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D3x – first impressions
After much agonizing, I bought a Nikon D3x. After owning the D3, unwrapping and getting started with the D3x is totally anticlimactic. Everything is identical across the two cameras and instantly familiar. This is definitely a good thing when using your muscle memory and working quickly under stressful situations. I took it out, unwrapped it, slapped…
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Ancestral Journey: Day Three
When I awoke on the Saturday, it was with a bit of alarm, as the weather forecast had been for rain and the streets in Huizhou were wet. I was concerned whether we’d be able to go visit the grave of ancestor #1 — not that it would really have stopped me (or probably many…
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Ancestral Journey: Day Two
The next day we decided to take the morning off to do some sightseeing of Huizhou. We visited the scenic West Lake area, ascended the Sizhou Pagoda, and walked through the nearby market to buy mui choy, the local specialty of preserved mustard cabbage. The wet market portion sold various live treats like turtles, frogs,…
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Ancestral Journey: Day One
We met up in the morning with the rest of my relatives from Malaysia and Hong Kong: several uncles, an aunt, two granduncles, and a grand-aunt. After a reunion dim sum breakfast, the fourteen of us headed for Huizhou on a chartered tour bus, crossing the Hong Kong SAR / China border. Upon our arrival…
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Ancestral Journey: Prologue
My trip to China came about through the rediscovery of the Chung family ancestral home in Tam Tong, a village near the city of Huizhou in Guangdong province. Chung Jen Miau, my great-great-grandfather, and his family had left Tam Tong for Malaysia in the early part of the 20th century. Several generations later, descendants of…
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D3 vs D3x
Indirectly through Nikon Canada I had a chance to have a D3x over Christmas. There have been endless criticisms of Nikon’s pricing on the D3x, a whopping $8000 US, or $9450 CDN, and I won’t touch upon that here (much). What I wanted to analyze for myself was how it compared to the D3 at…
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A year with the D3
A year has passed since I rushed out of work to pick up my Nikon D3 at Lens and Shutter and arrived 10 minutes before closing time. I had previously filled out the application form (aka Customer Worthiness form) that Nikon Canada was requiring all prospective purchasers to fill out and send in. At the…
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Joe McNally’s lighting workshop
I attended a 5-day lighting workshop in Vancouver (organized through Vancouver Photo Workshops) with Joe McNally a couple of weeks ago. Joe's a great, down-to-earth, self-effacing guy, pretty much as he comes across in his blog, and he worked us and himself hard. Beyond his huge volume of published work with National Geographic and Life magazines,…
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Vintage video
To experiment a bit with Animoto, I built the following video for my buddies in the band Vintage using a medley of images I've taken of them over several gigs.
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Scotland 2008
A few images from our recent trip to Scotland. View towards Glencoe Clan Memorial Stone at Culloden Field Ruins of Elgin Cathedral