On the advice of my semi pro friend (he hates being called a pro) I set out to find a better rubber band to hold my Better Bounce Card so I hit the local hardware shop during lunch and asked them for.. a big rubber band. The store attendant looked at me blankly and told me they don't sell rubber bands. So I said "Anything that is shaped like a band, elastic and strong!"

He showed me a tray containing rubber 'O' rings of various sizes which they use in pipe connections. I picked up one that looked the right size for my flash head, stretched it a bit and... looks good to me!

And that must be the least exciting picture I ever posted on my site.

At night I knew I wanted to make a bounce card out of the foam material Peter was talking about in the video. After going through the other videos on his sit I figured the closest thing I have seen that resembles it would be the foam like material which is used in making rose flowers... or scrap book decorations. So I went to the scrap book shop at the Curve and lo and behold..

There I found a pack of foam sheets just sitting there in the shop. RM19.90 for 12 sheets. You'd think I'd be happy about the find but...

The pack contains a plethora of colors!!! There's only ONE WHITE SHEET!! Damn it!

But it works... the thing is malleable yet more durable than just a sheet of paper and thus can survived being rolled up and down to adjust the forward bounce. For other people looking for this stuff, it's called EVA Foam. I know of another craft shop in 1 Utama's connection bridge, and a paper shop in Mid Valley and I guess I'll hit them up over the weekend to see if I can buy just white sheets instead of a whole pack.

Of course... color filtering is an interesting experiment, and more pieces means I can experiment with some modifications.

The package from PA arrived and I got my Classic Mario Sound Drops!

It's the classic noise, the buttons are hard and make a satisfying click when you press them. Hopefully WZ will like playing with them.

But the shot clocks... are just sad.

First.. I got 2 of the same kind!!! MCH!!! Second and most importantly, they DON'T MAKE A PEEP!! No sound at all!! So it calculates how many button presses you can press in 10 seconds, but no sounds mean... WZ won't give a dam about them.

BAH!

I wanted to look for a diffuser for my flash, on the advice of my friend he asked me to just use a bloody card first and learn up my technique, and lo what do I find online? A Better Bounce Card!

And I wasn't sure how well it worked since indoors, in a house with a low ceiling it was hard to tell the difference between a bounce flash or a diffused flash. But then I got this pair of shots at the Visual Studio launch today.

On the left, no flash the scene is lit mainly by the blue screen behind the person. On the right, with the bounce card. The effect is nice, the blue lighting is still there and yet it's not a harsh flash spotlight. Picture I didn't get, a shot with normal direct flash at the stage.

Considering all I use was a piece of photo paper with 3 cuts... COOL! Now to find that foam material the guy was talking about in the website, think I can find it at some arts and crafts or scrapbook shops.

For my Sony A350 I got this SanDisk Extreme III 2GB Card.

And it was working out great for me. As for the card reader, well I was just using this old thing which I bought a few months ago.

It worked out great... until my card was almost filled with pictures, then Windows Explorer began to act unresponsive when browsing the card's image folder. After some digging around I realized what was happening, Explorer was trying to load the image's thumbnail and EXIF information in order to display. But due to the fact that we're talking about hundreds of image files whose file size is 5MB, the cheap ass card reader just couldn't take it. That's when my friend told me to pick up the San Disk Extreme USB Reader.

I was skeptical at first but since hey... he's a pro and I'm just a noob in photography so... Anyway, to me I always thought that it didn't really matter how much faster a card reader is. But then again I wasn't dealing with large quantity of large images. The reader costs about twice as much as a chapalang reader.

But... it works.. fantastically. Explorer is able to retrieve and display the thumbnails and EXIF data without hitting any speed bumps!

Who knew there was an actual reason for getting a branded card reader? :P

edit : On a side note, the kit lens of the A350 doesn't seem to be well suited for product Macro shots. So I guess I'll have to keep the Sony H1 for that duty!

One thing after buying a DSLR is that the user usually gets roped into buying a lot of accessories like lenses, flashes, tripods, etc. etc. There's where the pain factor of owning a DSLR comes in. Well I'm not planning to take this up as a serious hobby, so I decided to stick to the essentials for my initial splurge. The 1st thing that I knew I must have was a flash!

So this is the entry level Sony Flash HVL-F36AM. With it I'm able to take flash shots as fast as the camera is capable of. Which is about 2 shots per sec with Live View on.

The next thing I needed to get was a bag considering the fact that Sony gave NOTHING in the package of the A350 other than.. camera.. lens.. So I got this.

The Lowepro Fastpack 250, it's a nice bag. Not too big, and spacious enough to hold all the stuff I need.

It has a side opening design, and it's enough to hold the camera, the flash, AND my video camera as well! So I can carry my full documentation equipment.

The top portion of the bag is a pretty spacious pocket, enough to hold all my gadgets and doodads, and laptop charger.

Yup.. the bag has a compartment for a laptop. This makes it the most ideal bag for me since obviously if I go anywhere which I would take my camera I'd most likely want to bring my laptop with me. Or most likely, the eeePC if I'm going on vacation.

And the final piece of equipment was bought so I could position the camera for gadget shots.

It's a Gorillapod SLR Zoom! The real deal and not an imitation product, I checked out one of those clones and they just didn't posses the strength and build of the real product.