Mommy let's take WZ to the park near our house, it's a small little park with a little pond.

Then there's the usual children's slide for WZ to run around and play in.

WZ might get distracted by the LRT that passes by over head every few minutes.

I'm sure that the high tension wires that run on top of the park won't do any harm

It's a pretty well equipped park there are some simple gym equipment things here. Like jogging machines, cross country skiing machines.

For sure they are just things that work, and don't have any fancy doodads or instrumentation.

But that's probably because it's a public park and it's better to make stuff that is simple and has a risk of being vandalized and broken.

That's a little on the lake walkway which we'd have to be sure to hang on to WZ if we want to walk on it.

And there are also some rules we need to follow, don't I don't get the bit about the blankets.

So.. what do you say mommy? Shall we go? What do you mean there might be too many mosquitos there? What do you mean WZ is too young to be playing on the slides? So... that's it? Ok... I'll go myself and to take some pics then.

My next little project would be to make it so I can embed all these little Silverlight Deep Zoom albums on the page itself. Currently they don't lend themselves well to being embedded because the image loads whenever you hit the page, so it's a waste of unnecessary bandwidth if you're not interesting in viewing.

But one main problem is that mouse wheel events aren't captured when you go fullscreen in a Silverlight application due to how it works. So I'll have to see how to get around that user interaction problem.

The first album were some little snaps which I took while I was in Thailand... I failed to get any scenery shots cause I missed the river cruise, but I found something else to shoot! Check it out here. The shots here were all taken with the kit lens of the A350.

The 2nd album are shots taken when I took a little trip down to the Lake Gardens, most interesting thing I realised while I was there was that the Macro lens makes a pretty good lens for shooting normal things too! Check out the shots here.

In case you don't know what Deep Zoom is, what's you're looking at is the FULL SIZED image from my A350, use the mousewheel or the controls on screen to zoom in and out of the photos, and of course.. let them load properly. (and that needs to be included as help text on the control as well!)

Mother's Day photo log and notes on what mistakes were made when taking the shot.

Off to the little fish pond we go, with only the A350's Kit lens attached. This shot's mistake : Metering was taking by focusing on mommy's BLACK shirt, therefore to compensate what it though was a dark scene the camera used a slower shutter speed and let more light on the picture over exposing the shot. Granted this is really the first time I tried taking pics with SPOT metering.. maybe I should go with Center Weighted first till I'm comfortable with measuring exposure before taking a shot... hmmm.. but then again I'm taking baby shots don't usually have the luxury of time to measure exposure before shooting.

The main thing wrong here is of course the subject has the sun behind them and me forgetting to pop the flash to catch the details. Point to note 2 seconds after I take this shot, WZ's shoe drops into the pond.

Mommy said "Get a picture with the fish in it!" Luckily I was not using the 50mm or the background would be lost to bokeh. So, tlited the view screen down, held the camera up high and shot from above. Think I focused on the mommy's body instead of head though.

One thing I found was that the A350 produces dull images, or it could just be the kit lens since I don't find my 50mm giving me that feeling. Anyway, bumping the saturation up by one step solves that issue for me. When in doubt shot in RAW mode, then do the adjustments with the LightBox app that came with the camera I'm *pretty sure* whatever settings you apply to the RAW image in that program is the same as what you can apply in camera. So you could take a plain image in RAW mode, then on the PC, use the LightBox app to see what kind of effects you'd get if you shot in vivid mode, applied more noise reduction, etc. etc. Great learning tool. Of course that increases the time to consumption of your shots but it all depends on what you want to do with your pictures.

The problem with this shot is that I took it during the cloudy evening, so white balance is all wrong. In my opinion learning what is white balance and how to adjust it is the first step to taking nice pics, it's also easy to explain than aperture and shuttle speed (it makes white look white) of course I guess the Semi Pro would probably scoff at such a remark. But that's what I think lar.

This pic pretty much sums up why I bought a DSLR, point to note here is that the restaurant had the usual dim mood lighting. So it'd be hard to get a nice bright shot without using a flash, but I didn't bring mine with me using the built in flash was an alternative but that wouldn't have looked nice. And I only had the kit lens which doesn't have a wide aperture. But no problem, like the Semi Pro told me before I bumped up the ISO to 1600 and got this shot which makes the place looks like it's brightly lit.

After I purchased the macro lens for my Sony A350, I started reading about people talking about a close up filter in the forums. So I asked the semi-pro (He tells me he doesn't want me to refer to him as semi pro anymore, so I shall refer to him as the friend formerly known as semi pro, or FFKASP but I figured I'd just forget how to type that in a few days so semi pro will have to do!)

Me : What is a close up filter?

Semi Pro : It's something that allows your lens to get a closer minimum focus distance, so let's say normally at maximum zoom the closest you can get for sharp focus is like this.

So with the close up filter you'll be able to get in closer like so.

Me : So it increase the macro capability of a given lens then?

Semi Pro : Yes but it'll never be as good as a real dedicated macro lens which gives you extremely close focus distances like this.

Me : But the filter costs a FRACTION of what a macro lens costs! And more importantly if I saw the results of the filter BEFORE I got the macro lens I would have been content with it. Why DIDN'T you tell me about this filter BEFORE telling me about the macro lens??

Semi Pro : But it's not as good as a real macro lens

Me : But I would have been content with the fact that I can get PRETTY close up shots, and I would have saved some money!

Semi Pro : .....

The more shots I take with the macro lens the more I realise I need to blow the item clean before taking the pics.

DUST SPECKS!!! They never were a problem previously! At first when taking closeup shots like this the shadow of the camera lens was blocking the light. And it's not like I have a proper lightbox to shoot product shots. Then the semi pro reminded me that my flash unit can be fired wirelessly thus all I needed to do was to find the right place to put it so it can provide enough light for the shot.

Interesting...

Well, now that I have a macro lens, I can shoot really small things really up close and not crop. Like this shot of the Mini SD card + reader.

So much detail until you can see the insertation marks (click to see the larger version)

Now I just need to constantly remind myself.. my collection is complete, I don't need anything else, and the box is full anyway.

When I bought my Sony A350, my friend kept telling me about the dark dark path of purchasing accessories which I was bound to travel down.

I told him that unlike him I wasn't using the camera to get some extra cash so I'll only buy things that I need. Like all the stuff I got after I got the camera.

When I made up my mind to buy the A350, I already knew what other extra lenses I would get. The first was the 50mm lens which I recently received, I needed this cause.... my wife likes the blur effect and she seems to feel that it makes pictures nicer. So who am I to say otherwise. The other lens I knew I would get was something wide to shoot scenery with, and I would be planning to get this lens only when my next overseas vacation has been planned.. and considering that we have WZ to worry about now that might be a while...

What I DID NOT plan for was that the macro capabilities of the lenses which I have didn't satisfy me. What I ALSO DID NOT plan for was how fast I sped down to Pudu Plaza when I heard that a shop there had a lens available.

I didn't initially plan to get a macro lens but hey.. it's cool since now I can take close up shots that show off how dusty a glossy surface can get.

Or just get up REAAAAAALLL close to something.

So.. everything is still good... I don't have a problem or a lust for glass.

After getting my Minolta 50mm lens, the shots I have been getting just feel so different. They look more colorful and bright.

The soft focus (bokeh) effect that the lens produces gives the pictures the professional look.

One thing that I'll always remember is that my skill hasn't improved or anything. It's just the lens, so one very important thing to remember with an SLR camera is that it's very important to get a lens that suits the purpose you use the camera for.

And one more thing is that there's no such thing as a BEST lens, I can see a lot of people who keep asking in the forums for the BEST LENS to get. But remember, there is NO SUCH THING as the BEST LENS!! It really depends on what kind of picture YOU want to get.

Finally my Minolta 50MM lens has arrived, so now I can take close up portrait style pictures with the spiffy blur (bokeh?) thing that happens in the background.

This should work out just fine.

Makes for some very interesting changes, for instance. The first time I took the A350 out was to the VS2k8 launch and as I was happily snapping away at the registration line..

One of the attendants approached me and said "Sir? Are you media? There's another line you register at." Someone needs to tell her that just because someone is holding an SLR doesn't mean they're with the media!

Second interesting point was how more frequently I was snapping pics as I mentioned in a previous post, a high performance camera that allows for more picture control means that a person simply wants to snap more shots to practice in getting the best picture possible.

Another interesting example of how people react to a SLR came when I was walking around PC Fair trying out how well my bounce card works in redirecting my flash. And the obvious target are the salesgirls handing out the leaflets. Imagine my surprise as I pointed my camera at one and...

Interesting.. I didn't even say anything yet. I just pointed my cam at her and she posed for the shot. Afterwards from the forums I read that this was the standard operational procedure when you walkabout the exhibitions. Point cam at girl, smile, wait for girl to pose, snap, smile thank you.

Unfortunately I didn't get too many chances to take a lot of pics, my kit lens doesn't work too well in small enclosed places. Just means I have to wait till my close range lens gets here.