It seems like not too long ago that I got my Sony A350 DSLR, ok... so it was only about a year ago that I got it. And boy did I have a lot of fun with it, the performance of an SLR was definitely needed to take shots of WZ who was now running, jumping and climbing everywhere. And Sony's FANTASTIC DSLR Live View system made the A350 a joy to use. But all good things must come to an end, and on Saturday 12th December 2009 (following the busted suspension) I said good bye to my Sony Alpha A350.

And HELLO to the Sony Alpha A550!

What follows is just a quick rundown of the camera, if you want to read a real review with numbers and samples and such check out this one.

So what warranted the upgrade? Well basically I liked the fact that the A550 had better High ISO performance due to the fact that well.. there's a one year technology gap between the A350 and the A550 so of course it got better between then and now!

This pic was taken in a dimly lit restaurant at ISO 6400, obviously there's still noise but it's not like I'm printing 8R sized pictures here.

If you're wondering, NO... the A550 record HD video. I've said it before that the way DSLR cameras take video now is a nifty little trick, but the fact that a cheaper point & shoot digicam can take video in a much more user friendly manner (ie.. with auto focus.. sound recording... no jello vision) means that I'll never buy a DSLR for it's video capability less my wife has the opportunity to say "Why is the video all shaky? Why can't the expensive camera auto focus while recording video?" But.. while the A550 can't record video, it has a speed priority multishot mode, once engaged you just hold down the shutter button, and the camera will start snapping pics at a maximum speed of 7 frames per second up to a max of 32 images at JPEG Fine quality. Makes for a nice flip book effect! ;) But when just one of 14 MegaPixel JPEG files has an average size of 6MB, it'd be best to buy a huge memory card first. And while we're on that topic.

The A550 comes with TWO memory card slots, an standard SDHC (I'm guessing it's HC, since the manual says that 32GB SD cards are supported) card slot and a slot for Sony's Memory Stick PRO Duo cards. There's a little switch that allows you to toggle between which of the slots you want to use. I was going to get an SD card at Low Yat but after the little accident with my car I just decided to get a Memory Stick from the shop. Call me old fashioned, but I still think Compact Flash cards had the time to mature into a realiable and high performance media. But of course... Compact Flash pins aren't exactly the best connector interface.

Another welcomed  change from the A350 is that it now has a STANDARD Mini USB connector instead of some proprietary/uncommon one.

And yes that's a Mini HDMI connector beside it. Which I personally feel I'm NEVER going to use. Heck... I don't even have a Mini HDMI cable!

The last thing I want to talk about is the A550's Live View.

Like the A350 the A550's Live View that's activated by the switch is unlike what you see on Canon's and Nikon's. While the other manufacturers choose to use the actual image sensor as the live view camera, thus sacrificing shot speed. Sony's LiveView uses another lower resolution camera sensor to give a LiveView experience that's exactly what you get on a normal digital camera WITHOUT sacrificing autofocus and shot speed. If anyone tells you a DSLR's LiveView is useless, they haven't seen a Sony DSLR LiveView in action before!

While Sony's LiveView experience is great in the eyes of people coming from compact cameras, the Pros shunned it because it wasn't an actual representation of the image you would shot cause the LiveView sensor showed a cropped image instead of the full picture that would be captured. To satisfy those users the A550 is able to perform LiveView using the ACTUAL IMAGE SENSOR (just like how Canon and Nikon does it) just by pushing the MF Check LV button on the top of the camera.

While it's a great way to know absolutely what picture you're going to be taking, remember that a DSLR's image sensor was not meant to be constantly on so the longer you keep it constantly on in LiveView mode, the hotter it gets.. and personally the shorter the lifespan of the sensor will be. (That's probably why users of the other camera don't encourage or see the point of LiveView :P)

Another neat trick that the A550 can do is that it can create HDR pics in the camera itself, basically the camera will take 2 shots at varying exposure levels and piece them together to form a HDR shot without the need to use Photoshop or what now. It's a neat trick, but I can't quite tell the difference yet. other than the highlights on a HDR pic looking brighter, check out the balls on the Christmas tree.

I really can't tell the difference... here are two shots of the same location, one with HDR, one without. Can you tell which is which?

I can't even remember which is which myself! :P

The A550 is definitely a worthwhile upgrade from my A350 and I'm glad that I got it, I think I should be able to keep using this until Sony puts proper video recording into a camera. ;)

One of the reasons which I don't bring my DSLR out a lot is the fact that if I am going to a casual get together with my friends and I'd like to take some nice photos I need to bring the flash, and if I'm going to bring my flash I'm gonna need to carry it in a bag, and the only bag I have that can safely hold both the flash and the camera is my Lowepro Fast Pack 250. And WAF of the bag is not very high cause it's big and solid... and if I just stick only the camera and flash into it, it feels like a waste.

I also have a Think Tank Digital Holster 20, which looks like this.

It's a simple camera bag designed to hold a camera, and nothing much else. That means I can't stuff my F36 flash into it. So I don't bring the camera out in this bag much because which I can boost the ISO to grab shots without a flash, it can only do so much when you're trying to snap a photo of a 2 year old. And because it's hard to actually bounce the built in flash, I end up with direct flash shots which make the WAF points go down.

So I was pleasantly surprised when Sony released this.

This is the Sony HVL-F20AM Flash. In the world of photography this would be called a low powered flash, can't shoot very far, has a slower (than other flash strobes) cycling time and I'd think is generally useless in long range. But... if you're using your camera indoors, in a party or an open house. This would do just fine! Oh.. and it helps that it's DAMN BLOODY SMALL!

This is how it looks in the off position, it just sits unassumingly on top of your camera. And for those of you who are wondering... yes, I pointed the camera at a mirror to take the picture. Anyway when it comes time to take a shot, all you do is flip it up and it's ready for action.

It's very obvious that the F20 was intended for the casual hobbyist photographer. There are no digital read outs, nor are there any complicated settings to work the flash. There's a switch that let's you flip the flash tube to point upwards so you have a bounce flash, and then there's another toggle to remove the diffuser from the front of the flash so you can try to use the flash on a longer range.

The BEST part about the F20, and the reason that I bought it once I saw it is that.

It just drops in to a corner of the Digital Holster with plenty of space to spare. So it means I can now carry around an external flash with the small camera bag. Sweet!

How well does it perform?

Indoors? just as good as any flash. Oh wait... wearing a hat, not a good candidate for a bounce flash shot. Let's switch to direct mode.

Typical shadow and effect of a head on flash, think the diffuser helped lower the harshness a bit.

Again, another shot in bounce mode. Works really well in doors, I'm very pleased. Not so worried about outdoor shots since I don't see myself doing a lot of that.

It's a nice piece of gear to own if you've always bemoaned the fact that your flash is too big and bulky to lug around and limiting your camera use. But it's definitely not as versatile as say... the HVL-F58AM, so best for your to ask yourself wheter or not the F20 suits your camera usage pattern before getting it.

After a full days of photo shooting, you pop the memory card out from your camera, insert it into your PC, browse to the card's folder and.. "ERROR READING FILES!!!"

Worse case scenario time, while writing to the card your camera must have choked, or worse! The camera or card is defective! But you want to try and get back at those files so you need to get one of them file recovery tools! But there's so many which promises so much, and costs just as much.

Before you give any of those apps a try, why don't you give PhotoRec a try? It's a FREE file recover that attempts to recover files from disks. Recovery here means either deleted files, or files that are in the disk but orphaned by the corrupted file table.

Sure, it basically runs via a command line interface and would prove daunting to any novice user, but there's documentation available on the site for those users and also did I mention that it's FREE?

I tried it out and well.. it pulled up a lot of files I deleted previously so... it works... and it's FREE!

So, about 11AM this morning I got to the AliCafe near my office.

It's not a place I normally go to, don't particularly like the food there. But there was something special happening today. Seems like someone famous was going to be here.

It was Raymond Lam, popular TVB actor. Normally I wouldn't care about this but seeing that his was coming some place convenient for me I decided to tag along with Kevin who told me about the event. To do a trial run of sort to see how to handle the situation if it was someone I actually cared about.

1st thing we were reminded after standing around for 5 mins was that, just because we were carrying SLRs, people automatically thought we were with the press. And one of these days I'm going to be prepared to answer YES so that I'm given a better shooting spot.

Speaking of shooting spots I took note that there wasn't any place to hide a famous actor in the shop, so I asked Kevin to look for a back entrance which is likely where the guy was going to come in from. Once Kevin confirmed that there was indeed a back entrance, I told him to stay put inside the shop while I went to check out the back.

At which point I noticed a parked car with a lot of people hustling around it.

I confirmed that this was indeed the ops center when a lady approached me and told me to go wait inside the shop to take photos. I acknowledged her but reminded her that this was a public street and she can't just shoo me away, but I told her I wouldn't play paparazzi and start taking shots through the window... besides I didn't have a circular polarizer which meant I couldn't shoot through glass anyway.

It was then I realized that the driver took up position beside me after having a chat with the lady, I put a car between him and myself. I wonder if he realized that I was taking video with my Creative Vado and decided against anything or maybe he just wanted to step into the shade (then again... he was in an air conditioned car)

Then 2 fans who also figured out that Raymond would come from the back door asked me "Where is he?" "Where must he walk from?" I helpfully pointed them to the car.

As expected they were stopped by the crew but it gave them something else to worry about than me. A few minutes later Raymond rushed the stairs and hurried down the corridor.

Darn he dipped his head just as I was taking the shot! As the handler behind walked past me and girl in pink's camera she showed her hand trying to block our cameras. As cool as I fell that I was actually shown the hand for taking pictures, I question her logic since she was walking BEHIND the guy she's attempting to shield from the lens so what good is she doing? Other than giving me something to blog about? :D

I stepped back into the shop to see out stretched arms taking shots.

The lone SLR you see in the shot above is Kevin, who had parked himself close to the tip of the crowd and armed with a tiltable LCD screen of his A300 he could take much better shots of the situation than me at the back. A mirror lining the wall of the shop shows how the crowd looks like with their cameras from one angle.

Armed with my 18250 and the ability to frame shots via the LCD viewfinder it was much easier for him to take closeups like this.

And this.

And this... damn this is turning out to be like some fan blog.

From my position the best I could do was take pictures of people taking pictures.

It's interesting to note that the crowd that gathered to get Raymond's autograph

Took up a whole lot of space in the shop, as well as blocked the main access for food to come out from the kitchen. I wonder if their business actually increased or decreased this morning due to the event?

My main aim of keeping myself at the end of the line was because that's the only exit point to return back to the car, so once Raymond finishes and he rushes off I can just snap pictures when he's heading towards me. At least that was my intention, but then after the autograph session was done he sat down to have some food. At which point we just left since we already got what we came for.

Not to mention learnt a valuable lesson that even now, people still assume that having an SLR means you are with the press.

As most SLR camera owners will tell you that it's probably best for you to keep your camera in a nice dry container. It could be just an airtight storage box with silica gel in it, or it could be an actual electrical climate controlled dry box. I can't bring myself to buying a dry box, so silica gel it is for me then. So previously I stuck either a pouch of silica gel or one of those thirsty hippo things into the box, and it worked out well except I had to change them after a few weeks.

Today I bought this.

They call it a rechargable dehumidifier. It works just like silica gel, but once it's done it's job instead of throwing it away, you plug it into a wall socket to recharge it and you can use it again. This thing isn't really anything special, it's basically contains silica gel inside, as well as a heating element. Whenever silica gel is full you can in theory just bake it in the sun, microwave it, etc. etc. and it'll be ready to suck moisture again. So with the builtin heating element you can basically do it in an easy manner.

This is NOT the first time I got something like this, a while back I already bought one of these so called rechargable dehumidifiers. It stopped working after 2 months, what's different now? That one looked the part of a chapalang branded product with dubious quality issues. This one looks... errrr... like it'll actually work for a while longer. I highly doubt it'll hit the 5 years it says on the sticker but consider this post a timestamp on how long/well it worked.

I was trying to take a photo of a crystal statue to see what results I'd get. A side flash made the details stand out, and well it looked like a cube of glass.

Then I positioned my flash so it shot from the top, and the cube started casting some flares.

Closing the aperture darkened the pic to give it a more errr.. gem like look? And reduced the main glare point. (err... what's the term for it? hotspot? reflection?)

But then again we can cut glare just by taking the shot from another angle.

I'm sure the semi pro wants to say something about the flares, I just found it interesting how the light X'out when it hit the top.

And here's a shot where I try to be make the shot look nicer with some bokeh at the side. And I took it at an angle too!

Then when viewing the pic on the screen I find out I made the same mistake again whenever I take stuff with my macro lens. I forgot to wipe down the thing to remove all the dust trails from it! :P

Damn.. why don't I bump into cool things like this earlier? Just got pointed to the direction of Microsoft Image Composite Editor which is essentially a FREE panoramic photo stitcher, and it's been out since LAST NOVEMBER! Downloading now to test as I write this.

The lenses that I bought for my Sony A350 all have a very specific use which I need them for.

The 50F1.7 portrait lens was the first one which I got, almost immediately after I got my camera.

This was simply because the SemiPro said that I should get one if it was cheap, and not to mention mommy really liked the bokeh effect of portrait pictures. But I don't use this lens a lot, since using a 50mm in doors is kinda hard when WZ keeps running at you.

The next lens I got was the 50F2.8 macro lens.

I got this lens by rushing down to Pudu Plaza the day after the SemiPro told me that a shop had this lens for second hand sale. I knew I wanted to get a macro when getting my camera because I knew I wanted to take product shots. This is the 2nd lens I used the most aside from the kit lens, other than for product shots I use it whenever I need the razor teeth sharpness of the lens.

The last lens which I wanted to get was something to use when I go on trips, something that had a focal range capability. I was planning to get the Sony 18250 lens before I went on my next trip overseas. But... that's changed now.

I decided to get it yesterday because I was afraid there was going to be a price increase on it soon following Sony's dire fiscal year reports. Now that I have it, it shall be used as I originally intended. To replace the 1870 kit lens since it has a further range. But is almost the same size when fully retracted.

When fully extended though, the lens makes the camera feel heavy and off balanced (guess I'll need to train my left arm a bit more!) since it stretches pretty far! Letting my wife hold it made her give out a groaning sigh before passing it back to me... guess she won't be that interested of taking pics of me and WZ with that lens attached :P.

And now... my collection is complete, I have no more desire for any more lenses. So here's my complete non kit lens collection!

The other place I took WZ to was the KL Aquaria, once again I went in hoping to take some pics. But when I heard the people at the entrance constantly repeat "Dear visitors with Digital Cameras, please do NOT use your flash, flash photography is not allowed in the venue" Let's just forget the fact that digital cameras are NOT the ONLY source of a xenon flash, This was a problem then, as it would mean I needed to again use my 50mm macro lens as that was the fastest one I had with me. I didn't bring my 50mm F1.7 lens cause, I was going with my family so if I was taking any pictures of WZ and mommy it would mean that mommy would like to have the background in the picture too instead of... well.. a big blue blur. So while it failed for me as a photography outing, here's what I learnt from my trip to KL Aquaria.

While it is possible to take some shots without flash.

You have to realize that underwater creatures swim pretty fast. And they're not inclined to pose for you.

Although there are some things in the place that DO sit still.

But even if they do sit still you have another thing that literally stands in your way

These are living breathing creatures behind a glass case, so the clarity of the case, or the reflection of the glass will throw off your auto focus. But of course, there's a chance to get a nice pic if you're lucky.

Another thing to remember when you go to places like this is that. If you only bring a fixed range lens.

Take note that you might not have a lot of space to back up and frame your subject.

Hmm... so I've tried to go to the butterfly park to take pictures and failed, tried Aquaria and failed cause my equipment doesn't allow me to take nice pictures in dark places.

I guess that leaves me with the Bird Park, and the Zoo. Hmmm... I guess I'll put that on my todo list.

I took a few days off to take WZ around town and also to well... actually take some days off. So the first place we went was the KL Butterfly Park, so WZ can finally see some butterflies actually flying around for real.

First thing first.. WHY THE HECK DO YOU STILL WANT TO CHARGE PEOPLE FOR BRINGING CAMERAS? What an ancient and barbaric practice when nearly everyone has something that can take pictures. Next thing was that, it's actually kinda hard to snap pictures of butterflies flying around. But I guess it's because I had a kid and a wife tagging along so I didn't exactly have the luxury of time to try and setup anything.

But switching the A300 to full auto mode and passing the camera to mommy meant I get to have some pictures taken with WZ.

They had a fish pond in the place which the fish was all too eager to come close to you... once you toss them some feed.

One good thing about the butterfly park is that it has ample sunlight, so there's ample light to take pictures of things.

The person at the counter told us that the feed was for both fishes and turtles. But we couldn't find the turtles, and threw the bag of feed for the fish.. which was sad but let's face it between colorful gold fish in a crystal clear pond, and this...

Which would you rather feed? It's sad that the turtles get no love.. they didn't even put any signs up (or maybe they were destroyed) to indicate that Look turtles HERE!.

WZ tried to see the turtles from the perch.

But the angle just wasn't right.

Thus he walked away disappointed. I think the turtles were disappointed too! They must have been hoping to get something to eat!

I did manage to get a shot of a butterfly close up

It was just constantly sucking on the ground trying to eat something and didn't care too much that there was a big ass black tube pointed at it. (I only have a 50mm Macro lens, to get this picture the tip of the lens was right NEXT to the butterfly) And then there was this... thing.

This ant like praying mantis was in the shade so the end results were a bit blurry cause of the slower shutter speed and I couldn't hold the camera steady.

Hmm.. did whatever ate the leaf, ate the butterfly as well?

They also had some other animals in the place. They had some rabbits in a well... rabbit smelling cage.

They had a python? boa? in a glass case which looked like it had coiled up and died, I didn't even had the heart to take a photo it. The had a chameleon lizard thing, but the plastic screen the cage was made of was clouded and hard to see through.

Overall, while there WERE definitely butterflies in the place and if I had more time to actually find my shots I think I would have gotten some more shots of stuff. I think if you wanted to take pictures of nature you have other better choices than paying RM18 (entrance fee) + RM1 (camera fee) to enter the KL Butterfly Garden.