EOY Cosplay at National Library

Ok finally getting to the cosplay updates. Quite a number of pictures, so i'll update a few at a time starting with these first batch.

Rant: National Library is a bad place for cosplaying. Too many people walking around, background is very very messy. Most of my shots have very distracting backgrounds -_-"
And to make things worse, I overexposed alot of pictures due to giving my flash gun a +1.3 ev setting. The ceiling of the area where the cosplayers were at is pretty high, I thought my flash gun's output wont have enough power to bounce the light from that sort of height, so I compensated my flash with such a high power setting. End up over exposing so many shots. Should have stayed with my +0.7ev which i used most of the time in normal rooms...

So yeah, here's the pics. Most of them overexposed, with messy background...
I bought 2 cameras along that day, to test out my Minolta 5D as mentioned below.
Pictures taken here are from my Sony Alpha A500 , except the first picture which is taken with the Minolta 5D.

Special Mention:
Lightning from Final Fantasy 13. IMO she really looks like the character. Apparently im not the only one who thinks so, as the other photographers around me are saying the same thing.



The rest of the action:





















Thats all for today. Will upload more pictures some other time :)

Chinese Garden Outing

Here's the photos of the Clubsnap Chinese Garden outing I attended :)
First time attending an outing~

I realise that scenery shots are very much different from my usual photographic subjects like Street Photography, Portraiture, macro photography, so I was kinda lost, as in I donno what to take.... so these are just some of my random shots...

Bought a 2nd DSLR...

Was surfing online on CHRISTMAS DAY and saw someone selling a cheap 2nd hand DSLR, a Minolta 5D. Since Minolta DSLRs are fully compatible with Sony Alpha lenses (after all, Sony Alpha DSLRs are made by Minolta), I decided to buy it as a spare body. The 5D body cost me only $250 (though i spend more than this, as I bought other accessories :p ), even cheaper than a compact camera!

Here's how a Minolta 5D looks like:



Here are some sample pics I took with the 5D. Note the overexposed pictures are entirely due to my poor control of my external flash (more on that in a later post).
























IMO, the Minolta 5D's performance is as good as any currently entry level DSLRs in the market. Im merely using the camera's default settings, as I hv no time to go thru the manuals to change settings like colour saturation etc. Infact the 5D has some advanced functions that are not found in most entry level DSLRs, like build in Image Stabilizer (which makes any lens into a IS/VR lens), wireless flash commander (normall entry level DSLRs will need to buy a seperate wireless commander at $200+), Programme Shift and Depth of Field Preview button (a function found normally on advanced DSLRs). I dont think I cant find any better cameras for $250...

Edit: After looking thru all the photos taken with the Minolta 5D, i realise that the colour rendering of the camera is very "real life" like. Most DSLRs nowadays tends to over saturate the colours of the pictures. The pictures from the Minolta 5D is pretty much similar to what you see from your eyes in real life. No excessive colour saturation was done by the camera.

Dragons again

Another dragonfly which posed happily for me today :)

Macro photography

Wanted to try out macro photography, so i ordered a macro lens from Japan :)
Arrived a few days ago, and I took it out for a walk today.

Didnt managed to find any insects LOL, only captured these guys.

Bonfire Festival 27-28 Nov 09

Just came back from the Bonfire Festival :)
Quite a nice event, I went there for both days ^^

Here are some photos that I took.