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an upgrade at x-mas?
· Saturday August 23, 2008

As you all probably know already, I am in the midst of thesis hell at the moment. The word count is floating somewhere around 35,000 words, with 80ish figures floating about the pages. I have one chapter of results left to write, then the discussion and conclusions chapter, followed by all the appendices, current corrections, and then one final round of conclusions. All to be done in the next 5 weeks! Yay!

So why, in the midst of all this, am I looking at camera bodies in anticipation of x-mas? Well, for one, a number of websites published (more-reliable-than-usual) rumors of Canon 50D specs on Friday. This website tells the story of how the specs were ‘leaked’ on the Canon China website. Here are the supposed stats from the fredmiranda website:

1.6x crop
15.1MP —- 4752 × 3168 pixels
JPEG´s + RAW + sRAW1 + sRAW2
Dust Reduction
Digic IV
Auto Brightness Processing
95% viewfinder .97 magnification
9 point af (All Cross Type)
AF Fine Tuning [AF microadjustment]
Face recognition for AF
ISO 100-3200 Expanded 6400-12800
Auto ISO 100-1600
LCD VGA type 920,000
6.3 FPS (high speed) 3fps (low speed)
Buffer: 16 RAW – 60 JPG – 10 RAW+JPG
Pop-Up flash (13/43 at ISO 100)
UDMA Support
Camera User settings C1 & C2
Shutter Actuations: 100,000

All in all, it sounds like a 40D with greater resolution, ridiculously high ISO capabilities, and faster processing. What follows is basically just me thinking aloud about cameras to which I might upgrade; if this bores you, feel free to pop back when returning to regularly scheduled photo-talk (in, oh, 5 weeks or so after I hand in my thesis).

I’ve had my 350D for more than 2 years now, and we’ve had a lot of fun together. And yes, we all know it’s the photographer that makes great pictures, not the camera… but… shiny!! I’ve been considering upgrading for a while now that I have a bit more cash in the ole account, so x-mas this year seems sensible.

There’s also been talk of a 5D Mk II, an updated version of Canon’s lower-end full-frame dSLR; this would make a lot of photographers out there very, very happy (and much, much poorer). So here are my potential upgrade options, in order of descending price:

1. 5D Mk II (if it’s on sale by x-mas)
2. 5D Mk I
3. 50D
4. 40D
5. 450D

Guessing at prices around Christmas, I’d say these bodies will go for somewhere between $2500-3000 at the upper end down to $600ish at the lower end (in US stores, of course— UK stores typically see a 40ish% markup).

450 vs 40
  • The 450 has 12.2 megapixels vs the 40’s 10.1. This isn’t a big deal to me, because in 3 years of serious(ish) photography I’ve printed ONE 12×18” photo, and it looked pretty darned good from my 8 megapixel sensor =)
  • both have the DIGIC 3 processor
  • the 450 now uses SD cards (a good thing) while the 40 still uses CF cards
  • the 450 has 14-bits of A/D conversion, whereas the 40D is still at 12-bit
  • both have a sensor-cleaning mode
  • the 450 is about half as expensive as the 40 on amazon right now.

Based on this list, it seems like the 450 is a clear winner. The major pros that the 40D holds for me are the ISO 3200 capability, a bigger viewfinder (0.95x vs 0.87x), and better construction (sealing). But at double the price, that’s a tall order.

450 vs 50
To be honest, there are very few practical differences between the 40 and the 50 for me (on paper), so I’d probably still go for a 450 for the cheaper price if it were just between these two.

450 vs 5D vs 5D Mk II
Well, who knows when the new 5D will be released. I’ve been reading rumors pages for weeks, which seem to suggest early September may be the time to expect an announcement (before or around Photokina). But given the 5D’s current $2300 body-only price tag on Amazon, you can bet the new one ain’t gonna be cheap. Will the new features be worth the wait? Well, we have to wait to know if it’s worth the wait, haha.

But really, 450D vs 5D is a tough call. The 450 is currently 1/4th the price of the 5D, a point which is not insignificant to yours truly, ladies and gentlemen. If the 5D falls below $1800, it would be seriously tempting; though this seems unlikely due to its continued popularity.

People talk about the film-like quality of the 5D’s images, and its fantastic low-light resolution due to the larger sensor. But there are several major downsides for me right now— the price (duh), the weight, and the fact that most of the lenses I own are built for a crop body (EF-S type).

The 5D weighs 1.8 pounds vs the 450’s 1.1 pounds. This might not seem like much, but when it’s around your neck all day, it definitely makes a difference. I have enjoyed the lightweight nature of my 350D, and especially with the 18-55mm IS kit lens, it hardly wears on you at all.

As for the lens issue, it’s not just that most of my lenses are crop-type; I’ve read that you really should have a high quality lens on a full-frame camera to make the most of it. Though having easy-access to wide angle lenses on the FF sensor would be nice :-)

Alas, it’s all still a bit unclear. I think the prices nearer to x-mas will be a determining factor. Or I could break out and go Pentax, with their great lineup of prime lenses and in-body image-stabilisation. And if all else fails, I can just buy more lenses =) Like… a nice wide-angle!

— Emery Ku

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thesis
· Thursday August 7, 2008

Dear friends,

I’m thinking I may make a sticky post that explains just how infrequently this blog is updated, haha. To be fair, though, it has been a very busy summer indeed.

I’ve been to Cornwall, two academic conferences, one of which was in Korea, and there is also the small matter of writing my thesis! If all goes well, I should have a draft of all of the chapters by the end of this month; then I’ll have all of September to write up the appendices and make the corrections.


ten foot flames

What will follow? Well, there is now a good chance I will take a yearlong postdoc here at the ISVR. Those of you who know me well know that I don’t plan to stay in academia, and as such, taking a postdoc position makes little sense from a career standpoint. However, the work that I’m doing right now is both quite interesting and going well. The year will give me a chance to write up a few more journal articles, and also start looking for a job in industry back in the states. At least, that’s what I tell myself, haha.

But back to photography… this year’s summer in England has not been altogether spectacular, though it’s nowhere near as dreary as last year! However, I am staying the summer with friends in a shared house on Kitchener Road. There are two houses joined at one wall, but separate— “semi-detached” is the British term :-) However, everyone in both houses is quite friendly and sociable, hence the adopted title, ‘Kitchener Community.’

I have to say I’ve enjoyed staying here immensely. One of the reasons why is that we have a wonderful garden. Everyone helps out occasionally with the associated chores, such as watering (or more often, consuming the fruits of the) vegetables, but one individual who has truly put his heart into the effort. Who is this talented gardener? None other than my friend and fellow photographer, Nick Bailey.

And I’ve definitely been partaking of the delightful tastes coming out of the garden, but I’ve also been capturing some of it digitally, as well! The below picture is of some beautiful peas, fresh from the plant. I honestly had never liked peas, until I tasted these!


Peas

And even on rainy days, there are still subjects to be found just hanging around!


Home

This truly is my home now, and I will be sad to leave at the end of September. But as they say, each ending is a new beginning :-)

— Emery Ku

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Day 3: the Ring of Kerry
· Tuesday May 27, 2008

The Ring of Kerry is one of the most popular tourist destinations in all of Ireland. It’s a set of roads that wind along mountains and coastline in the southwest of the island, perhaps 100 miles or so in length. According to google maps, Elizabeth and I drove about 135 miles that day, including a couple small detours out to Ballycarbery West (where there were a couple forts and a small castle) and the ‘Ring of Skellig.’ The following map was generated using Google Maps, and adding points of interest with links to some of the photos on my blog =)


View Larger: Emery and Elizabeth’s Ring of Kerry Drive

I couldn’t quite get the driving directions to stick on the map, so I just roughly drew our route with the drawing tool. But for my first usage of google maps for something like this, I’m pretty pleased with it! Ain’t technology grand?

Overall, the drive was very pleasant. We chose to do the trip in a counter-clockwise (or ‘anti-clockwise’ as they say here) fashion, which is the typical direction of choice. Later in the summer, we understood that the roads get incredibly packed with buses, other tourists and cyclists, so going in a clockwise direction can occasionally be easier. Our first view of the ocean was a very welcome one, and the sights would just get better from there.


Ring of Kerry Drive

Interestingly, both Elizabeth and I probably most enjoyed the smaller detours we made off of the main Ring of Kerry. Our 10-euro road map showed that there were a couple small forts and a small castle on a small peninsula just North of Cahersiveen, so we stopped there for lunch. Elizabeth maintains that the climate was best described as cold, but just between you and me, it was cool and pleasant ;-)


Staige Fort

By many standards, these ruins were quite modest, but I think we felt much more connected to the landscape having stopped there. The sunny, wind-swept stones offered us a glimpse into what it may have been like to live there 500 years ago.


Ballycarbery Castle

The coastal scenery truly was stunning at times, and the color of the ocean was much more suggestive of Mediterranean coastline than either of us had expected.


Ring of Kerry Shoreline

The roads, while well-kept for the most part, were narrower than we were used to; I think Elizabeth was still adjusting to driving on the left and on these smaller streets. I promised not to distract her whilst she was driving, so I took a minimum amount of pictures while she was behind the wheel… but I couldn’t resist this one time :)


Road Works

We both found it funny that there were numerous signs for ‘Road Works Now,’ though we only actually encountered working crews about twice the entire trip. The previous shot was taken during one of those brief encounters :-)

If you follow the full Ring of Kerry, it also takes you through some lovely little villages. One of the larger towns is called Kenmare, just South/South-West of Killarney.


Kenmare

Though we debated staying there for dinner, we decided that it would be more relaxing to sup back in Killarney. The last shots of the day on the Ring were taken overlooking Lough Leane.


Overlooking the Lough

The next day’s travel would take us back up north, toward Galway and beyond. Stay tuned =)

— Emery Ku

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Day 1-2: Dublin, Killarney
· Sunday May 25, 2008

Dublin

Early on Saturday morning, I flew into Dublin International Airport on a FlyBe flight. For those that aren’t familiar with FlyBe, it’s another low-fare airline that operates in Europe, similar to Ryanair or Frontier Airlines in the states. In any case, it all went quite smoothly (somewhat to my surprise) and I soon found a slightly sleepy Elizabeth at the Meeting Point in the arrivals hall :)

We knew that we’d both be a somewhat drowsy, and Elizabeth a bit jet-lagged, so we took the day easy. After checking in to our hostel, we proceeded out to the Guinness Storehouse! Dublin seemed a nice enough city, but both of us decided that it was probably a better experience for those who lived there as opposed to casual day-tourists. In that way, it was similar to Philly, where we’d both gone to uni.

The queue for the Guinness Storehouse was actually longer than we’d anticipated (though perhaps we should have expected this, in retrospect). A slow but steady stream of visitors lined up outside the main entrance… which we later learned led to an even longer queue inside the building!! A sneaky and effective tactic, oft-employed at theme parks.


Guinness Queue

The multi-floor self-guided tour was fairly in-depth, and you could tell a great deal of thought went into its design. It was all quite over-the-top, though, from the fostering of a cult of personality of Arthur Guinness to the fact that the central portion of the building was shaped like an enormous pint glass!! It was like one enormous propaganda machine, and everyone loved it :) Even the KIDS!


Guinness Kids

Why a family would bring children to the Guinness Storehouse is slightly beyond me, but hey, start ‘em young. After enjoying our Guinness drinks which were included with the price of entry, we whiled away the rest of the afternoon with a walk through the city and a lovely park called St. Stephen’s Green.

The next day, we returned to the airport to pick up our rental car and begin the drive to the South-West of Ireland. The original plan was that I would drive for the duration of the trip, primarily because I was more familiar with the road rules in the country (ie. driving on the left, roundabouts, etc.) and also because I really love driving and have greatly missed having a car in England.

Now, those who know me well realize that I’m a fairly responsible person. Prior to the trip, I’d bought travel insurance, checked my luggage several times, checked that my passport was in order… The one thing that I hadn’t even thought to check was my driver’s license. That’s right, it had expired on my 25th birthday, less than two weeks prior. Dohhh! I’d like to think Elizabeth and I did a fairly good job of hiding the looks of shock on our faces from the lady at Europcar’s desk when she apprised me of this. Change of plans: Elizabeth will drive, and we will rent an automatic, haha.

Well, neither of us were overly pleased with the turn of events, but Elizabeth kindly agreed to drive with my guidance and navigation. To be honest, she was a very safe driver, and the task was simply a matter of regaining her confidence on (the left side of) the road. Off we went to Killarney, as we had planned to do the Ring of Kerry the next day!

Killarney

We arrived that evening having driven through some nice small towns, including a posh-looking place called Adare which was hosting the Irish Open (golf tournament). After getting settled in our hostel, we went out to Killarney National Park, which is just adjacent to the town.


Killarney National Park

Though it was a bit overcast, the climate was very comfortable (though Elizabeth claims it was ‘cold‘) and we both found it quite energising to be out of the car and walking about. The park has some lovely paths, and we followed one of the main ones out toward Ross Castle which sits by the lake.


Circular Walk

The castle we encountered was actually in decent condition, having survived more than 500 years.


Ross Castle

The next day would see sites of even greater antiquity, as we ventured out onto the Ring of Kerry! The next post will be coming soon… :)

— Emery Ku

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6 days in Ireland
· Sunday May 25, 2008

Another long break in posting… I sometimes think I must have the most infrequently updated blog out there :-) But this year is my last in the UK, the last of my PhD, and there just has not been much time for photography. Alas. The exception is when I go walking… or on a holiday =)

For some months now, my friend Elizabeth and I have been planning a trip to Ireland. She and I were close friends at Swarthmore, but like many of my college buddies who remained stateside, I just haven’t had the opportunity to stay in very close touch. We mutually chose Ireland because it was on both of our lists of places to see, and also to some degree for the convenience and safety of travelling to an English-speaking country. Last week our plans came to fruition!

The following posts will be less oriented towards photography than usual, if only because I want to describe the experiences that we had on the road. However, I will try to include photographic commentary where appropriate! I took very little on my trip in terms of kit:

The Eee really excelled on this trip. My primary motivation for bringing it along was to have a way to download pictures from my camera to the usb drive, which was handy. But given that wireless is so widely available these days, we made use of it almost every night at our hostels.

On a side note, if anyone out there knows a good program to preview RAW images (just view, not develop) on the Eee or in Linux in general, I’d be very glad to hear from you! I’ve installed dcraw, gnome-raw-thumbnailer and Nautilus, which lets me preview the images in low-res in Nautilus, but I can’t figure out how to force it to generate larger-res previews, short of opening the files in GIMP/UFRaw :-/

In any case, I’ll be posting entries that correspond to different portions of our trip in the coming days. Here was our rough itinerary:

Saturday: arrive in Dublin
Sunday: depart Dublin, arrive Killarney
Monday: Ring of Kerry / Ring of Skellig / Killarney
Tuesday: depart Killarney, arrive outside Galway
Wednesday: Galway city
Thursday: Connemara National Park, return to Dublin

If you have any questions about the trip, just shout!

— Emery Ku

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Bluebells
· Sunday April 6, 2008

I think it is universally accepted that Spring is a busy time; it is especially so for me this year because I’m trying to finish my PhD on time (ie. pass my viva in October). At the moment, however, things are slightly quieter than normal around Southampton because the undergraduate students are all away on their (month-long!) Easter holidays.

What this means is that neither the walking club nor my choir are meeting regularly, so in theory I have plenty of time to get lots of research done :) Things are actually going pretty well work-wise, and I’m hopeful that I can finish all of the simulations of the cochlea I’ve planned for. If you’d like to see some nonlinear time-domain simulations I’ve generated, check out this page though beware the files are somewhat big and take a while to load.

In any case, I’m guessing you came here to read about something related to photography, not to listen to me go on about work, haha. Well as I was returning from a conference in Manchester early last week, I decided to pick up the latest copy of Outdoor Photographer. It made for decent reading with some nice photos, and they also included a section of favourite photographic locations around the South of England. The spot they included for Hampshire, the county where I live, was the Micheldever woods. In the spring, there are areas of this forest which are thickly carpeted by bluebells.

Yesterday, I packed up my gear and hopped on a train out to Micheldever train station. The Micheldever woods are too far to reach on foot from the train station, though there is a smaller forest called the Black Wood nearby, so I headed that way instead.

It was a lovely day (to start), and the sun was playing hide-and-seek behind the clouds. I was slightly disappointed, if only because everything was just starting to bud. So instead of wide forest views, I unpacked my macro lens and did some close-up and more abstract work.


Oily

I’m always impressed by the optical quality of Canon’s 100mm macro lens. If anything comes out unsharp, I can’t blame the equipment. The main problem yesterday was there was an intermittent breeze which, coupled with the alternatingly strong and cloud-obscured sunlight, made conditions a little trickier.

I was a bit frustrated at first, because there were no bluebells in sight at all, just lots of dead leaves on the forest floor. There were other flowers about, though, and I caught the one below while the sun was shining brightly with the lens wide open.


Hover

When I found my first patch of bluebells, I was a bit relieved to have succeeded in finding them at all, haha. Unfortunately, there were very few flowers that had bloomed as of yet, so again, I focused more on individual specimens.


Reach

I’m hoping to return again in a few weeks, when presumably there will be more of a ‘carpet.’


Tendrils

Fingers crossed that the snowstorm I woke up to today(!) will not have damaged these beautiful flowers…

— Emery Ku

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Beacons Away Trip
· Monday March 17, 2008

Away trips with the southampton uni walking club are always good fun. The people that come along are colorful, diverse, friendly, and some are just a tad rude— even by Dutch standards, haha. But I also love going away with the club because we get to experience some of the most beautiful places in England by foot.

Of course, the weather does not always cooperate, sometimes with disastrous photographic consequences. Still, it’s worth the risk to me. If you’re not going to take your camera out because you’re afraid it’s going to get a little wet, you may as well leave it home altogether, right?

Weather aside, the trip presented plenty of opportunities for portraits, candids and landscapes. It was also a chance to put two relatively new pieces of kit to use— my EF-S 55-250mm IS telephoto (which I had already gotten to know in Asia) and the new set of polarizers. This telephoto is really not that long by the standards of those who specialize in bird or wildlife photography, but it was enough to give a different perspective on the scene.

EF-S 55-250mm IS

The hill in the distance in the below photo, shadowed, looks much more imposing when viewed at 179mm. It also feels a bit like a wildlife shot, hence the title :)


the Herd

I think a lot of people have been fairly surprised by the resolution figures published by photozone on the new 17-55 and 55-250 IS EF-S lenses. While I don’t own the former yet, I can certainly attest to the sharpness of the telephoto.


Jacqui

A 100% crop of the above photo is included below, just for those of you pixel-peepers out there :)

Photozone more or less says that the lens has quite good optical resolution, but perhaps does not have the best contrast; this seems to agree with my general observations. But in the end, it’s what you do with the equipment that counts!

Circular Polarizer

I’ve read numerous times from various sources that a polarizer is one of the best tools in a photographer’s kit. Well, I’ve gotten on without one for a couple years now… I first bought a 52mm polarizer for a screw-in filter-attachment ring for my Canon A95 in ’05. I found it fun to use, but perhaps too much so, because the two separately-rotating plates broke apart :( Basically I’ve been too lazy/cheap to buy a replacement until this last trip to Taipei’s Camera Street, haha.

Well, the weather on Sunday certainly was lovely and bright (except for the brief period where a snowstorm swept through the middle of our walk!), and my polarizer spent more time on my 17-70mm Sigma than off. It added depth and saturation to the sky, and I think it also enhanced the contrast of the beautiful banks of clouds we encountered that day.


the Cloud

It was also useful in portraits to reduce glare and of course keep the sky more saturated while retaining shadow detail.


Katie and Jinx

But I’m a bit unconvinced about the optical quality of the polarizers I got. You can’t tell in these web-sized shots, but I think you do sacrifice some resolution by adding another piece of glass in front of your lens. Still, I’m a long ways away from wanting to spring for something like a $210 Singh-Ray filter. Hell, those accessories cost almost as much as some of my lenses!

In the end, you make do with what you have… at least until Christmas or a birthday rolls by :)

P.S. It should be noted that I didn’t discover the clock on my camera was still set to Taiwan time (GMT+8) until almost the end of the trip, hence the slightly odd time-stamping in the photo EXIF details!!

— Emery Ku

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Brecon Beacons and before
· Friday March 14, 2008

I love taking pictures. I even love developing them. I love talking to people about pictures. But for whatever reason, it always takes quite a bit of effort for me to upload them onto my website :)

It’s especially hard, when you can just drop photos onto facebook, and my friends can instantly check them out there, make comments, etc. But the resolution is poor, facebook doesn’t display EXIF info, etc. etc. I don’t always put the same set of pics on my website as I do on facebook (different audience, I assume), but you’re welcome to check out a couple of my facebook galleries if you like :)

Portraits
SUHC Away Trips

In any case, I’m just being whiny, haha. Things have been so busy since I’ve returned from Taiwan that I haven’t even really had time to go through all of my trip pics in any detail. Unfortunately, given that I’m scheduled to finish my PhD by this October, times will be very tight from here on out.

That doesn’t mean I’m not going to make the most of my dwindling time in Europe… and academia, haha. I’m going to visit Ireland in May with a close friend from Swarthmore, and even heading to South Korea for a conference in July. And there are a few Southampton University Hillwalking Club away trips left as well!

Last weekend was just such an occasion, where I had the chance to get out and see some of the countryside with the walking club. For the past two years, I had missed the Brecon Beacons National Park away trip because it had always coincided with the weekend of a Jazzmanix concert. Well not the case this year!

And I had a great time, as always. In typical away trip fashion, the weather was crap the first day (pouring with rain— took out my camera twice), but did manage to get a decent shot of the scene before it started really tipping:


Walkers

More photos of the beautiful weather on Sunday to come very soon, but I did want to note that some more pics from my trip to Asia are up now :) A couple of my favs:


the Light

and


Tea Fields

both taken on Alishan (a mountain in Taiwan).

— Emery Ku

Thoughts? [2]

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Many shots, little time
· Thursday February 14, 2008

Well, my time in Taiwan is slowly coming to a close… On Monday, I’ll hop on an airplane (hopefully an A380 out of Singapore!!) and find myself back in England on Tuesday. My friends back in Southampton tell me the weather has been “like summer,” which would be a welcome change from the cold and rain in Taipei, haha. Somewhat ironic that this trip was supposed to be a respite from English weather :)

I’ve been taking lots of pics lately, and also doing some shopping. Just opposite Taipei’s Main (Rail/HSR/MRT) Station is an amazing ‘store’ (it’s actually a 4-level collection of various retailers) called Nova, which is packed with electronics shops selling everything computer-related. How come I never know about this place before??? I’m a bit sad I didn’t bring my camera that day, but I decided that shopping without a big SLR around my neck might get me some better deals.

Well, I didn’t buy anything, but I do have my eyes set on a replacement external hard drive. A shop on the second level was the only one that was carrying an external hard drive enclosure that supports a single SATA drive and includes a Firewire (only 400Mb/s) output. Why would I want to use Firewire (aka IEEE 1394), as opposed to the cheaper USB 2.0 that is everywhere and has a higher (burst) speed rating?

USB 2.0 is great because it’s quick and dirty, but Firewire wins in a couple important respects. First of all, USB transfers are managed in a master-slave configuration. This means that when you connect your computer to an external drive, for instance, it’s your computer that’s doing all the hard ‘thinking’ work. With Firewire, transfers are mutually coordinated, which frees up the CPU for more important things (like image processing).

So the plan is to head back to Nova on Sunday to pick up the external drive enclosure and a 500GB Seagate drive, while helping my dad pick out a new laptop (he’s coming up to Taipei for the day).

In the meanwhile, I’ve been shooting lots, but haven’t really gone through and done much organizing. Yesterday, my aunt took me to Taiwan’s National Palace Museum, which was packed with really amazing artifacts that date back 8000 years. This picture was taken in a garden adjacent to the museum itself:


Fa1 Dai1 (发呆)

Fa1 Dai1 means ‘to do nothing’, and a Fa1 Dai1 Ting2 (发呆亭) is a gazebo where one does nothing :)

— Emery Ku

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Taipei's Camera Street
· Saturday February 9, 2008

There have been several posts I’ve had bouncing around in my mind for some time, regarding:

But this current post is about shopping experience on Taipei’s ‘Camera Street’ while looking for an 18-55mm IS lens. I had planned my trip in advance, and even rehearsed to myself how I would haggle to bring down the price of the lens. Unfortunately, as I went from shop to shop on Taipei’s it became apparent that none of the shops actually stocked my intended purchase.

The shop attendants told me they didn’t anticipate demand for the new IS lens, and Canon was not selling them in Taiwan; waiting for gray market versions from Japan would be my best bet. I was a bit surprised at this, because there have been many positive reviews, including one presented at Photozone, (Photozone tends to be my starting point for a new bout of lens-lust).

Well, I think we all know what it’s like to go out in the mood to buy something, only to find the intended item is unavailable. It’s like there’s a vacuum of need to satiate one’s materialistic tendencies. Well, I plugged that capitalistic hole by purchasing:

I have to admit, I overpaid quite a bit for the camera bag. After returning home, I found that the Rezo 140 goes for $25 on amazon, though I paid closer to $37 :(

On the other hand, I got a great deal on the polarizer! 850NT = $26.5 USD, compared to Amazon’s Tiffen variety, going for $62.75. Wowsers! So the verdict: good bargains to be found, but only if you know what prices are reasonable.

Unfortunately, the weather in Taipei has been fairly miserable lately giving rise to few opportunities to utilise the polarizer. Rain, rain, and more rain have been the tune (luckily, the Rezo 140 has a built-in raincoat, which is nice). And it’s cold too! Though not so cold the SLR doesn’t work :) This shot was taken while waiting for a bus (from under a shelter):


Taxi

Well, I’ll be headed back to England in a week or so, and should have plenty of time to muck around with the photos I do have left. Shahram has kindly agreed to send me a dvd of the pics I took in Singapore, which made me very glad I left a copy of those RAW files there with him =)

— Emery Ku

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