mingthein.com – Ming Thein

The demise of the DSLR

August 24, 2013 by Ming Thein

Five years ago, while I was writing for a local photo magazine, I was mostly in charge of the ‘big’ cameras – DSLRs and the like. There was no mirrorless category, with the exception of Leica; compacts meant serious image quality or lens quality compromises, and every serious photographer was typically also on first name terms with their chiropractor. You could still get film with relative ease, and better still, develop it. Not long ago, my desk had three cameras for review/ testing on it (the Olympus E-P5, Leica X Vario and Sigma DP3M – none of them were DSLRs. I now routinely travel without one; in fact, most of the time I do a lot of personal photography with compacts. And pretty much the only time my D800E comes out is when I’ve got a commercial job to shoot.

How things change.

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Filed Under: Articles Tagged With: article, demise of the dslr, dslr, essay, future of photography, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, opinion, thein

PayPal, margin pressure and the small business perspective

August 22, 2013 by Ming Thein

A few days ago, I received an email from PayPal informing me that some of their terms and conditions of service had changed – ostensibly to ‘ensure high standards of service continue to be maintained’. I read that immediately as a greedy grab: turns out I was right. Buried in the fine print of the changes were a bunch of rate amendments, effective 10 Sep 2013, that now make the cost of receiving payments in my part of the world anywhere up to 6% plus a fixed fee (for commercial payments that fall into the “International micro payments for digital goods” category, which includes my videos). On top of this, there’s a ‘micropayment fixed fee’ of MYR2.00 (US$0.65). And then there’s a 4% currency conversion fee to Malaysian Ringgit on conversion. And a further 2.5% added to the exchange rate when you withdraw the funds to your bank account. Very cunningly, they don’t provide a like-for-like fee comparison, either. That’s a grand total of anywhere up to 12.5% PLUS RM2.00. Previously, I calculated the net cost of using PayPal at about 5% inclusive of FX; a merchant credit card terminal would be around 3%. Given the long payment times for credit card providers and relative discomfort of people using cards overseas, I elected to stay with PayPal for the time being – lousy service and lack of regulation notwithstanding. See why this has now become a problem?

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Filed Under: Articles, Off topic Tagged With: article, business, costs, essay, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, opinion, payments, paypal, pricing, small business, strategy, thein

Ultimate tripod heads, part two: the Arca-Swiss P0 Monoball

August 20, 2013 by Ming Thein

The P0 Monoball; Manfrotto 394 RC4 QR plate is for me to standardize my connectors across heads, and also because the QR version of this head costs nearly 50% more than the standard one – you can buy the adaptor AND a lot of spare plates for the difference. I’ve since replaced it with an Arca-style clamp I found on eBay for about $25 – surprisingly well made, and cost-efficient, too.

Today’s conclusion of the two-part review (part one covering the Arca-Swiss C1 Cube is here) covers the much simpler, cheaper, but no less well built P0 Monoball. They aren’t direct competitors or replacements for each other; to be honest, there’s ample room in a gear bag for both since they fulfil very different photographic needs.

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Filed Under: Gearhead: Reviews Tagged With: arca swiss, ballhead, c1, cube, gearhead, head, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, p0, review, thein, tripod

Ultimate tripod heads, part one: the Arca-Swiss C1 Cube

August 18, 2013 by Ming Thein

Arca-Swiss C1 Cube with D800E mounted via universal L bracket.

Arca-Swiss are known for two things: producing excellent precision photographic gear, and having spotty availability – probably due to very small production runs. This two part review is going to cover what I think are two of the best tripod heads currently available – the P0 and C1 Cube. I picked up the P0 from B&H as a lightweight travel head during my trip to New York earlier in the year; I’ve been using it since – more often than I’d imagined I would. After being very impressed with the little one, I requested a C1 Cube as soon as it finally became available; both out of curiosity, and also to see if the hype was true.

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Filed Under: Gearhead: Reviews Tagged With: arca swiss, ballhead, c1, cube, gearhead, head, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, p0, review, thein, tripod

On Assignment: architecture by night

August 16, 2013 by Ming Thein

Sometimes, one is given some pretty sweet assignments. Quite near the top of that list is a commission to photograph beautiful buildings by one of the country’s – arguably the world’s, too – leading architects with the rare thing of a completely open creative brief. This is the position I found myself in a couple of months ago, camera bag in one hand, Mother Of All (somewhat portable) Tripods in the other, and sheaf of permission letters and permits from Hijjas Kasturi Associates tucked away safe inside the camera bag just in case.

Photoessay: New York City urbanscapes

August 14, 2013 by Ming Thein

I honestly have no idea what category or genre this kind of photography falls into; it’s not quite abstract because you know what the subject is, though there’s heavy reliance on geometry, form, color and light; it’s not street even though it’s generally shot on the street or from the street; I suppose it could be travel, though they don’t really especially make you want to go visit a place. Flaneur, perhaps; the exploring observer. Or still life, except there are frequently moving elements. It’s not really cityscape or architecture either, because often there are no buildings, or they’re not complete, or the view isn’t wide enough to be considered an entire cityscape.

On Assignment: Retouching, and the difference between amateurs and pros…

August 12, 2013 by Ming Thein

Maitres du Temps Chapter Three in white gold. (Larger version) There are panels at 6 and 12 that drop down into the dial and retract to uncover day/night and second time zone indicators; there’s a moonphase indicator at 4.30, date at 2 and small seconds at 8. Like all watches designed and made by famous independent ACHI members – this one is the offspring of Kari Voutilainen and Andreas Strehler – if you have to ask the price…

An image like this requires a surprising amount of work: I’ve already talked about the mechanics of lighting horological images in this three-part series (beginning here). To be honest, I originally intended to photograph the set up and other b-roll for another on-assignment post, but the simple reality is that I’m usually so busy on the shoot that I just don’t have the time. Instead, I’m going to talk about the amount of work that goes in behind the scenes.

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Filed Under: On Assignment, Watches/ Horology Tagged With: ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, on assignment, retouching, thein, watches

One place left for the Prague workshop…special! (updated)

August 11, 2013 by Ming Thein

~~Prague – 2-5 October: one four-day seat left at a special price of $1,900 instead of $2,150~~ Now taken, thanks! Inevitably, last minute schedule changes and commitments occur with participants, so I am still accepting standbys though…

The syllabus will still follow the core fundamentals from the USA tour: throw everything you thought you knew about photography out the window, and start again. All you need is a camera and a couple of perspectives – one wide, one tele. It could be either end of a zoom on a compact, or it could be medium format and a couple of primes – it’s up to you. What I’ll be teaching is subject independent: make great images, any time, with any subject, any camera. Put it this way: it’s easy to spend thousands on equipment that you may use a handful of times a year, but what about the knowledge that lets you make the most of that equipment, in any situation?

The Singapore and USA workshop reports are here and here respectively.

For full details and to make a booking, click here. Thanks! MT

Filed Under: Teaching Tagged With: amsterdam, europe 2013, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, munich, prague, teaching, thein, Workshop

Repost: It’s a visual world – the basics of making great images

August 10, 2013 by Ming Thein

This article was originally written for and posted on the official WordPress blog in two parts on 18 and 25 June 2013. I’ve reposted it here as I believe it makes a good primer to the science and art of making outstanding images – the full-blown article is here. MT

Ginza, Tokyo. Sony RX100 (I include camera info here solely to demonstrate that it really doesn’t matter what you use.)

When I was first approached by WordPress, I have to admit that I was a little worried about the magnitude of the task at hand: ultimately my own site is very much about what goes into the creation of outstanding images. And that’s a 600+ article, 1.3-million word work in progress. That’s obviously not going to fit into the length of your average post, so today I’m going to throw the rulebook out of the window and start again. I highly encourage you to do the same: regardless of your experience level with photography, do the same. Approach this article with an open mind and no preconceptions. I’m going to do the same.

A question of clarity

August 8, 2013 by Ming Thein

Photography as an artistic medium is limited: by and large, the structure of your image is restricted by what exists in reality. Sure, you can alter that representation of reality by changing the light, your composition, your physical position, focal length, perspective, white balance, saturation, or a thousand and one other technical and artistic parameters. But ultimately, it still remains both interpretative and approximate. This is a good and bad thing: it means that assuming there is no post-capture manipulation of content going on, a photograph can be used as a relatively accurate representation of something; there is an assumed level of integrity in a photograph that isn’t present in an impressionist painting, for example. However, photography as a medium isn’t really encouraging of the same interpretative latitude as other media where one starts with a blank canvas/ sheet of paper (forget three dimensional and mixed media for the time being, that’s something which photography will never be able to replicate).