I’ve been up and running for just under four months now – some time during the early hours of this morning saw the half-millionth visitor to my site.
I just wanted to say thank you all for your support! Please continue to help keep things growing by sharing this site with your friends! MT
Ming Thein | Photographer 
Hi Ming,
I’d like to congratulate and thank you for your blog, your pictures, your ideas, thoughts, your reviews and your down-to-earth views on things (which add up nicely to a very sympathetic personality). It was amazing how fast I became an everyday reader once I discovered your blog looking for some real-user review. Nowadays I just go directly to your homepage whenever I can to see whether there is anything new… I hope your doubts about your ability maintaining this blog are gone for good. Wish you the very best from Hungary!
Thanks Dzso. I’m not sure anybody has called me sympathetic before (!) haha! Thank you for the support. I’ve always updated at least daily, so you’ll always find something new to look at or read when you come back. Please do me a favor and share it with your other photography friends! 🙂
Ooh, sorry if I wrote something wrong or funny. English is not even my second language. So put it an other way: everything I read and see on your blog indicate a nice personality which I like. You could be the “best” professional with an arrogant style or the disability to share your knowledge, or you could have the “perfect” technical mambo jambo with crappy photos. So because you seem to be a very good photographer and have – in my view – excellent style and interesting thoughts, mine is the easiest task about this blog: enjoying it. 🙂
Not at all, I was just joking with you. You’re doing great – I don’t think even my second language is remotely as proficient as yours. 🙂
I just care about the photos, and how to make better ones – things I can change to do that, I do. Things that I can’t, I won’t. Things that there are no point understanding or going into the detailed technicalities, I avoid.
Thanks for an inspiring and teaching blog. Loving it and hopefully learning bit by bit also. Only problem is seeing stuff like Leicas is that they create such a big strong “want” factor. ;- ) But its all good, must save money and invest.. Still going strong with an obsolete D200 but have to upgrade soon, hopefully to either a FF Nikon or the OMD. Mainly because the pics are horrific above iso800.
-Jere-
500px.com/JKetola
Thanks Jere. I’ll post a few more images from older cameras to give some inspiration 🙂
Either OM-D or D700/800 will be a huge step up – even the OM-D is useable at ISO 3200, and the tones and dynamic range remain intact. You get huge improvements in color, too.
Thank you, the article “Some thoughts on reprocessing and revisiting images” was also very relevant, considering us who are using old cameras now, but of course processing with the software that is available now but was not when the camera was new. There is a definate difference between the output of say Lightroom 4 vs the original Nikon raw converter I used earlier.
I am still working on improving my composition, timing etc. so it is great to see the work of other more experienced people and read their thoughts.
I still don’t know if newer is necessarily better. There’s a difference in purity of vision, for sure.
Perhaps I could interest you in subscribing to my Email School of Photography?
Congratulations! Every day I learn so much from you!
Great Work …. saving all of your pictures and showing them to friends…..
Haha, thanks – there’s my flickr page for that! 🙂
Keep going, Ming, your blog is much appreciated! I particularly appreciate your candor, expertise, and variety of articles. Thanks again for sharing
Thanks Andy! Help me along and share it with your friends, too 🙂
Hi Ming,
Can I also add my congratulations. I only came across your site around four weeks ago, but the quality of your photographs, together with the “real world” gear reviews and, possibly most importantly, your articles on the philosophy on Photography has made it a site that I now visit without fail each day. Many thanks.
Oh, and as regards the vehicle, I have your blog subscribed in NetNewsWire so that I always see new articles. Having said that, in the last few days I have just tended to go straight to the web site directly.
All the best
Thanks Simon! I looked around and found plenty of detailed measurements, some ‘real world’ reviews by people who fawn over gear but don’t use it for a living, very, very few philosophical sites (TOP is probably the only one) – and decided to create my own. I think it’s important that we understand why we look at and react to the world in the way we do – after all, photography is a visual art, and if we don’t spend some time figuring out the interpretation portion too, then we’re doing ourselves and our audience a disservice.
Sorry, I mean the CFV backs of course. I never used one (they were too expensive), only B&W and slides.
Thank you too, Ming! Actually, in 2003 I lived in Paris for a while and one of my favourite spots were that cafe. I used to sit at the center table in your picture, reading and writing and looking at passers-by.
Did you find the quality of the 503 and VFC (which one?) combo sufficient for let us say a magazine cover print?
It was a long time ago – the 16MP version. Yes, more than sufficient – even the 12MP FX DSLRs are enough for that.
Thanks again for taking your time to answer!
All my best
Xenia
No problem.
Congratulations, Ming! I enjoy reading your post each morning at breakfast, sometimes instead of my daily papers. Thank you for all the hard work you put in! Also, I have noticed, it does almost not matter which camera or lens you use, your final pictures are always excellent and quite a few are superb…
Greetings from Sweden, Xenia
Thanks Xenia! Always nice to know you have fans! By the way, do you subscribe and read via email or go to the site directly? (Trying to figure out how to better optimize formatting).
Mostly, I read via email, but at least once a week I visit your site, looking at older reviews etc.
By the way, several shots have stayed in my mind. For example: ‘the girl in the doorway in Hanoi’ and more recently ‘your muse looking out of the train window. The Paris cafe looked a lot like ‘Les Deux Magots’ in St. Germain.
I wonder, have you ever tried the Hasselblad SWC/M or 903SWC? Some of my best shots came from a 1982 SWC/M. I sold it later on, which I now regret. Do you know if it works with the Hasselblad Digital Back VFC-50? If it does, I could be tempted…
Kind regards and good luck to you! Xenia
Thank you. The cafe was Les Deux Magots – you’ve got a good eye!
I used a 503 a long time ago with the CF-V back, and the H3D-40, but not the SWC. Sorry!