GX GARNERINGS

^Traditional Chinese pastries with a pigmented Chinese character on top, "double happiness". The single biggest factor fascinating me about Hong Kong is the mixtures of all sorts.  You just see mixtures everywhere in Hong Kong. The Chinese community in Hong Kong is like not any other you may find around the world.  The Chinese people here (excluding, for the moment, the wallet-fattened Mainland Chinese holding overseas passports and migrating to Hong Kong as investment migrants) are individually a mixture of liberal and conservative minds.  Most of them treasure the old Chinese values while having a fairly westernised minds about fairness, openness and democracy. «An old-style notice setting the dishes and price for a set meal The cityscape is a real mix of advancement and ancientry.  I like the way the city is haphazardly developed with a naturally occurring tidiness.  Disorder and order, old and new.  This is the major factor giving Hong...

Old areas are always my favourite. Whether I am in or out of town, my penchant for old areas urges me to venture into the labyrinthic lanes of the old districts. Chances are that surprises of no discription are awaiting for every of such a visit. Here in a local old district I ran into some workers giving final touches to a Chinese traditional whatchamacallit for, as suggested by the Chinese characters on it, a Chinese martial arts body. Whether it will be displayed in a row or stacked up for the Kung-fu masters to jump over, I have absolutely no idea. Well, I will have some idea after some research which I have been too busy lately to do. Which I do know is, in the second photo, the pink bat-shaped back of the heavily ornamented thing denotes "fortune" because "bat" and "fortune" are homophones in Chinese. And the fish ornament, which I suppose is a gigantic harp, connotates "abundancy". They are great artworks, aren't they. (The GF1 impr...

Having heaped praises on the GF1, I am ready to write something negative about it.  Well, it is a camera and no camera is perfect (and no designer is perfect).  The discussion here is to point out to prospective users the reality to expect and the camera makers areas for improvements. There are two big parts in the GF1's design flaws. Video Button First it is the position of the dedicated red video button which is located on the right side atop the camera body.  It is so undesirably positioned and easily activated that I have accidentally shot several videos in between the shooting occasions.  It should absolutely be relocated in a GF2. EVF Second, it is the design of the EVF.   Pany doesn't give the EVF a neat design.  In fact, the design makes me think that the EVF was an afterthought in the wake of the camera production.  The somewhat horrible design features: - a button on the EVF itself for toggling between the EVF and LCD....

^This is one of my favourite images taken with the GF-1 so far, reminding me of the Chinese ink painting. Most digital cameras allow users to choose from different image settings.  As discussed yesterday, I found two of the My Colour settings of the GF-1 handy and useful. Great Function 4 But I'm more concerned about the black and white image settings.  Take my GX200 for example.  The GX200's black and white images dons a unique film-like grainy character, especially at high ISO values because, interestingly, of its lacklustre performance high up there.  The GX200 lets users tune the contrast and sharpness for their own black and white setting.  But, frankly, the differences are not obvious. For sure, we can always post-process.  But what can be better than seeing a scene in different image characters instantly? It is where GF1's film mode comes in handy.   The film mode features several effects in colour and B&W, as well as two cust...

^I like a lot the texture of the B&W images afforded by the My Colour mode. We carry on yesterday's discussion on the likeable functions of the GF-1. Great Function 3 Some photographers dispute the integration of post-processing functions in digital cameras.  I'm not a big fan of such functions either.  But most users I think cannot afford or don't care to spend too much time post-processing photos. In this case, the My Colour mode of the GF-1 comes in handy.  The mode has eight different colour settings for users to choose from. The settings are, from top left to right, elegant, silhouette, expressive, dynamic art, retro, pure, sepia and monochrome.  There is also a custom setting for users to save their own tuning. Do I have a full understanding of what all these terminologies mean? Nope.  But they do give distinct looks to the images among which, to me, Dynamic Art and Monochrome are best.   The Dynamic Art setting is best for...

This post continues the GF-1 impression series and talks about some of its well thought-out functions. The function I think most useful is the exposure sliders working in tandem with the compensation ruler. Useful Function One Dpreview has made a flash gif about how the pair works here .  But it doesn't mention a point which is useful in manual mode. It works this way: in manual mode, when either the shutter speed or the aperture value is selected, both exposure sliders have some sections shaded in brownish colour.  This is to show that if an exposure combo involves a value in the shaded area, it becomes not "right" to the extent displayed on the compensation ruler. With reference to the above Dpreview's gif, the section from shutter speed (SS) 2 to 15 will have been shaded while the extent of the over-exposure is being shown on the compensation ruler. This mechanism definitely affords the photographer quick informed guesses before the picture is ac...

This morning the Internet is awash with news about Samsung's NX10 , a potential rival to the MFT system and Ricoh's GXR.

Hands-off, for sure, on Sunday.  Have a restful day, and a peaceful new year!