The Boatman, Chao Phraya River, Bangkok. Leica M9-P, 35/1.4 ASPH FLE
POTD: Too many cliches – or, a story in an image
March 14, 2012 by
Too many cliches. Merdeka Square. Leica M9-P, Zeiss ZM 2/50 Planar
Meaning in an image: always subjective, sometimes obvious. Sometimes deliberately obfuscated. For instance, it could mean that on reflection, cloudy times are ahead for Malaysia; the wind has gone out of it’s sails now that we are no longer a cheap manufacturing country, natural resources are dwindling (limp flag) and independence has brought nothing but rainy days and corruption (photo taken of a distorted puddle of dirty water at Merdeka Square, the site of the declaration of independence) and greed. Or it could just be a reflection of a flagpole in a puddle. The beauty of photography and a multilayered image is that it’s up to the viewer to decide. MT
POTD: Three men and a mirror
March 13, 2012 by
Three men and a mirror. Old Kuala Lumpur coffeeshop. Leica M9-P, Zeiss ZM 2/50 Planar
I do enjoy street photography. But it’s more of a social documentary and practice arena to hone my skills in other areas. The one big difference between photojournalism and street is your internal sense of purpose: with the former, you know you’re there on assignment, and looking for particular images. This means two things: confidence, and focus. That’s why I find photojournalism a lot easier than street – it’s all about confidence. MT
POTD: Shards
March 12, 2012 by
Shards. New facade of Starhill Gallery, Kuala Lumpur. Would probably look a whole lot nicer if they bothered to clean the glass, especially after repeated monsoon rains. Nikon D700, 24/1.4
POTD: The orange tunnel
March 11, 2012 by
The orange tunnel. Fuji X100
The color is caused by the extreme difference in color temperature of light sources: sodium vapor in the tunnel, evening shade outside. It would be impossible to get the right white balance for both – so a ‘middle value’ produces this effect. A pain when shooting something where color is important, or one of those interesting properties of optics that we photographers exploit from time to time…MT
POTD: Spiral
March 10, 2012 by
Spiral. Images are everywhere if you open your eyes. Olympus Pen Mini E-PM1, ZD 12/2.
POTD/ Quick review: Details in the fabric/ Leica D-Lux 5
March 5, 2012 by
Details in the fabric. Traditional Japanese spring kimono. Leica D-Lux 5 Titanium
Now may also be a good time to share a few quick thoughts on the Leica D-Lux 5 Titanium – it arrived early last week for me to use as a backup/ pocket camera. In short,
The Good:
-Very flexible controls.
-Multi-aspect ratio switch – I’m using it a lot more than I would; it’s now easier to fit the frame to the subject.
-Image quality is excellent up to ISO 400; useable at ISO 800; I wouldn’t go any higher than that.
-It’s one sexy looking camera.
-Battery life seems to go on and on and on – first 200 frames shot, still showing full.
-Sharpness is good throughout the frame, and even at macro distances – cross-frame consistency close up isn’t usually a strong point of compact cameras. This was a big, pleasant surprise.
-Usefully large RAW buffer; i.e. you don’t notice any penalty for using RAW instead of JPEG (which I of course highly encourage).
-Mode dial is much stiffer than its predecessors, and can’t easily be knocked off position.
-Like all leaf-shutter compacts, the flash sync speed is all the way up to its maximum of 1/2000s! (*More on this later – I also shot a food job with it this weekend, which will be the subject of a future article.)
-Like all Panasonic-based cameras, an excellent optical image stabilizer – I can’t quantify this in any way, but I’ve always felt that their IS systems are on par with or even slightly better than the systems Nikon and Canon use on their SLR lenses.
The not so good:
-It is expensive for what it is – the standard D-Lux 5 represents fair value for money, because if you take out the cost of Lightroom (bundled) and the extended warranty, it’s not much more expensive than the Panasonic LX5 it’s based on, but arguably a better looking camera. The Titanium version, on the other hand, isn’t real titanium but commands a hefty premium over the standard one.
-The LCD is pretty poor; in fact it’s difficult to gauge the quality of a shot using it alone. The one on the V-Lux 3 is much better.
-Could be faster – startup feels decidedly leisurely and focusing isn’t as fast as the older Ricoh GR-Digital III. There was a time when these prosumer compacts were much faster than the mirrorless compact system cameras; my Pen Mini blows both of them out of the water.
-The included gray leather case looks cool, but is bulky and totally impractical. It stays at home for storage only.
I’ll be traveling for the rest of the week; depending on internet connection availability, frequency of posts may be reduced (don’t worry, I’ve got some great stuff prepared in advance and auto-scheduled in case I have no internet access at all). MT
POTD: The three-legged boy
March 3, 2012 by
The three-legged boy, Kathmandu. Look closer. Nikon D700, 24/1.4
POTD: Filling Stop and Traffic Jam
March 2, 2012 by
Filling stop.
Why not full stop? Because this was a petrol station, as as consequence of the second image…
I couldn’t decide which image to put up today, so there’ll be two: actually, they’re kinda different sides of the same motoring coin.
Traffic Jam. Just another day in Kuala Lumpur.
Somehow, whenever it rains, people lose the ability to drive or at least keep moving at a constant rate, and everything just grinds to a halt. It’ll take you two hours to cover a distance you normally do in 30min. I drive one of the most efficient turbo diesels on the planet, and I get abysmal mileage here – half of what friends with the same car get in Europe, hell, half of what I get when I drive on clear highways. If the government would do something about driver education and traffic planning, they could probably significantly lower fuel subsidies without affecting the net amount people have to pay. But, seems like nobody ever thought of that – maybe they were too busy cursing the traffic name they were stuck in.
I want to add another note about sufficiency: we’re there. What do I mean by that? Well, if I didn’t tell you both of these images were shot with an iPhone 4 (not even a 4S, which is supposedly even better from a camera point of view), would you know? How about if they were prints? Probably not. I’ve done experiments which show that even 8×10″s aren’t really enough to show cracks – if it’s a solid image, it’ll still look good; which is to say, as always, power of composition comes first. There are 5.0 decent megapixels on the iPhone 4 I’m using – that’s probably close to the same ultimate resolution as the Nikon D2H I used for professional work not so many years ago. I have photos in the Getty Images library which were shot with the iPhone 4. Of course there are plenty of situations where the iPhone won’t work – low light, action, anything other than 28mm etc – but I distinctly recall a time when camera phones were useless for anything but emergency ‘record’ snaps. And that definitely isn’t the case anymore. I’ve shot thousands of frames with my various iPhones; some of which I really, really like – I don’t wish I’d shot them with another camera. The best camera is the one you have with you all the time – and this fulfills the brief, and happens to have a pretty decent 28mm lens, too. Now if only they’d make it spit out a raw file instead of an over processed cartoon color JPEG. MT
Ming Thein | Photographer 