Matt was using a Nikon D90 with his 35mm f1.8, and myself the D300 with the Sigma 24-60mm f2.8. Different lenses not withstanding of course, the flash settings and DSLR modes we used were roughly similar but the results turned out rather differently.
Mine’s the first set below:
And Matt’s:
And just for fun: of Matt shooting Hannah.:)
Every other day there’ll be photographic events organized and posted up on Clubsnap, with the subjects of photography in one room at least typically young female models, and not always fully clothed but in lingerie and bikinis. I remembered these amateur model photoshoots were actually reported in The Straits Times a couple of months ago, and there was some bad publicity surrounding some of these photo shoots with some persons I think asking aloud if some of these amateur photographers participating in these events had sleazy intentions. While Matt was in Labrador Park last week, he encountered one such event with a young female model being followed by seven photographers around the park, and texted me asking what was going on haha.:)
Anyway, we decided to pull our own TFCD (LOL) ‘model’ shoot at The Rivervale stunt, just for fun. The model? None other than our very own Hannah! Here’re the third-person behind-the-scenes pictures taken by Ling on that little Panasonic LZ8 compact.:)
Hannah gamely took up the challenge of posing for Matt and myself, and didn’t seem in the least perturbed by the three flashes constantly going off. I’ll put up the pictures tomorrow in a different post.
In the mean time, the whole experience was just outright hilarious, and Hannah’s mood willing, we’ll do this again very soon.:)
It’s extremely rare for Ling to show any interest in the lenses I use when it comes to taking pictures. So it came as surprise to me when she took a look at some pictures I took of Hannah yesterday evening, expressed surprise at how amazing the shots looked and asked what lens was used:
The lens belongs to Matt, and is the Nikon 35mm f1.8G DX and for cropped sensors a fairly recent release from Nikon actually. Prior to coming to Singapore and earlier this year, Matt actually asked if I’d to buy a copy of the lens too for him to bring here too but I declined then. While I don’t have a lens capable of shooting at 35mm @ f1.8, I thought the Sigma 24-60mm f2.8 I normally use for indoor and Hannah’s pictures would cover any intended use of the 35mm.
Well, I got to eat my words now: the lens is simply superb! Even Ling was bowled over at its color reproduction and how much detail the lens could resolve (“Wah… can see the detail in the cushion cover!!”). And when I told her it was a lens the lens costs about USD200, she said “buy buy buy!!”, and even suggested buying it from Matt haha!
Given the heat in recent days, we’ve been trying to give Hannah a second bath each evening before the last feed of the day. This will usually be at about 8 pm. Ling bathes Hannah, and I do all the menial labor (e.g. bring bucket of water, pour bucket of water into baby bath tub, carry and pour used water, wash the tub and mat, mop floor). But what we get in return is a happy Hannah and she smells superbly nice and fragrant. We were intending to use the spare time this evening to clean up the house and move Hannah’s furniture out of the guestroom for Matt’s stay, but with that postponed, we got to clean her up, do a slow feed and set her to bed a little earlier than normal.
When Hannah’s dressed in colorful bed-time wear, and especially if I haven’t taken pictures of her in that wear before, it’s opportunity to dig out the D300 and just go nuts! Here’s an outfit I thought would make for colorful pictures: the green long-sleeved shirt was from one of Ling’s long-time friends, and the purple pants a hand-me down from her ex-colleague.
Taken using the Sigma 18-250mm. The lens sure is useful – generous focal length so I don’t have to move my legs too much. Down side though is that it sometimes has problems deciding on focus! :)
The list of photography web sites that I bookmark and check everyday include Imaging Resource, The Photography Blog, DPReview, The Luminous Landscape and Clubsnap though funnily, the first three sites largely present similar articles when it comes to news items. There’s also a bunch of other sites whose URLs I keep and I go to semi-frequently.
SLR Gear – a great repository for editorial and user reviews of lenses.
DxOMark – a database for DSLR sensors. I visit this whenever there’s a new DSLR body and I want to check on its specifications for fun. The site has a controversial sensor noise sensitivity ratings which gets hotly debated in online forums, especially after one of their reports stated that the top-of-the-line full frame DSLR from Nikon bested Canon’s equivalent by a noticeable margin in one albeit very important aspect for the kind of persons who’d buy those cameras.
Lenstip – this is a Polish site I think with the occasional lens review. But it contains two reference articles that I check frequently: a review of CPLs and another for UV filters.
This isn’t including the bunch of other photography-centric blog and review sites, but the ones above contain pretty useful reference information.:)
While I was in Kumamoto last December, Ling and Hannah spent a good amount of time at our Lentor family home, staying with my parents.
After I got back home, Ling shared with me her experience of staying at Lentor, including listening to the many stories my Mom has of this particular branch of the Foo clan. For those of us not in the know, my Mom is a very colorful story teller – she’s the type who could tell a story of a wall getting painted, and turn it into a bestseller!
It was during this period of stay that Ling finally saw firsthand evidence proving that I take after my Mom. Including how I interact with the spouse (LOL), the way I absolutely cannot abide lateness of any sort, or that I frequently throw away used stuff that Ling would want to keep (Ling’s a pack rat). Ling finally saw for herself exactly where I got all those traits from her, and it was scarily familiar! :)
In any case, Ling also took the opportunity to pour through the photos my Dad took of us as babies and infants at our old home in Sembawang Hills Estate. While I got my looks and most of my traits and character inclinations from my Mom, I got the obsessive compulsion to record both in imagery and text from my Dad. My Dad took hundreds of pictures of the three of us using his old twin-lens reflex camera.
Just as a comparison: while I was doing my weekly backup of Hannah pictures and video, I took a note of how much videos and pictures I’ve kept of her in the first 8 months 3 weeks. And the tally goes like this:
- 1,571 pictures (about 13.6 GB)
- 196 minutes of HD video (17.6 GB)
The actual image frame count I suspect is probably three times 1,571, since I typically keep about a third of all the actual frames I trigger. Now, if I were to translate it into 1980s technology with 36 exposure film rolls, it’ll work out to about 44 film rolls assuming if I keep every one of those exposures.
Another interesting stat: Hannah’s about 264 days old. That also means on average, she gets about 5.95 pictures taken and kept of her everyday since birth.:)
I should had been an accountant!
Writing and preparing yet another Blurb book has become a regular ritual for me. As soon as I finished Book III of the series of Vita Una books last September, I began work on Book IV:
The initial plan for the fourth book was to cover the period from Hannah at 3 months to when she’s a year old, but the large number of pictures I liked and are significant in Hannah’s life journey accelerated the production quite a bit.
This new volume covers the period between 24 Sep last year to 21 Feb 2010 and just a shade under five months. There’re more photos than the previous volume too: a projected 221 compared to 182, though that’s come at the expense of text. The format of the book, like the previous volumes, stipulates a maximum of 160 pages – a bummer since I’d really like to do up more pages if I could.
I suspect that the next volume – Book V – will come out even quicker, and that’s in view of the travels we’ve had that weren’t centered specifically on Hannah and I haven’t yet covered in the series of books. Specifically, I’d like the next book to at least cover the San Francisco and Kumamoto Trips, and Hannah turning one in June this year – and if at all possible, perhaps even pictures from the Boston trip if plans work out.
I was thrilled yesterday to read that Sigma has just announced a lens that I’d been hoping for: their 70-20mm f2.8 optically stabilized lens! I’d blogged about this class of lens just the other month ago, but had no idea that was already in the works. With Sigma getting into the picture, I expect Tamron to follow suit with an optically stabilized version of their similar lens. Assuming that this lens is even nearly as good as the Nikon equivalent – that costs a royal bomb – I’m pretty certain I’ll pick up this Sigma lens when it’s finally available here.:)
Lens announcement here on DPReview.:)
Comical situations occasionally come up at home. Just 30 minutes ago, Hannah was sleeping and I was working on the PC when Ling came into the workroom and said in hushed tone:
“Dear, want to take pictures of Hannah? She’s sleeping and hugging her pillow. She looks soooo cute!”
I’ll never pass up an opportunity to take pictures of Hannah, so I raced to the dry cabinet, dug out the D300, exchanged and mounted up the Sigma 24-60mm and SB600, tip-toed into her room, composed and took the first shot:
It’s moments like these when you realize how beautiful children are, and the loveliness of God’s creations.
Unfortunately as blogged here before, Hannah’s a light sleeper like me. As soon as she heard the shuttle curtain clicks, she opened her eyes, propped herself up:
At this point, Ling and I exchanged looks that said it all: “Oh sh*t. Tolong… die liao. Maybe she’ll go back to sleep!”
No such luck, because as soon as she got up, Hannah brought down the house with some of the loudest wailing we’ve heard in a while. You can’t hear it in a blog post, but you can see the evidence!
Before you think we’ve got our priorities messed up by taking pictures of her instead of pacifying her – immediately after taking this picture above, I carried then soothed Hannah back to a state of calm (though not before she deposited her mucus and tears all on my shoulder). I figured that if we’re going to even get any sort of mileage out of this encounter, at least there’ll be pictures! :)
Hannah was in one of her usual wailing moods mid-afternoon yesterday. Ling was preparing her solids feed, so it fell to me to have to ‘entertain’ and quieten her just so that the entire block of Rivervale residents don’t come knocking on our door with pitchforks.
I’ve discovered one trick that seems to work well: put her onto our bed, surround it with pillows, and point a DSLR at her. The first don’t always just work, but the both of us have observed that Hannah’s attracted not only to lights of any kind, but also to objects that are pointed at her – in this case the lens off a DSLR.
Probably impossible to tell the difference: but the top two were taken using the Sigma 24-60mm f2.8, and the bottom two using the cheapo Nikon 18-55mm VRII. Had to make a quick lens switch because as soon as Hannah saw that the D300 had been set down on the bed to facilitate the lens change, she immediately scampered in that direction to play with it!
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