Viva Las Vegas

It's been just about a year since I've been to Vegas.  I was disappointed to find that behind the lens of a fancy new camera I still found Vegas to be dull and uninspiring. Unattractive and mundane. Familiar and predictable. Some highlights included the Assouline store at the new Crystals shopping center and watching The Lion King musical. A lowlight would involve 2 hours of getting shoved around in an overcrowded Tao, whether Charles Barkley and Paris Hilton were there or not. Here are the (very) few new things that caught my eye.

The food, though, is never disappointing. Take a look here for some eats.

Dinky Fifty

My EF 50mm f/1.8 II lens finally came in the mail today. I ordered it online the same day I bought my camera (2 weeks ago) so I could save $10 and ended up kicking myself for it because it took so long to come in! I really wanted to experiment with it while I was in Vegas. Luckily, my co-worker Ken was nice enough to loan me his EF 50mm f/1.4 USM for the weekend. I was actually going to decline, didn't want to get used to the faster lens and get stuck with the 1.8, but I wanted something other than my zoom to play with so I borrowed it anyway.

So now that I had both in my possession, it was time to test out to see if the 1.4 really is worth 4x more ($389 vs $99). First of all, the 1.8 is dinky compared to the 1.4. It's made out of a cheapy plastic that is lighter and shinier. It's super light and surprisingly quite smaller. It really is a no-frills lens. It took a while to get used to the 50mm in general... it almost reminded me of my first 35mm camera when I was 13 (won it in 7th grade for selling 12 boxes of chocolate). No zoom, no frills, just get close to your subject and shoot. The 1.8 was quick and it was easy to adjust aperture and shutter speed to get a good amount of light in, especially since our media room is kind of dark. However, the preview for each photo seemed so blurry. I was disheartened but kept on shooting. After I viewed the pics on my computer, I realized that the larger aperture had such narrow depth of field that it blurred out everything except for the very point I was focusing at. It was even more ridiculous in the 1.4. (I was shooting both in Tv, letting the camera choose the aperture)

50mm f/1.8 II // quick and dirty

50mm f/1.4 USM // super quick and much more vibrant

So, for now I'm not a good enough photographer to show much of a difference between the two so I am happy to practice with my 1.8. It's small and light and will be much easier to work with when I'm not freaked out about knocking it on a wall. At $99, you really can't complain.

P.S. Doesn't Cora look silly with short ears?

This is fun.

Disney vinylmation character.

Fun with Photoshop

Okay, I don't want to fall into the bucket of amateur-photographer-discovers-photoshop-plug-ins but I will admit it is a lot of fun. Sure it's easy to go overboard (overprocessed images on Facebook bug me too) but I think they might make for neat prints framed on a wall.

I will probably stick to the more traditional method of touching up through Photoshop for my regular photos but why not let loose once in a while and go click-crazy? :)

I used 3 different presets for this shot of Cora. I wanted to get an extremely burnt, but not overexposed, contrast since the original image was so boringly brown. Brown dog on brown carpet against a brown background. I also played with a pixelating tool which made for a cool shadow around her head.

I had a nice, clear outdoor shot of Max that was, well, almost too clear. This was a good way to practice with "airbrushing" tools to eliminate blemishes, minimize pores and do just about everything my collection of Bliss products promises to do.

My last picture was a "happy accident" that Aai took with the camera as she was trying it out for the first time. Again we had a white dog against a white shirt in front of white cabinets so I wanted to play with color and contrast to add dimensionality. Adding the frame was a fun way to add balance to the edges.

Happy (lunar) new year!

Last night we threw a Chinese new years' party at the house for some family friends. If only I had hand-written the invitations I would have knocked out two resolutions this year but this wasn't the invitation-type of crowd so let's call it practice for now. My mom did most of the cooking and I delegated the cleaning to the sisters. House prep went to the BF (mounting a TV up in the main room, patching up walls, hanging up wall decor, repotting plants) and I played orchestra leader, sitting at my podium (couch) and making sure things were done in an orderly manner. ;)

New Toy: Canon 5D Mark II

So I finally bit the bullet and plunged head first in a dslr purchase. I've always had interest in photography but have always been too intimidated to use anything more complicated than a point & shoot. The BF gave me a Leica DLUX-4 for Christmas 2 years ago and though it's a great camera, it doesn't reward you unless you know what you are doing.

So for the past month I've been toying with the idea of getting a dslr. Working at a creative agency, I am surrounded by photographers so within a couple of days I heard enough opinions to narrow my sights on a Canon 5D. The question now was do I buy a used 5D or splurge on a new 5D Mark II? Then I started getting worried -- what if I spend all of that money on a camera and I learn that I am no good? Do I start with a 50D instead, which is half the price? The Samy's Camera Presidents' Day no-tax sale made my decision for me. Not only did I splurge and get the 5DM2, but I bought it with a kit so it came with a 24-105mm f/4L IS USM AF lens.

After taking my first test shot with the camera, I'm instantly happy with my purchase. The picture of Lulu below was taken on program mode (I don't know what I'm doing, remember? :P) in the low lighting of my media room and I was immediately impressed with how much warmth and rich color it captured. I'm excited to see how else I can incorporate photography into my day-to-day life, as both a way to capture memories and to add dimension to the mundane.