A tough week has come to an end, it’s time for a recharge. Here’s one for you cat lovers out there.
Kittens are sure cute. They’re so adorable and innocent. Same with puppies and other pets. Please show some love to them, and not hurt them! This is a mixed breed of Persian kitten, which caught my attention when I visited the Sunday Market, Satok few weeks back.
I personally love this edit, and will turn this into a print. It’ll be hanging around in my office the next time you visit me. 
Thanks to Canon and Great Wall Photo, I had a chance to try out on the much anticipated EOS monster. Will be sharing my experience on the brief encounter.
In case you missed out on the previous demo/try out session, there is another session scheduled on July 31, 1:30pm — 6:00pm, at Great Wall Photo.
My brief encounter with EOS 1DX. A self shot to the mirror in the display cabinet, while Edwin Lay looked on.
It’s been in the rumor mill for quite sometime, and rumor no more. Canon has launched its very own mirrorless camera, taking a dip into the mirrorless market, which has seen the likes of Olympus and Panasonic excel in this segment with their Micro Four Thirds.
This is exciting, as I am looking forward to see a smaller form factor from Canon. There are many functions where I am dreaded to bring my DSLRs, or pulled out the bulky bodies and lenses even if I had them in bag. I long for something compact for vacations, casual functions, family gathering, or even some food tasting/review. I foresee this to fit my need perfectly! Also, with the 22mm lens mounted, it has focal length equivalent of 35mm, perfect to hit the street for some shutter therapy! Exciting!
I was surprised to see this mirrorless to come in a form closer to the S100 range, instead of a retro look in form of AE-1, or maybe even the rangefinders. Nonetheless, it’s still awesome. Can’t wait for the reviews to come on line. If possible, I would love to have a test unit to play with, and share my experience out.
Below are some images I got from the circulation on the Internet.
Canon’s first mirrorless — EOS M: 18 megapixel APS-C Camera.
Back view of the EOS M, pretty much like a compact, but comes with a APS-C quality images. I hope the touch screen is as good as the one that comes with EOS 650D. Let’s wait for the reviews online.
The 18-55mm lens looks so much nicer for EOS M, much more solid than the one for EF-S.
The adapter made it possible to use EF lenses on the EOS M body. In this case, it looks like the camera body is mounted to the lens instead. With that, mounting the recently launched 40mm pancake STM lens should be still compact even on this tiny EOS M.
At this point of time, there is no official pricing listed in Malaysia. However, Canon EOS M w/22 f/2 STM is listed at $799, at both B&H and Amazon.
Canon EOS 5D Mark III has been talk of the town, of late. No doubt, it is one out the best offering by Canon to date. At the same time, there are a lot comparison with the counterpart by Nikon, the D800. We have seen many news about this model, from how good it is, to the light leak issue it has. There are plenty of reviews carried out by plenty of photographers, if not photography site around the world. Here, however, is where I will share what I personally think of the latest offering by Canon.
I had a couple of chances to handle EOS 5D Mark III (5DM3 hereon). I was pretty impressed with the performance overall, of which I shall detail out in a bit later.
The talk of the town Canon EOS 5D Mark III, with EF 70-200mm f/2.8 IS II mounted on.
One of the strength which is often highlighted on 5DM3 is the ISO performance. Canon has improved, if not revamped the whole ISO performance on 5D M3. The other notable improvement over Mark II was the focusing points.
During one of my recent assignment, I thought it was a good opportunity to test out how good the ISO can really go. My friend, Kelvin was generous enough to allow me to snap a few shots with his new camera. I mounted EF 50mm f/1.4 USM to test out high I can go with the ISO in such low light setting.
ISO: 6400 f/1.6, straight to JPEG
5Dm3 didn’t disappoint at all. When I checked back the image on the screen panel, the image was really clean. Initially, I played safe, only toying the ISO between 3200 and 8000. then later, I convinced myself to go all the way
ISO 800 f/1.8 JPEG
ISO 6400 f/1.4
The joker at the pathway. f/1.4 ISO6400
f/1.4 ISO 8000
Joker card tricks, f/1.4 ISO8000
The in-camera RAW processing for 5Dm3 is superb. For shooters who need to get the images right away (with no time to do post processing), 5Dm3 could be the right answer. For example, if I were covering an event, and my editor needs my images to reach his email right at the end of the event, I could grab the JPEGs out from the CF, and straight away work it to the email without worrying the post. The AWB functions pretty accurate in most condition.
f/2.5 ISO 12,800
ISO 8000
f/1.6 ISO10,000 (photo by Kelvin Bong)
Some other new features introduced to this camera includes the HDR processing within the camera, multiple exposure functions, and etc. On movie recording part, it also gives more control over the video recording. Videographers will be thrilled to have those add ons.
It is kind of late for me to get this entry up, as 5Dm3 is out on the street for couple of months already. Nevertheless, I still wish to share my thought here. At the price of USD3,500 (or MYR10k+), in my opinion, it isn’t the affordable Full-frame like what 5D or 5D Mark 2 was made to be. With all the new features (the new AF system, the ISO performance etc), it has become one of the best performing camera in the professional range.
I shoot a lot of wedding, portrait, event and conferences, and some commercial jobs (products and interior/architecture), I don’t have the need to shoot beyond ISO6400 at most of the time. It would be rare for me to do so. Where as other features such as HDR processing, I almost never use those. And I don’t see myself using that just yet. I mean, for sure it’s handy, but I also can do without that function.
On the other hand, I somehow think it’s good that Canon doesn’t bump up the resolution beyond 30+ megapixel. It would be chaos if I were to cover event with such huge file size clogging my CF card. (I have made a habit to shoot in RAW for all occasion now)
So the bottom line is, I love the little things they have added onto this camera, but I feel that I can live without many of those. I really hope Canon can come up with another full frame, probably ‘entry leve’ full frame, maybe pricing around USD2000 -2500? (or MYR 6,000-MYR8,000). I do have strong reasons why they would, and they should. I am sure there are plenty like me who are on tighter budget, and would be thrilled to shoot with a full frame machine.
Canon, I do hope to hear some good news in your upcoming announcement in the coming quarter.
The Sunday Market, as how Kuching folks call it, has been around for a long, long time. It is one of the most iconic marketplace in the city. Despite its history, it couldn’t avoid the fate of urbanization. It is believed that the market will be relocated to other location after Hari Raya festival, making way for ‘yet another’ urbanization project by the local government.
I decided to take a walk in the market, allowing myself to know the place better, before it goes into history, and could only recall in memories.
![[B&W] Sunday Market, Satok, Kuching](http://allenang.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/50D_5046_web1.jpg "50D_5046_web")
The operation hour for Sunday market. This would not be applicable anymore after they move out to a new location, right across the river.
![[B&W] Sunday Market, Satok, Kuching](http://allenang.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/5D2_9892_web1.jpg "5D2_9892_web")
Holding the father's hand, following his lead to the market.
![[B&W] Sunday Market, Satok, Kuching](http://allenang.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/5D2_9925_web1.jpg "5D2_9925_web")
Caution.
Aperture has been one of my favorite image handling software since my switch to Mac OS. I have been using Aperture since its very first release, and now its third iteration.
I went through some old sets of images in my hard drive, trying to clear of some junks/old archives. And, I stumbled upon a couple of images taken in quite bad lighting condition. I thought it might be a good chance to test out the presets. I never really make use of the Presets in Aperture 3.0, so I asked myself if I could do anything to improve the output for these two images.
I shot this without flash, only with the stage lighting. The lighting seems rather flat here, which is not to my liking.
Here's another shot which I took from the same stage, this photo was straight from Adobe's RAW processing, without much adjustment, if none at all. Not very nice.
I must say, the output is quite impressive. I applied the presets intuitively. I made use of the preview function before applying the presets. I’m sharing both the two images here for comparison.
Comparison between the two images: There wasn't much adjustment or tweaking done on Aperture. I only stacked up a few sets of the Preset. I quite like the outcome.
Comparison: Again, here's the before and after comparison. I think the image stands out more after applying the simple presets on Aperture.
These presets could be life savers, if not saves a large amount of time on post processing. Manual adjustment on post processing can be quite tedious and time consuming.
Final Result: The final outcome is rather pleasing, surprisingly. (scroll up to compare to original image) NOTE: The original image is not quite in focus, despite so, after the post processing, the final outcome is somewhat acceptable.
Final outcome: It's rather pleasing to see how the image turned out after a few clicks on the Aperture. I think it's rather amazing tool to use.