GX GARNERINGS

The window shopping some hours ago has almost provoked my AgIDS illness.  Just in case you’re in Hong Kong or are coming here, and have the money to burn (All in HK$/ body only): GX200 = $3,280 GRD2 = $3,380 LX3 = $3,180 G10 = $3,280 Prices are available form a gear shop on the 1st floor of the Mongkok Computer Centre.   Besides these new low prices, I found that Wing Shing Photo (55-57Sai Yeung Choi St., MK Tel: 2396 6886/ 91-95 Fa Yuen St., MK  Tel: 2396 6885) is offering a Sony A700 + Carl Zeiss Lens package for HK$9,980 (hopefully, a bargain will make it some hundreds cheaper).

  Ready to brake your brain for the weekend?  Before that, here is a last exercise for you.  Check out these food items: think and make your best guess.  WHAT ARE THESE? A local gastronomist's favourite dish they will make.  Known as "Lap Aap", (literally, Salted and Dried Duck) they always make a powerful sight to my eye for their identical pattern and flattened outlook.  I wonder how a fat duck can be murdered and reduced to the thickness of some pieces of paper.  I can tell kids and they will readily believe me that these ducks were run over by a trucks and killed on their way back to a barn. Seriously, these ducks are deboned, salted and dried in the open air.  A winter delicacy available in local delicatessens, they are most sought after for the leg parts.   If you have tasted a smoked pork hock, the Lap Aap is similar in taste but more chewy.  The usual way of serving is to steam a  tiny piece with rice. (...

  (Self-portrait of SY.  The comedic expression on his face goes very well with the comedic reproduction of his reproductive organ) SY HSU is an extremely popular amateur photographer in Taiwan and beyond.   I first learned about him on his album site " I Take Photos of Pretty Ladies Alone " some two years ago.   Located in Taiwan, SY has proven his photographic skills and talent especially in portraits of unique charactristics, the very reason why GX GARNERINGS is putting up a special regular section to show some of his portrait works done with small sensor digital cameras. Yes, compacts, virtually any compact, can take great portraits and even photos of other themes.  I can never be too emphatical in advocating that again, in photography, our photographic skills count much more than which camera is technically better.  A better camera can make a better tool, but never a better photograher. So, back to the captioned question: Ment...

(What's Wrong with Him:  Wrong place to preach a wrongly put message) People are baffling with the financial tsunami.  Some are losing money, some home, some sanity.  This is happening in almost every corner of the world.  Last Saturday, I was at a road junction waiting to cross the road. "He shows up here at the weekends," murmured two passers-by standing next to me at the crossing. They were talking about the man in Islamic clothes on the safty island at the bustling road junction. I looked some four metres ahead.  The man wasn't there last month as I  was aware.  There on the safety island he was holding a placard written with some religious message.  That was a wrong place, at least a dangerous one, to preach the message put in a wrong order (numbers 1 and 2 should swap places).  In any case, however, it was the world which wronged him. Maybe he has lost his sanity.  Maybe he is homeless.  Puzzled by...

(A GX200 to be fitted with the Nikon teleconverter) For those who are as creative, you would be interested in this post published by Ricoh GRDII Journal. Bhuminan wrote in the post about a Thai user building a lens converter to fit a Nikon converter into a GX200. This is probably a big draw to more users for the future GX models. A Taiwan user's similar creative expansion of the GX system is a head turner no less, which was reported in a previous post on GX GARNERINGS.   (A Taiwan user's GX200 fitted with a zoom lens with the longest focal length at 500mm)

(Dealer in Old Goods: His ad board is extraodinarily large, on which he wrote wanted old items including old wristwatches, speakers, pagers, air-conditioners, cellphones, video recorders, fax machines and TVs.) When you are in Hong Kong, go to the neighbourhood of a residential area, especially those which are old or where there are the old government subsidised housing estates. Their neighbourhoods are more lively and exotic. Being in such neighbourhoods, you are destinated to see one or two roadside dealers in second-hand goods. They operate in a similar fashion: a man sitting on a chair next to a wooden ad board or placard on which the wanted second-hand items are listed out. Some dealers may even display broken T.V. and Hi-Fi sets to catch attention. For small second-hand items like a broken GX100, customers usually bring and sell them to the dealers for a minimal price. If the items are bulky like an unwanted desktop com-puter, custo-mers can first agree on an approximate...

(Skirt Up: This is my favorite photo in the exhibition. It was taken during a memorial service to pay tribute to the British soldiers died in the fighting against the Japanese invasion of Hong Kong. The memorial service was held once a year in Hong Kong during the Bristish colonial rule. It still is but not at the Cenotaph adjoining the Statue Square in Central) I am just back from the “Imaging Hong Kong” photography exhibition. Some of the exhibited photos were intriguing in the way they were presented. Photography has a very long history in Hong Kong, which is actually as long as since the French government announced the invention of photography in 1839. Not long afterwards in 1845, the first photographic studio was established by a Mr West at Sydenham Terrace near Queen’s Road Central, Hong Kong. In the beginning, under the British colonial rule, all the photographers in Hong Kong were expats but in around 1860, local Chinese photographers began to emerge. Among them Afong Lai , ow...

The Week of Reviews was fnished yesterday, thanks to Colin, Wouter, the Co-editor and myself. I have just wrapped up the posts to put the links in order as follows: 1) Review of GX200 by Wouter Brandsma: Parts One , Two , Three 2) Mini Review of GRDII by Colin Bradbury 3) A SLR User's Verdict on GX200 by Nevin Young: Parts One , Two , Three 4) Comparative Reviews and Photos of GX200, G10, LX3, P6000 and G1 5) Impressions on LX3 of a Former GRD II User 6) Film versus m Digital Images Some previous posts that you may also be interested: 7) How to Read a Camera Review 8) Simplifying A Decision in Buying a Camera 9) Does Noise Really Sound Bad 10)Non-Commercial Reviews of GX200

To sate any wistful sense left after the Week of Reviews, we draw your attention to a recent comparative review of the above four cameras done by a Chinese popular website, Pchome.net. The translated pages in Googlish is here , and in traditional Chinese here . In parallel, if you are interested in our previous posts for the comparative photos taken with these serious compacts and others, check out the links below: 1) GX200 vs LX3 vs G10 vs DP1 vs P6000 2) Nightshots Comparison: GX200 vs G10 vs G9 vs LX3 vs P6000 3) Nightshots Comparison (Round Two): G1 vs DP1 vs GX200 vs G10 vs LX3

The lens The GX200’s lens has a very useful focal length of 24mm 72mm F/2.5 to 4.4. In terms of portability, and somewhat in speed, it is superior than my Minolta 24mm to 105mm F/3.5-4.5 (i.e. Sony SAL24105). It is proved in numerous online reviews that the GX200’s lens have suffered from only mild barrel distortion. Surely, for edge to edge sharpness, the proper Minolta lens is the winner. In a nutshell, GX200’s lens covers a useful range for landscape to portrait with an agreeable quality. I do not miss carrying about extra pounds of lens and the film camera for some extra image quality really. The only lament I have for the lens is that it requires optional accessories to be able to put on filters (The GX200 has the handy colour tone function which works like colour filters though). I used the filters a lot with the Minolta lens. Unless I am ready to invest in a compact camera system, I do without the filters with the GX200 for the moment. But, again, in mos...