Here you can either go to my Flickr page,
or go to my Photography Article Archive in my blog,
or go and view my very old photos in my Mac.com homepage.
For as long as I could remember, I had always had a love for photography.It started as a somewhat innocent fling. A faded picture or two of my parents when they were young. A stack of freshly developed birthday photos of my cousins. Then whole family photo albums.
Before I knew it, I was fighting to take control of my father’s old SLR-type camera whenever it was time for a family photo. Which would had be easier if he hadn’t been so strict on letting a child “play” with a grown-up thing (which incidentally was the term used for anything that they didn’t want me to touch).
I got my first camera relatively late in life. I was in my early twenties when I got myself a camera, the first ever Canon Digital IXUS. It was a portable point-and-click camera so small that it fit neatly in my front jeans pocket. The small camera was relatively one of the more highly spec-ed point-and-click compact digital cameras then:-
Canon Digital IXUS S100
- Introduction date: June 2000
- Sensor: 2MP (1600 x 1200), 1/2.7″
- Lens: 35-70mm (2x Optical Zoom)
- Card: CF
- Size: 87mm x 57mm x 26.9mm
- Weight: 210g (including battery)
It took pretty decent pictures but the 2MP sensor was, as I had felt then, not and I demanded more and more from the small camera- pushing it to its limits. I played with the advance settings, setting my own shutter speed, manually adjusting the aperture.
However, a close friend once told me a simple maxim about photography which has influenced me until today: “It is not the camera that takes the pictures. It is the person.”
After that fateful day, I looked at the viewfinder and I understood what composition means. Now I understand why my photographs didn’t look as good as the ones that I saw in magazines and books. I trained myself to be mindful of headspaces when taking photos of people and groups. I experimented with angles and lights. And the results were, in my opinion, interesting.
While it is fun to be able to have the latest grown up camera, it is more important is to develop the photographic eye in all of us. This is something that will never go out of date, regardless of how many megapixels future cameras promise to deliver.
My “equipment” today of course has evolved from my first camera though, interestingly the original IXUS is still operation and I recently got my wife the latest IXUS as a simple point-and-click. For about 4 years, I went around shooting pictures with:-
Nikon D70
- Type: Single-lens reflex
- Sensor: CCD
- Maximum resolution: 3,008 × 2,000 (6.01 million)
- Lens type: Interchangeable, Nikon F-Mount
- Shutter: Combined mechanical and CCD electronic shutter
- Shutter speed range: 30 s to 1/8000 s in steps of 1/3 or 1/2 EV, bulb
- Exposure Metering: EV 0 to 20 (3D Color Matrix or center-weighted metering); EV 2 to 20 (spot metering)
- Exposure Modes: Digital Vari-Program (Auto, Portrait, Landscape, Close up, Sports, Night landscape, Night portrait), Programmed Auto [P] with flexible program; Shutter Priority Auto [S]; Aperture Priority Auto [A]; Manual [M]
- Metering modes: Matrix, Center-weighted, Spot
- Focus areas: Can be selected from 5 focus areas
- Focus modes: Single Area AF, Dynamic Area AF, Closest Subject Priority Dynamic Area AF
- Continuous Shooting: 3 fps up to 144 frames (JPEG/RAW)
- Viewfinder: Optical
- ASA/ISO range: 200 to 1600 (ISO equivalent) in steps of 1/3 EV
- Rear LCD monitor: 1.8 inches (46 mm) (D70) 130,000 pixel TFT
- Storage: CompactFlash (Type I or Type II) or Hitachi Microdrive
- Weight: no battery 595 g (1.3 lb), inc. batt 679 g (1.5 lb)
Being my first SLR camera (that I owned), I was overwhelmed at first by the functionalities especially after “graduating” from an IXUS. But as I got used to it after various experimentations (I hate manuals so I chucked it aside after a few flip of pages), I begin to love it more and more each time I use it.In addition to the great value Nikkor 18-70mm f/3.5-4 DX lens that came with the camera, I also got (over the past 2 years):-
- Nikkor 28-200mm f/3.5-5.6G lens
- Nikkor 50mm f/1.8 lens
- Nikon SB-800 Speedlight
(Update June 2008: I finally upgraded my camera to the spanking Nikon D300 which doesn’t come with automatic modes like “Sports” or “Portrait” etc. It comes with P, A, S and M mode which means that I’m now learning about Apertures, Shutter Speeds, ISOs, EV steps, etc which are so much more fun than doing pure pointing and clicking!)
I love sharing my photos with friends and families through Flickr. I regularly go for holidays and travel extensively for work so my subject matter is never boring. So if you go to sleep viewing my photos, it’s the photographer and not the subject that is to blame.
The most current thing that I’m doing right now is to process my photos on my Mac. I’ve always believed in the “unplugged” spirit of sharing photographs. Until recently, all of my previous uploads to Flickr were untouched-up and un-processed. After seeing some impressive results, I’m a believer. There are only 2 real choices for Photography software in my opinion.I’m evaluating both Adobe Lightroom and Apple Aperture. Both have its strengths and weaknesses but I’m leaning towards Adobe Lightroom for its ease of use and fantastic UI (sorry Steve, but you have to make Aperture run on my 512MB Quicksilver G4 PowerMac).
(Update Aug 2008: I’ve finally settled on Adobe Lightroom 2 as the photography workflow software of choice. Sorry Steve, told you about the clunky Aperture but did you listen…)