GX GARNERINGS

Now that we are all exposing a scene with the instant cue on a LCD screen, the techniques of doing exposure are left to the wind by and by. In the above contrasty scene, which I photographed with my film Minolta Dynax 7, how would you expose? The present-day metering system and micro-chips in the cameras are so sophisticated that giving it an average metering will do the trick. The photo will come out okay. But, what if you wish to know exactly what you're doing, and to end up with a final image turning out to be exactly the way you want? For this photo, I cared about the foliage under the shade by the footpath. I didn't want it to be unduly darkened in the final image. So, I metered the area. Since I presumed it to be near zone 5, I just exposed the scene as suggested by the camera and took the shot. Zone 5? Read on here .

^These birds were as big as half an adult's height.  Well, it depends on how high you are.  All images in this post are film photos.     Maybe I shall be as wise as Marco who, in his comment yesterday, revealed that his GX200 would be sold. I am still keeping two GX200, and even my decade-old Minolta Dynax 7 and, believe or not, the dead body (well, it doesn't function anymore) of my Minolta Dynax 7000i plus a P&S Oly film mju-zoom camera.      Can you recall the crush for such old flames when you first caught sight of them seemingly with a halo overhead inside the shop windows? And if you have many old cameras, it was "lust" not just "crush".   ^I like the serene view of this boardwalk over a pond. Want a cure to mitigate your insatisfiable photographic libido which get you in a downward spiral of dire need of money? It is time to revive your old flames. Give them a hug (not with force or the ba...

^My Ricoh GX200 System:  the camera, two conversion lenses, some filters and the accompanying long-zoom CX1.  Wonder why the EXIF suggests that the photo was taken by a GX200? A lady speaking English at a near native-speaker proficiency said in regret, "This is not enough.  I still have lots to learn." I, half turning to her husband, replied, "Well, we are always in the want of what we already have but want more. "Ask him," I, pointing to the man's Epson R-D1 and hinting at his Ricoh camera in his backpack,  continued in an amusing tone, "if he still wants more cameras?" The answer was a resounding YES. ^The answer to the last question is: I have two GX200 cameras.  The photo gives an idea of how the GX200 grows in size with the tele-converter.  I attached to it a step-up ring to use a circular polariser. With the dawning of the interchangeable-lens MFT (micro 4/3) cameras, the exciting GXR and the likes with...

Hong Kong is a typical big city where nearly all neighbourhood shops have been elbowed out of the way by colossal chain stores, except for the older districts devoid of huge business viability. With the juggernaut of greed in nowadays humans whereby even the Copenhagen summit  becomes another occasion to ask for delayed remedial actions to the big environment issue, it is little wonder that small neighbourhood businesses cannot survive. They are the vanishing race. It was just by chance that I came across this teeny-weeny shoesmith shop which is situated in the tiny space under a staircase leading up to a pre-WWII tenement building.  For this kind of shop, the commonly known name is "Loutiedyke  Poou", or literally "Staircase-underside Shop". These days you won't find many, if any, shoesmiths in Hong Kong.  Maybe you can spot one or two mending shoes of variety at some makeshift stall in a back lane of an old neighbourhood.  It wi...

Today's photo may be puzzling to the tyros: how did the photographer do it? Flash photography is a genre of photography in its own right.  For one thing, the flash now serves as the primary light source and the control of the amount of light reaching the sensor hinges on the aperture alone.  The shutter speed becomes irrelevant, well,  in a way, to the exposure. This is why flash photography affords you the chance to do intriguing photos like this. Here the room was lit by environmental light peering through the window.  I spot-metered the backyard outside the window, thus making the room seriously underexposed save for when the flash beamed light in a split of a second.  The shutter was dragged by way of lowering the ISO - since the camera used was CX1 which didn't allow tweaking of the exposure combo - thereby allowing me enough time to turn the camera from a horizontal to a vertical position. Since the backyard was exposed correctly throughout th...

This is a shop which sells spare tyres of all sorts, with the obese shopkeeper sitting outside it.  The humour is, without any intention to tease the man, cultural. In Cantonese, one's "spare tyres" are the wiggling rings of unshaped fat around the waist, the big fat belly. See the spare tyres now? This is Sunday.  Have a restful day!