GX GARNERINGS

Our long-time reader, Christopher Guy, sent us some of his shots surrounding a theme "City Rhapsody", showing us around the city in his photographic eye.  He uses the Panasonic LX3.  Enjoy!

Some folks have already got their new Panasonic GH 2 and tested them.   Click the links below to check the image quality, noise performance, bokehness of shots taken at different focal lengths and ISO values.  Be sure to check the noise performance in the last few images: ISO Focal Length (mm) Exposure Combo 100 45 1/50s, f2.8 1/1300s, f3.2 2s, f5.6 20 1/125s, f1.7 160 150 1/500s, f2 1/1300s, f2.5 14 1/250s, f5 400 20 1/8s, f8 800 300 1/25s, f5 45 1/320s, f4.5 ...

(Camera: GXR A12 50mm) We have two kinds of live forms in Hong Kong, with property developers and speculators as the supreme life-form and owners and aspirant owners of a property as the cheap low-life one.  These are some of the whys: -- In Hong Kong, touting for tickets of any sort is illegal and offenders are liable to conviction for ticket scalping.  Applying this logic to the property market will be a long time coming, if that will ever happen.  Do you have the ambassadorial eloquence to justify why landed-property scalping activities, a.k.a. speculation or investment, are permitted at the expense of the general public's interest? -- Just as most booming countries in this part of the world, property prices have skyrocketed in recent years.  Members of the public have urged the government to rein in the crazy property price hikes to, not surprisingly, no avail.  Just days ago, a local property developer commented in public that the property price...

(Camera: EX1; noise added to the image) Maybe in our eyes she is an old lady of no relevance, eating people's leftovers on the roadside.  But fact is, she is a real person who has lived a life as worthy as ours.  This awareness can change our perspective in approaching these "strangers".  A sense of humanity in our observations can make the world very different.  I have a recent story to tell. While the legislation on minimum wage is to be implemented in Hong Kong, the public is gobsmacked to learn the unedifying move of a local chain restaurant, Cafe d' Carol.  It excludes lunchtime from the paying working hours! We are talking about a few Hong Kong dollars rise in the hourly wage rate per employee.  But the recent performance report shows that the food company has earned about HK$500 million. Think about that again.

(Camera: EX1) At the corner of a bustling street, this beggar started to make his living in the morning.  The reason why he had to beg for money is not known.  But do we care?  Do we really just walk by without any show of the slightest pity?

  There's why we have a break.  This is Sunday.  Have a great day in freedom!