I'm Gonna Splurge!

Merry Christmas Everyone!!

Sorry, it has been some delay in that. Anyone I appreciated the gifts I got :) Thanks yo!

Just to sum up my holiday, it has been one of the most mundane 1 ever. Very unfortunate bout that. In no particular order of events:

• Work (both at office and programme)
• At home (online, sleep, 'nurturing' my soul...yeah rite, lol)
• Photo outing (notice its singular and not plural)
• Probably like 3 movie outings
• Yi Vern's birthday dinner
• Michelle's choir performance
• Online (I did it so often, it deserved to be mentioned twice)
• Office xmas party (its sure a fun 1 :) )
• BRATs Alternative (we old farts just love torturing the kids at brats camps)
  

What I failed to do:

• Going to Bukit Tinggi (oh gawd, please don't mention this place ever again to me, failed too many times)
• Trip to Bangkok
• To Putrajaya Botanical Park/Garden for photoshoot
• Celebrating Xmas countdown and Xmas (due to a few unforeseen stuffs)
• Gettin a tattoo (I'm just kiddin on this one)
• Have a less 'exciting' exam results
• Another trip to somewhere (potentially would be Bukit Larut, Malacca, PD or Penang)

As hard as I'm trying to relate back to the title of this post, I'm gonna splurge because I have worked for quite some time and I do have a very expensive hobby *hint* You do know where am I going with my pay chequeS right? ;) Since I've considered to save quite a sum by not going for any holiday trips.

*drums rollling*

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..


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1. Nikkor 55-200mm f/4-5.6 VR lens
2. Nikon SB-600 Speedlight
3. Lowepro Off Trail (camera not included)
4. Miscellaneous (Optional and pending)

a) Batteries with charger for the flashgun (It's not this type as this will cost a bomb)
b) Diffuser for the flash unit
c.) SD card, 4GB or 8GB (I have the tendency to shoot everything in RAW format and in huge quantity)

P/s: Should have just taken up planting or stamps collecting as a hobby

Shutter Asia & PhotoMalaysia KL Outing

It's very random of me, but for the first time ever, I went to photo shoot with a bunch of forum people I've never knew/met in my entire life.
Turned out it wasn't that bad at all.

We met up at 8am in this mamak shop inside the KTM station at central of KL. Those mamaks must be wondering why the heck there are suddenly 30-40 people coming to their shop.

Yeaps, there are alot of people there. No kiddin. One of the interesting fact was that, probably I'm the youngest there 0.0
People of all ages (starting from my age of course), mostly around late 20's and mid 30's. Pros, amateurs, hobbyist, you name it.

Gotta admit that my battery acted weirdly. It went to 1 bar from full bars after taking a few shots. But heck, it lasted me until the very end of the outing which is bout 1pm or so.















This is my very first single raw file HDR attempt. It's too technical for me to explain what is High Dynamic Range. So feel free to google that up :D














Yeaps, somehow the organiser able to get a model for that day. So consider this as my first portrait attempt. Still kinda soft, haven't get used to the 50mm manual focus yet

The day my favourite childhood cartoon got killed

Product Shots

Due to certain reasons that I wasn't able to go for outdoor photo shooting. In case you're wondering, my outdoor photo shoot only revolve around nature, buildings, surroundings and probably some people. Never had any models to being with.

Stucked at home, I decided to just shoot some ordinary objects.

Nopes, this doesn't belong to me.


Originally for my photography assignment, but lecturer might want a poster instead of an advertisement.


Carved penguin bought by sis from Bali


Soulstudio.com is one of my sis' New Age website/project

Photography Assignment

I've totally forgotten bout this poster assignment for my photography subject in UKM. Thanks to Esther for reminding me bout it :)

It was from my previous Pangkor photos set. Yeaps, I'm very pleased with this pic for many reasons. One of it is that it was worth waiting for that winged guy to look up instead of muching nonstop with its beak down.

AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.8D

Title says it all. Its my very first lens purchase!

Bought it for RM360 at J-One which I booked and waited for a week or so. Can't really blame anyone since its selling like hotcakes. Cheapest Nikon lens and rated as one of the few sharpest lens.

I can't really tell how sharp it is until I bring it out for field test.


Both taken at max aperture of 1.8. Looks pretty sharp to me.
Btw, there's barely anything nice to be photographed in my room. Even the lil koala fella are kinda covered with dust.

But the depth of field/bokeh is amazing :D

-Enabling Electronic Rangefinder in D60 for Manual Focus-
This took me quite a while to figure it out k. This is a feature in D60's cam where the electronic rangefinder will take over the exposure bar and tells you how far/near you are focused.

1. Setup menu > CSM/Setup menu> Choose 'Full'
2. Custom Settings Menu > Go to no. 19 and just choose yes for 'Rangefinder'.

Thats it!
So now on ur viewfinder, you will still see the indicator bar somethin like <........0........>
When its focused, it will be shown as <.......| 0 | .......>, not the exact 'illustration' but you'll get the drift of it.

Awana Kijal

I think I should really stop taking sunrise/sun set pics. Lol. Its gettin a little boring for both of you and me :P
It's a sunrise btw, for those of you who have no idea whether the sun rise from the east or west.

I was back again at Awana Kijal Resort, Terengganu. What can I say, I'm really running out of ideas on shooting an empty beach.
1/4 of the time I was aiming to get a shot for my new desktop wallapaper. So pardon me if you noticed some similiar compositions

Prison Break

...and i've officially started watching season 4!

Nothin to say actually, since I've just only done with episode 2. From the trailer, I'm sure you can pretty much tell that its like a Ocean Eleven movie running over 20 episodes+

On second thought, the trailer doesn't show it that way. But I am telling you now anyway.

Surprising (or not so)

I was working my ass for this econometrics assignment of mine. For those of you who have no idea what the heck is that, its still a field/study/specialisation under economics.

In a laymen term: A study and/or solution of a particular problem/issue through the perspective of mathematical, statistical and economics.

I didn't google that up, so don't take that as an official definition. I could be wrong. I'm just quoting and translating back by memory from what my lecturer has said.

ANYWAY, we're suppose to come up with this 'mini thesis' assignment which is freely based on any topics of our choice. It's quite simple...decide on a problem/issue, get the data, process and interpret the results, transfer everything into a thesis form.

I was working my way from middle to front and then to the back. So my issue was decided based on the data I found. The issue I was working on was that road accidents are affected by the factor of the number of commercial vehicles (lorry, trailer) and the amount of summons issued by our cops during Ops Sikap.

To prove that I'm not lying, here's the output I got from the data.

Parameter Estimates

Parameter Standard
Variable DF Estimate Error t Value Pr > |t|

Intercept 1 5.01346 1.77470 2.82 0.2166
LX1 1 -0.15874 0.16041 -0.99 0.5033
LX2 1 0.72740 0.13309 5.47 0.1152

Do u see the -1.5874? That means its a negative relation among 2 variables.
So the 0.7274 is showing a positive relation. Simple enough rite?

Here goes:
In a laymen lingo, it means the more summons issued by the cops, the higher the amount of road accidents gets!! Lol. This is really interesting. Probably everyone speeds off right after the road block knowing there wont be another speed trap bout 200km ahead.

Anyway this research is lacking in alot of areas like lack of data (data from 2005-2008), accuracy of the given data, should be using the number of summons throughout the whole year (but I cant get it) etc etc.
Afterall the given varibles are not significant in explaining the model/equation. It means the data doesn't make much of an effect towards the number of accidents. But then again, it means that Ops Sikap doesn't make a significance change either! Ha!

So eventually I changed to a more boring topic which is about Malaysia economics. Very bland and textbook-like.

Moral of the story: Ops Sikap doesn't make a difference (besides financially)

Cherating

The beach ain't that good compared to Pangkor. That explains the amount of pics I have this time :P My one and only major major major complain bout sunrise pics would be needed to wake up way early(it is for me k) in the morning. It's not that fun when you found out that you're the only one on the beach, clouds covering the horizon (damn!), its 6 in the morning and everyone else is still asleep!

Oh well, at least still manage to get a few wallpaper shots. Like I said, I was the only one there...so there's definitely close to not having any subjects in my pics at all.

Yes, the beams from the clouds are real. I wouldn't even dare to make up such thing with Photoshop