Moving around within in Seattle is fairly easy. You can simply take the bus/metro to Westlake Station and visit the Pike Place Market. At the Pike Place Market, you can taste the fresh seafood (with a price) or simply enjoy the liveliness of the stores there. From there, visit the first Starbuck Coffee shop (the queue is very long) or go down to the Alaskan Way. Along the Alaskan Way are the piers with a different kind of energy. The ship to Canada depart from one of the piers.

Alternatively, from Westlake Center (beside Westlake Station), take a train to the Space Needle. Enjoy the show, watching the water dances with the music at the International Fountain.

You can also take a stroll eastward to the International District Station, observing the beautiful buildings, e.g. Seattle Public Library – Central Library. The Chinatown town is just beside the International District Station. On the other side of the International District Station, there are the Century Link Field, home of the Seattle Seahawks American Football Team, and Safeco Field, home of the Seattle Mariners Baseball Team.

Possible short 1 to 2 hours tours are the Duck Tour (starting at Westlake Center) and the Underground Tour (at Pioneer Square). The Duck Tour will take you to some sights of Seattle, including Lake Union, Space Needle, etc. Whereas, the Underground Tour, as its name mentioned, took us back in time to see the old Seattle, where the ground floor used to be.

These are some of the photos taken in Seattle.

Recently, I bought a LG 3D Smart Television. This television has USB ports for me to plug in a thumb drive and has the capability to display 3D MPO files. With a viewer, I now have a sudden interest to take 3D pictures with my TG-310 camera and view it on the television.

TG-310 has only one lens as compared to a dedicated 3D camera which has two lenses. Therefore, to take a 3D picture, I have to take a picture, align the viewer to overlay image and the camera will automatically record the second image to form the 3D image.

A 3D image in make out of 2 pictures.

Initially, I had problem taking the second image. I would shift the camera to the right or left to align the image, but the camera would not record the second image. Later, I found out that the easiest way to capture the second image fast was not to shift the camera. I just had to rotate the camera slightly to the right. Most of the time, the camera would capture the second image in a split second.

I also notice that, I have to take care on the subject. I had to take special care that, there was no moving object in the picture. I was taking two pictures with time lap. If there is a moving object, this object will appear in two different places. As a result, it will create a flicking effort.

Notice the sliver car on the right lane. It was moving, resulting a flicking effect on the final 3D image

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.

Lightning occurs very fast. Before we can react to snap, the lightning is over. To me, taking photo of lightning bolt was like a gamble. We have to snap before the lightning strike.

I had attempted to take photos of the lightning before on a stormy night, but without any success. I remembered very clearly, that evening, I saw a lot of lightning flash. But I could not tell the actual direction where the lightning was occurring.

I could only point my camera in a general direction which I believe was the lightning storm. It was a fruitless attempt.

Few evening ago, it was another thunder storm. This time, I could see the lightning bolt with my naked eyes. I quickly set up my tripod and camera with my quick release control.

I was not sure what setting to use. I used Tv mode to check the aperture to use. From there, I switched to full manual mode, using the setting previously found with a -2 Ev. I also set the camera to continuously shooting. I used the quick release to lock the shooting. That means that I would continuously shooting photos.

It was quite fortunate that the lightning was quite often that evening. This allowed me to change my setting along the way. I found the exposure of 4 sec, aperture of f/9.0 and ISO 400 gave me the best effect. Or maybe, it was because I was not so lucky when I was trying other settings.

Anyway, out of over 130 photos, I managed to get some nice photos. I am wondering, how people take photos of lightning in the days of using film.

These are the better ones of the lightning photos.

I think the one on the left is the Papa Monkey and the Mama Monkey was feeding the baby monkey.

What a happy family.

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.

The 2010 Summer Youth Olympics is currently taking place in Singapore from 14th to 26th August 2010. We only have this window to take the photos of the 2010 Summer Youth Olympics Cauldron Lit Up.

Zoom in shot of 2010 Summer Youth Olympics Cauldron

2010 Summer Youth Olympics Cauldron

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.

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I recalled that, I had taken some Tiger photos sometime in 2007 when I was on a working trip to South Africa. These Tigers were not from South Africa, but from India.

Let this year of Tiger be a year of Achievements and Advancements.