D-Lighting on the Nikon S210

I took these pictures around the city with the Nikon S210. I was playing around with the D-Lighting feature.

Active D-Lighting is the name for the software program which automatically adjusts shadows, highlights, colours and therefore contrasts. It’s very good at adjusting dark shadows without adjusting the highlights so the dark parts of your picture become lighter.

Newer Nikon cameras now have this software built in. This is also sort a way of increasing the dynamic range of a photograph. These photos were taken from the inside of the car so any reflections in the photos are caused by the car window.

Luna

I felt so annoyed that I didnt have a DSLR handy when I spotted the moon like this. I had to borrow my mum's Nikon Coolpix compact camera to take this picture. I think the exposure was about 1 second at ISO 800. Look at all the noise. If only I could have set the camera shutter to 2 seconds at least, then I didnt have to set such high ISO. [compact cameras usually dont allow manual exposure settings]

In the five minutes that I tried to get a clear shot of the moon, I propped the camera on the car roof as sort of a stabiliser. It took so many shots and this was the clearest one. Even so, the moon is still slightly misshapen because of the movement of my hands. After five minutes, the clouds around the moon had shifted and gradually dissapeared.

Anyways, I still like the picture. It was such a starry night :)

Pastel Colors of the Evening Sky

These are the photos I took with the Nikon D200. I used a Nikon DX VR 18-200mm F3.5-5.6 lens for these.

You don't always have to use a wide angle lens to shoot the sky. You can also try longer focal lengths and still get great results :)

You'll Never Break Me

No thief can stop me. Yeah okay im very sad my laptop and my DSLR got stolen. Its not going to be the end of my photography. Far from it. My passion aint stolen :). Some day the thief will regret it. Because what goes around, comes around. :)

This is a photo I took [with the Canon EOS 1000d] last year of my neighbor, Bernard Klassen. I never really got to post it because I had forgotten all about it. It was buried in the desktop at home which I currently have to use now. The editing was inspired by advertising posters that I see around shopping malls. :)

Im temporarily being lent a Nikon D200. My blog lives on. :)

Photos from the D200 will be in the next post :)

The End for Now

Hi all... im not posting any pictures here now because... well there isnt anything to post. Its 12am now and I am so exhausted. [Please bear with this because this is a long story]

Few hours ago tonight... while I was at church attending a prayer group, something happened. As we were leaving the room, someone was saying "somebody's car got broken into!" and then was saying out my mums car number. I feared the worst. I had left my laptop and my DSLR in the car while I was in the church. I ran towards where the car was parked and there were two police men talking to a lady and when I looked at my mums car, the back window had been opened and the space where I had left my things were empty. I felt numb. I didnt know what to think. ALL my schoolwork, photos, memories, all were in that laptop. It didnt really sink in after a couple of minutes and I had realised that tears were rolling down my face.

Its a little too late for "why did you leave it in the car?" I was asking myself the same question. Earlier before we left the house I noticed I had grabbed my laptop and my camera with me into the car because I had an uneasy feeling. I actually didnt want to go out tonight because I felt strange. Probably out of paranoia since the last time my house was broken into, I never liked to leave my stuff at home. But this time, I took it for granted that I was in the church so I felt it was safe to leave the stuff on the floor the car, hidden only in the shadows. Truth was really, This week I have been quite forgetful because there has been so much going on, I cant really think straight at times.

I asked the lady that the police men were talking to "what happened?" and she told me that the thief had also broken into her car. The worst part is, she was all alone after she helped clean up the church canteen and was searching for her car key when the thief had approached her with a knife and threatened her to hand over her hand bag. She gave the hand bag to the man and the man drove off in a white Toyota Avanza. She didnt catch the plate number because it was too dark. I was thinking, thank God she didnt get stabbed. I later discovered at the police station that she was the mother of a friend of mine. What a coincidence.

Anyways,

I got home after the police report and I had already changed every email, facebook, etc. password that I know of.

Well now Im not sure what to do next. Just wait and see maybe. I hope I can sleep tonight. I just thank God nobody got hurt.

Till next time then. :(

Kitty Cat

Just a few photos I took of a stray cat. This one is really good at posing.

Today was fun, played futsal at 4pm, and scored lotsa goals :) Im so hungry now, theres gonna be dinner soon and I cant wait :). Still got a report to do for my assignment and it looks like this week is gonna be one of the busiest.

Garden Photos

Here are a few photos that I have taken from the garden around my house. I have been really busy this week and I haven't been getting enough sleep so I have been quite cranky.
Its really fun going around the garden and zooming up close into the plants\flowers because its just a whole new perspective out there.

This time around, I tried to get creative with some shapes and lines.

Im really tired now and Im not sure what more to write so, adios amigos!.

Perseid Meteor Shower

Looking up at the sky with my neighbor on the roof of his house this morning at around 1.10am , with my camera set on a tripod, we began scanning the skies just staring for any sign of the meteor shower. Whether or not it is viewable in Malaysia, we dont know, but we just kept looking, taking pictures of the sky in the hopes that one of those meteors might make its appearance in the frame.

We started talking about ghost stories because we got bored after the first half hour. The clouds cleared up and more stars came into view. There were more stars in the images than we thought we saw in the sky.

In the end, at around 2.30am we called it quits and decided to go back inside to get some shut eye. We never got to see any of the meteors and got no pictures of them in the end. Just a couple of pictures of stars and the view from the roof. :)

Maybe there will be some that will make their appearance over the next few days and hopefully I can snap an image of one.

Update: We were staring at the wrong part of the sky... we were facing west and south most of the time because the north was blocked by the house and roof so we couldnt get any shots in that direction.

Kingston SDHC Ad

Again, I made an ad for the a SDHC (Secure Digital High Capacity) card that I just bought two days ago at the PC Fair in the Sabah Trade Center. The morning I arrived there, It was jam packed with people waiting in front of the door even before it was open. It took me a couple of rounds around the place before I found a booth that sells SDHC cards so I just bought it from there.

Finally now I can take more RAW pictures without having to worry about not having enough space for other photos :)


SDHC(Secure Digital High Capacity) Cards come in different speeds which are divided into three classes:
Class 2 - guaranteed minimum DataTransferRate 2MB/sec.
Class 4 - guaranteed minimum DataTransferRate 4MB/sec.
Class 6 - guaranteed minimum DataTransferRate 6MB/sec.

[Note: Sandisk Extreme III SDHC Cards can go up to 30mb/s]

The SDHC Card above was taken on a piece of white paper and then edited with Adobe Photoshop.

Trip To Manukan Island

A few days ago, I went to Manukan Island. It was my first time there XD and it was also my first time on a speedboat :p it was fun, though it was a really bumpy ride. The island isnt really what I expected it to be... there were so many people there. I sort of expected it to be almost empty, and the beach to be a little bigger. Also, I dont think the RM4 spent on a plain "cheese" sandwich from the island food stall was really worth it. The weather was really hazy, you could just make out the parasailers on the nearby island. They looked like colorful UFOs :D

That said, the island was quite relaxing, The breeze made me feel sleepy though it could have been caused by something in the haze... There were tourists playing soccer there. I felt like joining them, but then I realised I was the only person in the island wearing long trousers. [I dont even remember why I considered wearing long trousers to an island]

Oh yeah! and there were these two really miserable old ladies, no doubt related, who kept rudely shoving me out of their way as if there was no more space to walk. I mean, like come on, was it really impossible to say the words "excuse me". Everytime they went past me they deemed it necessary to just shove me out of their way even until we were back in KK. I wont deny that I had a sudden urge to just shove the both of them into the sea. hahahahaha. just kidding. ahem...

Anyways, these are the photos from the Island :) Kinda lost for inspiration, didnt come up with too many ideas for poses. I got really bored after the shoot and started drawing random stuff in the sand.

Model: Mona Isley

Sutera Harbour [Evening Shots]

These are the photos from the shoot last Saturday evening at Sutera Harbour :)

FYI [The shoot is strictly just for fun and experience] There are more but then these are the best of the bunch. xD I felt pretty much on my game this time around :p It was actually super hazy that day the sky was quite overcast. It really never hit me what a good place Sutera Harbour is for a shoot.

As you can see we shot from evening till night.We shot at night using our pop-up flashes to light each other's portraits since we dont have shoe flashes. All we needed was a slow shutter and we synchronised our shots together just by counting to three. The last photo is probably my best done HDR and tone mapped picture at the moment.

Lots of thanks to Cheryl [my sister], Joanna, and Esther for volunteering to be models. Well done :)