scenery
N82 night mode was clear and has relatively low level of noise.

zn5 night mode was brighter, but color more saturated

Conclusion

For conclusion is that, there still ain't no conclusion. That's no clear cut winner. In term of camera,

I would prefer zn5 for its quick focus but I have to live with its short coming on low light shooting condition, furthermore its battery life was slightly better than n82. Did I mention that its has very very good quality for music play back through earpiece??

N82, 'wan neng shuo ji wang'. Every function on the phone above average but I had to live with its size.

After reading this, what do you think?