Tuesday, December 16, 2008

almost full moon on 14 Zulhijjah...

Each time I went back to Muar, I never felt bored nor tired to snap photo of Muar Jame' Mosque the II.... perhaps I am living on this side of the river ... If I stay on the Tanjung Agas side, perhaps I will be snapping the original Muar Mosque photo...

Ever since I had camera, the Mosque is among my photography obsession... Each photo or moment i captured doesn't seem satisfied me... 
This almost full moon image was taken on 14 Zulhijjah recently.... I was heading home with my son, and I saw the moon almost full... I said to myself, this the perfect time for me to snap the photo since the shadowy side of the moon clearly revealed the craters.... 

By tomorrow, 15 Zulhijjah... the moon will be totally full and brightly lit... I won't be able  to capture the craters image... 

I stop at the roadside, took out my camera, put it under 4 Mega pixel resolution so I can have better zoom of 23x... snapped several shots... If I put it under full resolution, 10MP.... I only have zoom of 18x.

I need to adjust a bit on the result using Irfanview... 

Friday, December 12, 2008

My bridge camera ... Panasonic Lumix FZ28

I finally bought a bridge camera... and currently still around 2 weeks old. The 4 GB SD memory card still have many empty space. With the presence of this new gadget or shall I say toy, I am transform back in time, perhaps 30 years back.... like a small boy experimenting with his new toy.

I need to upgrade to a better camera, since my compact camera have many limitation, not enough zoom, slow in auto focusing and image capture, no enough wide angle.. just to name a few.

I need a camera with quite a powerful zoom so  that I can capture moment..... with normal compact, you have to be so closed to the subject to capture the photo.... which will make the moment less natural or worst, gone... due to disturbance of serenity or harmony.. such as if you want to snap photo of bee or butterfly on flowers.. Or capture human expression... 

The camera come with adequate wide angle although still not comparable with DSLR but better than my compact camera...the above photo show the advantage of wide angle lens.This is Pontelan, the bad cat belong to my brother living next to my kampung house.... I don't know why she kept coming in and pick up fight with our cats, Minciku and Macan Tutul....She's quite heavyweight in size....

My son looking hermit crab among the rocks at Tanjung Mas Muar.

Perhaps the main reason I choose Panasonix Lumix FZ28, is the price... RM1460.  You can get it cheaper in lelong.com.my, but I have more trust on the old face to face  commerce style...especially if you are dealing with merchandise worth more than RM500. 

I read through the comments from users, amateur and pro, most of them give high rating for this camera... This camera is meant for people who want most of the features of the DSLR, lightweight, compact, quite high quality image, wide angle lens with macro to telephoto... without need to exchange the lenses... and capture video...

For me, this camera is good enough for me.... although a few reviews said the image is not as sharp as DSLR.... bridge camera cannot be as good as DSLR. One of the main reasons is, the photo sensor is switched on all the time and exposed to light during the camera operation.... If you remember from the Physics lecture, this will saturate the photosensor and create noise ....

In DSLR, since you are viewing using the viewfinder, the photo sensor only exposed to light in microsecond during the button snapped to capture image.

Furthermore, the photo sensor in bridge camera is much smaller compare to DSLR... Bigger is better ma....

Anyway, this camera is a compromise between function, agility, quality ...and pricing... 

The last factor is the main factor for me....

Visit to Parit Jawa small fish landing port....and mud skippers

Early this week I took my son to watch with own eyes the mud skipper fish ...ikan belacak...ikan tembakul... or ikan belodok. Beside from reading books and watching Natgeo, he never seen mud skipper fish live.

The location was, Parit Jawa fish landing port... this type of creature dwell in muddy river mouth. Normally the fishes will come out from their burrow in the morning.. perhaps to avoid the scorching heat of the sun during noon...

I had hard time waking him up, early in the morning .. since it's school holiday.. After strong persuasion, we finally of to the site.


According to the Jeff Corwin, the mud skipper kept some amount water in their mouth so that their gills can conduct respiration... it's just like us when we do scuba diving, we bring along the compressed air tank.. so we can breathe through our lungs...

I remembered last time when I took scuba diving for the first time in Bali, my compressed air tank... nearly emptied, perhaps due to excitement and wrong breathing technique underwater....The instructor had to gave me his breathing apparatus so I could continue breathing while we ascending to the surface... luckily it's only a 5m deep dive.. If the depth more then that, perhaps I would be another sea creature meals...

Looking at the mud skipper face I remembered the Gungan ... the alien creature in Star Wars...with it famous character, Jar Jar Binks....


Friday, December 5, 2008

the beauty of raindrops....

" Tears from Heaven"....

Yesterday, after 3 long hot and humid days.... rainfall finally pay a visit. I really enjoy each time it's rain in my kampung, although some of the villager may have different feeling... since they can't go rubber tapping the next day... Since the price of palm oil go down badly, some of the villagers resort to rubber tapping... just to meet the end.

The rain started around 3 pm, as anticipated due to heavy dark cloud since in the morning..... 
I sat down in front of the house, enjoying and feeling the cool air and thumping sound as the raindrop hits the zinc roof.... without realizing I dozed off for a few minutes, while Luqman reading book beside me...


The rain subsided late that day, and as the volume of the raindrops decreasing...... I managed to snapped a few shots.... 
The clear and transparent droplets of water falling from the sky, hit the zinc roof and flow down to the earth.... frozen in time captured by photo sensor.....

It's just like diamond ....glittering.....in purest form..  just like  " Tears from Heaven".....