testing the olympus zuiko 9-18mm f4-5.6ed super wide angle lens

I took a time last weekend to try this super wide angle lens from Olympus. Adam from Camera House Camera Action kindly enough to lend me this lens for couple of hours. At the moment I am juggling between Olympus Zuiko 7-14mm f4 Pro lens and this lens for my next purchase. The price difference between both is a lot. I heard a lot about the performance of this lens. The images produce is very sharp. Being 9-18mm means it is 18-36mm equivalent and it loosing 2mm and if I translate to the angle view it means it loosing around 10 degree compared then the 7-14mm. Not bad I think...

As the winter weather is good I took this lens for a test. And all the photos below is from the Zuiko 9-18mm f4-5.6ED

With a very close to the subject I am able to shoot the full view of it using this lens


GPO from 2nd floor using Zuiko 9-18mm


With this lens I am able to frame very close to the subject


Took the lens up to Realto Tower and I am impressed with the angle view of this lens


At Yarra River


Image is sharp


This lens is very capable and it works well with my 620

Gears: Olympus E-620 DSLR with Zuiko Digital 9-18mm f4.0-5.6 ED

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infrared photography

I had a small test on my new Cokin IR filter yesterday. This is the simplest way to create an IR (Infrared) photos. As my camera is equipped with high IR isolation then the process to capture the IR photos is more difficult. I take longer to capture the IR light. In this test I set the ISO to 400, set the color to Monochrome set the shutter to 20-30 seconds with aperture to f7. In this test I use Zuiko Digital 9-18mm f4-5.6ED lens as I am testing this lens too.

I will play more with this filter next time as I am started to like this technique I have few more filter to test such as Grand (graduated).

Normal monochrome photo taken straight from the camera without the IR filter


Taken with Cokin IR filter attached

Gears: Olympus E-620 DSLR with Zuiko Digital 9-18mm f4.0-5.6 ED

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minum petang with tapioca

Cuaca yang sejuk mengundang banyak masalah to my diet. Usually I will gain weight when cold season come.

Usually I don't really have 'minum petang' kind of thingy but now minum petang is a must. I always feel hungry by 4pm. As for today I steamed tapioca. I made a 'sambal kicap' to go with and a hot tea.

Steamed tapioca

Gears: Olympus E-620 DSLR with Zuiko Digital 14-54mm f2.8-3.5 Mark II

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melbourne celebrating winter solstice

Last Saturday 20th June 2009 Melbourne celebrating the winter solstice. Winter solstice or mid winter we use to call it is a day when the tilt of the Earth's axis is most inclined toward or away from the sun, causing the Sun's apparent position in the sky to reach it northernmost or southernmost extreme. This phenomenon happen twice a year.

What happen in this time is the Sun stands still in declination; that is, the apparent movement of the Sun's path north or south comes to a stop before reversing direction.

In conjunction of this, there was a light celebration at Federation Square. Music about light, light performance, cultural performance was performed from various group of community such as Turkish, Burmese, Vietnamese, Indian and Aboriginal people of Australia. Each community show the significant of light in their culture and life that bring luck, happiness and joyful.

The ceremony started with the Aboriginal culture dance of fire


Everyone gathered for the winter light at Federation Square


Traditional dance from the Myanmar community. It almost like "Tarian Lilin"


Indian dance about light


Vietnamese ladies waiting for their turn to dance


Turkish girls in a beautiful costume


Beautiful headgear


Gambus player


Lanterns being lit up

UTC date and time of solstices and equinoxes
Year	Equinox Mar		Solstice June		Equinox Sept		Solstice Dec
	day	time	day	time	day	time	day	time
2004	20	06:49	21	00:57	22	16:30	21	12:42
2005	20	12:33	21	06:46	22	22:23	21	18:35
2006	20	18:26	21	12:26	23	04:03	22	00:22
2007	21	00:07	21	18:06	23	09:51	22	06:08
2008	20	05:48	20	23:59	22	15:44	21	12:04
2009	20	11:44	21	05:45	22	21:18	21	17:47
2010	20	17:32	21	11:28	23	03:09	21	23:38
2011	20	23:21	21	17:16	23	09:04	22	05:30
2012	20	05:14	20	23:09	22	14:49	21	11:11
2013	20	11:02	21	05:04	22	20:44	21	17:11
2014	20	16:57	21	10:51	23	02:29	21	23:03
2015	20	22:45	21	16:38	23	08:20	22	04:48
2016	20	04:30	20	22:34	22	14:21	21	10:44
2017	20	10:28	21	04:24	22	20:02	21	16:28

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pavlova with caramelize apple topping

Had a successful meeting with my supervisor today. He was happy with my writing progress. As a reward, I baked a meringue or pavlova topped with caramelize apple. There are so many type of pavlova recipe with different ingredients. I prefer the one with less ingredients and easy to make.

Ingredients:
For Pavlova
4 egg white (room temperature)
1 cup Custer sugar
1 teaspoon lemon juice or vinegar or even a sprinkle of salt

For topping
1 granny smith apple
2 table spoon brown sugar
200g butter (room temperature)
1 cup icing sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
4 table spoon lemon juice

Preparation for the meringue:
1. Beat the egg white in a bowl until it peak form (make sure the bowl is free from oil or grease)
2. Add the lemon juice the Custer sugar. Beat again for at least 10 minutes until the mixture look shiny and thick
3. Place the mixture onto the baking paper.
4. Bake the pavlova or meringue in a low heat for 1 and half hour or until the outside crispy and the inside a bit moist.
5. Once done leave it in the oven with the oven ajar.

Preparation for the topping:
1. Beat the icing sugar, butter and vanilla essence until it foam and creamy. Put aside
2. Caramelize the brown sugar in a non stick pan. Add the lemon juice and stir the mixture. Add a bit of water if it is too thick. Slice the apple and add into the mixture. Cook until the apple caramelize both side. Once cook cool it off.

To serve spread the creamy icing on top of the pavlova or meringue. Add the apple and it ready to be serve.

Beat the white egg, Custer sugar and lemon juice until it peak form


Bake in a slow heat at around one and half hour. In a meantime prepare the icing and the caramelize apple


Dessert time!

Gears: Olympus E-620 DSLR with Zuiko Digital 14-54mm f2.8-3.5 Mark II

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is it easy to take picture in winter?

Came back from Nahar's place we decided to spend a few hours in the city to see the fire show at Crown. As the weather was very mild and a bit cloudy, I thought that it might be a good time to test my new camera capability in a low light condition.

Frankly, I am very satisfied with my new Olympus E620 performance. The Dynamic Range control is better and the color is more punchy. As some people asked me do I do image processing to my photo? My answer is minimal. Usually I only reduce the resolution and add some marking text and the rest is straight from the camera JPEG. (I am rarely shoot in RAW nowdays)

Some people also asked me how come some of my photos does have a beautiful dramatic sky or clouds? The answer is, if I shoot in this kind of condition, I didn't use Cloudy White Balance setting unless I want to unveil an orange colour of the sunset. I am not using HDR or whatsoever as people claim. But I think what important is a correct exposure and moment. All these shot taken with flash assistant as I want to illuminate the foreground but retained the clarity of the background.

But the real deal is by having an Art Filters built in into the camera that really safe the day. The Pop Art Filter help to boost the saturation on the photos when needed such as in a cloudy day, rainy day and so on. The Soft Focus help to soften the skin tone for beautiful portraiture shot and the Pin Hole create vignetting around the photo to give an emphasize to the subject.

Melbourne at around 5pm in winter 2009


Southbank.. we were waiting for the fire show at 6pm


To retain the details of the foreground means that I have to sacrifice the sky at the background, so I use flash to illuminate the foreground and set the exposure correctly to retain the sky


I set the White Balance to something that probably people will thought that I am crazy, but it work. Definitely not Sunny, Cloudy, Tungsten or even Shade WB


Realto building. Still look stunning even it is not the tallest anymore.

Gears: Olympus E-620 DSLR with Zuiko Digital 14-54mm f2.8-3.5 Mark II

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nahar's birthday party

I went to the city and bump onto Huzaizi and Zainah and family at Flinder Station. We were invited to Nahar's birthday party. Before that, I went to Perfume Connection and bought him a Tous in Heaven for Him.

We reached Nahar's house at around 1.10pm. He cooked Opor Ayam, Nasi Himpit, KFC Variety, Kuih Koci and Kek Labu. Zainah brought the cake.

Beacuse everyone was hungry we forgot to take a pictures and only realized that we were done.

Birthday cake from Zainah and family


Pumpkin cake


Opor Ayam


Chiapppppppp.... I am not even know what the mean ..haa haaa

Gears: Olympus E-620 DSLR with Zuiko Digital 14-54mm f2.8-3.5 Mark II and Flash LF-36R

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ink drop - photography activity

Just give myself a bit of challenge today. Last challenge that I set to myself was to capture the beauty of the smoke lamina, today I tried another effect which is ink drop.

The tools that I use are: Olympus E620 DSLR, Olympus Zuiko 14-54mm f2.8-3.5 Mark II, Olympus FL-50R flash, Olympus FL-36R flash, goblet, red food ink, white canvas board, tripod and dropper.

The set up: I place the FL-36R at the back beside the canvas background while the FL-50R flash at the 3/4 angle front bounce to the white canvas background. Both set to wireless remote. Mount the camera to the tripod and point to the goblet that fill with water. Set the ISO to 200, aperture at f4 and shutter at 1/180.

After a few shot, I realised that this challenge is more difficult then the previous one. From nearly 50 shots, these are the only shot that I am happy with.

My first drop


Another drop


The ink already sank at the bottom and bounced upward


Crop from the drop

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i like my potatoe chips crinkle

Thing that I never miss to stock every time I go for shopping. A packet or two of Smith's Potatoe Chips and I it crinkle cut. The Original, Spring Onion or BBQ flavoured are the best. Usually I can finish the whole 200g packet by myself :P

Among all, the Rock Deli's and Smith's are my 2 favourite brand for crunchy, delicious and tasty chips.

My favourite chips


Like it

Gears: Olympus E-620 DSLR with Zuiko Digital 14-54mm f2.8-3.5 Mark II

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smoke trail - creative photography technique

Outside the window the weather is so bad. Raining through out the day. It is a public holiday in conjunction of Queen's Birthday so I decided to finish up few journal reading. Then I thought I should do some photography activity and this time I try to capture a smoke trail. There are few more technique that I am going to do such as ink drop, fire trail from the matches or gas stove etc.

The tools for this particular technique is quite simple. You need DSLR camera, incense stick, Flash, non shiny black paper and tripod, table and the blue tack to hold the paper and the incense.

The setup is, hang the black paper on the wall and cover part of the table with it. Attached the camera on the tripod at 12-18 inch away from the incense stick. Use off the camera flash or you can use other source of lighting such as table lamp or study lamp. Place off the camera flash to the side of the background.

In this assignment I use the 14-54mm 2.8-3.5 lens. Set the aperture to f4 and manually focus the lens and try to get as sharp as you can. Make sure that you will capture the background in a pure black.

Lit up the incense stick and wait the smoke to rise. From time to time blow the incense's stick tip to create a twirl effect on the smoke. Shoot as many as you can and preview each one.

Bring the image to Adobe Photoshop or any image editing software and using Invert tool invert the photos as shown below. The left image with a black background are the original photos and the right side are the result from the invert process.

Smoke trail 1


Smoke trail 2


Smoke trail 3


Smoke trail 4


Smoke trail 5


Smoke trail 6

Gears: Olympus E-620 DSLR with Zuiko Digital 14-54mm f2.8-3.5 Mark II, FL-36R

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coffee break

Had a coffee break with Nahar yesterday. As usual we did a bit of window shopping as nothing special on sales, but Nahar was interested in getting another watch. Mid year sales is already on and most of shop offering between 30-70% discount.

We had a dinner at Nelayan then we headed to our favorite hang out place. We discussed about few things including our plan to complete our photographic gear before October as November and December we plan to go to Tasmania and Sydney.

Thinking of getting a second camera body, most probably a rangefinder type of camera. As Olympus ready to roll out their Micro Four Third Interchangeable lens Pen camera, I thought I should wait for that. I plan to equipped the camera with Zuiko 50mm prime lens if available then I can use it as my portrait camera.

This National Geographic bag provide me with a more discreet way of carrying my camera. It is more safe to bring along the camera this way rather then carrying it in a camera backpack. This bag fit my Olympus E620, Zuiko 14-54mm lens, Zuiko 70-300mm, FL-36R flash and sometimes I carry my FL-50R flash, my netbook, extra battery, grey card, OM lens adapter, CIR polariser, wireless shutter release, lens pen and few cables.


After a long day studying, what I need is a good Green Tea Latte

Gears: Olympus E-620 DSLR with Zuiko Digital 14-54mm f2.8-3.5 Mark II

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frommer's melbourne day by day

Today I received a copy of Frommer's Melbourne Day By Day from John Wiley & Sons featuring one of my photo that I took while I was at Warrnambool. This is my 3rd photos published by reputable publisher. I am waiting for 2 more photos that are going to be publish by another publisher. Hopefully it will be publish before the end of this year or early next year.

The original photo from my archive


2009 Frommer's Melbourne Day by Day


Printed on page 145 with caption:Whale watching platform at Warrnambool's Logan's Beach

Gears: Olympus E-620 DSLR with Zuiko Digital 14-54mm f2.6-3.5 Mark II

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mushrooming?

Autumn and winter is the best time to roam for mushroom. I invited Nahar to join me to search for mushroom at Royal Botanical Garden last weekend. It took us nearly 3 hours to find few species but the one that I really look for was not available. Luckily after few hours relentless search we found few species.

I always intrigue with the way mushroom grow. It such a delicate fungi and it can be found all around the world.

Found this tiny mushroom with bright orange colour at the herbs garden.


This tiny white mushroom grow among the green grass.


I found this tiny mushroom at the Australian tropical forest. As it was so tiny I nearly step onto it


We were unlucky because we only found small mushroom


This was the biggest mushroom we found so far

Gears: Olympus E-620 DSLR with Zuiko Digital 14-540mm f2.8-3.5 Mark II and Flash FL-36R

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