It started some time back, when my younger brother loaned me a DVD of The Phantom of the Opera movie.

Sometime last year, I stumbled upon the 25th Anniversary The Phantom of the Opera at the Royal Albert Hall Blu-Ray at a local shopping mall. I bought the disc almost immediately.

Before I realized it, I was captivated in front of the TV screen for the next three hours

When I got to know that The Phantom of the Opera was coming to Singapore at Grand Theatre of MasterCard Theatres at Marina Bay Sands, I bought the tickets immediately. The Phantom was played by Brad Little and Christine was played by Claire Lyon.

I must admit, I was not that willing to part too much of my money (which I regretted later), and not really experienced in choosing seats. I purchased the first row of the second cheapest tickets. Only available tickets in the next higher tier were just a row in front. I thought that the visual will not have much different with just a row apart. Only when I got sited, I realized that it was the first row of the upper deck. There was a safety bar in front of me. If I lean back, my vision would be block. So I ended up watching the whole musical leaning forward. From my position, I could see that last row from the next tier had so much better view. Anyway, I learnt a lesson.

I could not help but to compare the three versions which I watched.

The movie version was remarkable in term of the computer graphic effect, especially the rising of the chandelier. It really brought us back to the theatre in 1881 Paris. I also found it make more logical sense on the timing of the falling chandelier. At the same time, it took away some of the mysteries of The Phantom. I was a bit disappointed that the Phantom was not that ugly as expected when he was unmasked.

I personally found that the vocal in the movie was not as good as the theatre versions, in Blu-Ray or live. Some of the stage magic could not be duplicated in the movie. Example was Christine could appear to change three very different looking costumes without actually leaving the stage.

The 25th Anniversary disc was almost as good as being there. On top of that, the camera zoomed in in a number of occasions, and this allowed us to watch the actors’ and actress’ expression. We could feel their emotions. The use of the LEDs and having the orchestras above the stage complimented the performance. On the other hand, the over use of the LEDs somehow at the same time limited the wow factor in the stage magic.

It was nothing compared to watching the performance live. Of course, we could not expect the large cast in a regular show compared to the special edition like the 25th Anniversary. But I think it was already sufficient to woo the audience. Without the LEDs, I could see the wonders of the stage magic. There was the rising and falling of the chandelier (absence in the 25th Anniversary). There was the transformation of the stage from the old ruined look to a new look. There were sudden appearances of The Phantom in the various occasions (e.g. during the “All I Ask of You (Reprise)” and “Why So Silent?”).

Sitting at the high up at the upper deck did have some advantages. I could see how the disappearing and re-appearing of The Phantom being done in ending of “Why So Silent?”.

Overall, the three versions of The Phantom of the Opera gave me much enjoyment. I would like the live viewing best, provided that I could get much better seating. If I do have a chance to visit New York or London, and it is still playing there, I think I will be catching the show again there.

Initially, I thought there was the only long wait. When I started the game, it performed an update with the server. It took another awfully long time to process “large file”. After that, I had to restart the game to start playing. Over the course of the few days, it had to be updated a few times. Perhaps, it is because it is still a fairly new game. There is much to be updated.
The first ten to twenty minutes was spent going through a sort of “tutorial” on the basics of the game. Although “basics”, it was sufficient to get me get started. Along the way, there was pop up guides to provide hints and “to-do” to proceed with the game.

At the start of the game, I had to build roads, basic infrastructures (ie, water supply, electric power, etc), zoning the areas, etc. The fun part was to slowly, from nothing, seeing a town being form, from hourly deficit to profitable, the expanding towards becoming a city.

Later, I was guided to put public services (ie police station, schools, etc) to increase the land value, so as to attract wealthier residents.

At a certain point of the time, I was prompted that, I need more residents to provide workers for the factories. I kept expanding the residential zone and yet there was very few occupants in the new areas. It took me a 2nd hour into the game, before I was “guided” that, to increase the density of the residential area, I need to upgrade the road. I think it was one of the fun parts of the game, to discover new tricks.

Before I knew it, I was prompted to start another city in a neighboring area.

I found that Simcity is an interesting game. It is opened ended, and I believe I will spend hours playing this game. And I am still learning how to play this game.

There are two sides of the collection book – the Light side and the Dark side. Of course, the Light side refers to the Heroes, the Jedis, the Alliance, etc. And the Dark side refers to the Sith, the Empire, etc.

Light Side Front Cover

Dark Side Front Cover

In each page, there is at least a stamp featuring a major character in the Star Wars movies. There are also 2 sets of middle pages, featuring the blue prints of the vehicles from the movies. There is also a very long poster included.

Light Side Page showing Anakin Skywalker and Luke Skywalker

Dark Side Page showing Darth Vadar

Light Side Middle Pages with the Alliance Ships Blue Print and the Poster came along

These are some of the photos taken during the event.

A Red Power Ranger

A Lego Town with Star Wars Storm Troopers Parade

Lego of Star Wars Rebel Hanger

Lego Incredible Hulk under Millenium Falcon

Figure of the Incredible Hulk from the Movie Avengers

Figure Captain America fighting Loki from the Movie The Avengers

Scale Model of The Bat from the movie Dark Knight Rises

Figure the Black Widow from the movie The Avengers

A Gundam Model, I think

2 Cosplay

Cosplay Kamen Rider Faiz , standing behind is Kamen Rider Black and a Green Power Ranger

Cosplay Iron Man

Cosplay from the Game Halo

Cosplay Predator

I had been using Canon EOS-400D for over 4 years. It had been serving me faithfully. Unfortunately, recently, the built-in flash was not functioning properly and it was too expensive to get it repair. As such, I need to get a new camera to replace it.

I was looking at Canon EOS-60D, a semi-professional camera and EOS-600D, an entry level camera. Having been using an entry level camera for so many years, it would be fairly logical for me to upgrade to a semi-professional camera, rather than getting another entry level camera.

I did a comparison between the 2 cameras.

There are a number of technical similarities, which are 18MByte effective picture pixels, 3″ fully articulated LCD screen, up to 12800 ISO and many more.

Being a semi-professional camera, EOS-60D has the advantages of faster shutter speed of 1/8000 second (which I hardly used), shoulder LCD screen, environmentally sealed body and at least double the battery life.

All these benefits are more than enough to lure me to pay slightly more to get the EOS-60D.

Amazingly, the final reason which made me go towards the entry level EOS-600D camera was physical instead of technical.

I reflected my experience of going around with my camera and other stuffs. I prefer using a sling camera bag instead of a backpack camera bag due to the ease of taking out the camera. Soon, I found that I was having shoulder ache because of carrying so much heavy stuff.

The EOS-60D is a much heavier and bigger camera than the EOS-600D. Considering the weight factor, I finally decided to purchase the EOS-600D instead of upgrading.

Maybe someday in the future, I may get a semi-professional camera. But there is the future.

Purchasing a Blu-Ray Player was not really an easy task for me. There were many inexpensive Blu-Ray Players out there on the market. But I had other thoughts.

My current set-up was a 5.1 channels DVD home theatre system. There was no HDMI input/output on the home theatre system. My LCD TV set has only one HDMI input and it was utilized. Neither the TV set nor the home theatre system has S/PDIF connection.

Because of these limitations, I did not want to just get any Blu-Ray player. On top of the video quality, another reason to get Blu-Ray was the sound quality. I want to enjoy the surround sounds from the video as well. My current setup simply could not satisfy my requirements with just a Blu-Ray player.

I decided to replace my current DVD Home Theatre System with a Blu-Ray Home Theatre System.

I also put other factors into consideration. One was if the system has HDMI inputs. Since my TV set had only one HDMI input and it was utilized, I would want my new system to have HDMI input for my existing devices. I did not wish to change my TV set yet.

The other factor was that, if it could be used to watch YouTube video. Watching YouTube video was sort of the trend now, especially most of the newer models of Blu-Ray Home Theatre system had this function.

After a search, I decided on the Sony BDVE380 5.1-Channel High-Definition Blu-ray Disc Player/DVD Disc Home theater System. It is a 5.1 Channel Blu-Ray Player with 2 HDMI inputs and allows me to watch YouTube videos directly. Somehow, it just fitted into my requirements.

Now, I can enjoy Star Wars Blu-Ray, my existing devices and YouTube Video on this system.

He carried on, “I am unlikely to watch these discs anytime soon. I had watched these movies countless time already. But getting this set is a fan thing… A must have.”

I understand what he meant. I did not have a Blu-Ray player yet, but I already bought the Blue-Ray set. Getting the Star Wars Blue-Ray set was a must have to a fan.

I had the original Star Wars Episode IV to VI Video CD and DVDs set. Frankly speaking, I had not really sat down to watch these videos discs. But I simply could not resist the Force to get them.

Star Wars Video Collection - VCD, DVD and Blu-Ray

I had not bought any of the Episodes I to III videos, because I knew one day, the complete saga set would be released. And this Star Wars Complete Saga Blu-Ray set was exactly what I had been waiting for.

This Star Wars: The Complete Saga (Episodes I-VI) [Blu-ray] had also given me the prefect excuse to get a Blu-Ray player. Although I do not know if I would really sit down and watch from start to end.

Bumblebee from Transformers: Dark of the Moon (Robot Mode)

Last evening, my friends asked me to join them to watch this movie Transformers: Dark of the Moon 3D. I did not watch the first 2 movies. But I had heard that the review was good and I grew up with Transformers. So, I quickly agreed.

The movie was quite long, about 2 hours. But there was not a moment to be bored. I found that it has an interesting story line, about loyalty, true to the belief and betrayal. The supposing good Autobot turned out to be the bad one. The Autobots had to fight to protect Earth from this past leader and the Decepticons.

After the movie, I couldn’t help but to go to the nearest Toy Shop and look for the toy lines from the Movie.

After looking through the line, I bought the MechTech Deluxe – Bumblebee.

Bumblebee from Transformers: Dark of the Moon (Car Mode)

I found some of the parts a bit to move, especially the back part. Whenever I want to transform the Bumblebee, I have to be careful not to break a part.

Anyway, with this toy around, I am now considering should I get the DVD of the previous two Transformers Movies: Transformers and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (Single-Disc Edition).

Tokina AT-X 10-17mm f3.5-4.5 Fisheye Effect

Finally, I have the opportunity to try out Tokina ATX107PRODXC 10-17mm f/3.5-4.5 Fish Eye ATX Pro DX over a weekend.

I had been thinking of buying this Tokina ATX107PRODXC 10-17mm f/3.5-4.5 Fish Eye ATX Pro DX for quite sometime, because there was a few occasions when I wished I had an ultra wide angle or fisheye lens. When I was covering events, I wish my lens was wide enough to cover the crowds. Or when I was capturing a beautiful scenery, I wish my lens was wide enough so that I would not have to use photo stitching software to get the panorama effect.

The first impression when I mount this Tokina ATX107PRODXC 10-17mm f/3.5-4.5 Fish Eye ATX Pro DX on my Canon DSLR camera, was the zoom rotation. I am used to rotating anti-clockwise for telephoto on my Canon and Sigma lens. However, I had to rotate clockwise for Tokina lens. It took me quite some time to get used to it. I believe Nikon users would have no problem on this.

The beauties of Fisheye lens are the barrel distortion and the ultrawide angle. At the widest angle with focus length of 10mm, Tokina ATX107PRODXC 10-17mm f/3.5-4.5 Fish Eye ATX Pro DX produced both the diagonal fisheye effect and the wide angle coverage. Now I had to learn how to frame my pictures at this angle. Many occasions, I even captured the railing or the windows frame.

Tokina AT-X 10-17mm f3.5-4.5 Fisheye DX at 10mm

At 17mm, the distortion was hardly noticable. In fact, I could not tell the photo was taken using the Tokina ATX107PRODXC 10-17mm f/3.5-4.5 Fish Eye ATX Pro DX or my Sigma 17-70mm f/2.8-4.5 DC IF Macro Lens at 17mm.

Tokina AT-X 10-17mm f3.5-4.5 Fisheye DX at 17mm

Because of the ultrawide angle, I did not have much problem taking photos at night without using a tripod. The f3.5 aperture was not a concern. And most of the pictures came up clear and sharp.

Night shot with Tokina AT-X 10-17mm f3.5-4.5 Fisheye DX

Close shot using Tokina AT-X 10-17mm f3.5-4.5 Fisheye DX

During my few days of playing this Tokina ATX107PRODXC 10-17mm f/3.5-4.5 Fish Eye ATX Pro DX, I usually took pictures either at 10mm or 17mm. I hardly made use of any focus length in-between. So, I do wondered, which would be a better choice, a dedicated prime fisheye lens with wider aperture or this zoom fisheye lens. Maybe, the zoom feature would be useful for tighter framing during event coverage.

The fisheye lens could be a very fun lens to have because of its extreme barrel distortion. I took a few portrait pictures with this lens very closed to the face. The outcome was the extremely big nose, distorted face and triangular body.

After the weekend, I wished I did not have to return this lens. I had so much fun with this lens. I just wonder, how does this Tokina ATX107PRODXC 10-17mm f/3.5-4.5 Fish Eye ATX Pro DX compared to the recent announced Canon EF 8-15mm f/4L Fisheye USM zoom lens. Anyway, till I got a choice to try the new Canon lens, Tokina ATX107PRODXC 10-17mm f/3.5-4.5 Fish Eye ATX Pro DX shall remain in my wish list.

I wanted to bring out the darkness of Gundam Wing Mobile Suit. So I have to work mostly in darkness and used LED touches as my main sources of light.

Sometime back, I did some operations to insert a LED in each of my Gundam Deathscythe Scale Models, to light up the green eyes. I think the green eyes bring out the mysteries and darkness of this Gundam scale model series.

It was a fun experience taking photos of Gundam Deathscythe and Gundam Deathscythe Hell.