Panasonic G1 & Canon FD 28mm - Orchard Christmas Light Up 2011 Part II

Carry on my previous part Orchard Christmas Light Up 2011 photo shooting.. Because of using manual Canon FD 28mm F2.8 lenses, normally i would set the focus point to infinity to reduce the time needed to do manual focusing (unless i found some static object which can let me to speed time to focus and think before the shutter button is pressed). Due to the night shot, majority of the photo taken here have to lower the shutter speed to around 1/60sec, it's very hard for a new photographer like me to handhold it without handshake blur. Maybe i'm still new to the manual focusing, it's take some time for me to really focus the subject, this are the steps i would do normally:

1. compose the image i want.
2. use the Lumix G1 manual focus function and locate the focus "box" on the subject. (of course, thru the superb viewfinder to reduce any handshake hence i can stop down the ISO and increase the shutter speed)
3. Adjust the focus ring on the lenses.

I found that if every scene i have to spend so much time to do all the steps here, i may miss some moment, so i will step down the aperture sometimes and set the focus point to infinity, and of course the trade-off is some photo is not 100% in focus ...

(All the photos shown here are JPEG with Auto WB straight from Panasonic Lumix G1 without any post processing)

Saw 2 of the waiters quarreling, so took their photos immediately. In the time of very busy, people get to angry is very normal...

Slightly out of focus "Hitachi" signboard. (please continue to read, i posted a better in-focus photo at the bottom :-))

 

I like this shot! bokeh-licious of the 28mm F2.8 lenses. I always found that the mix of bokeh effect and background light make them very attractive. if the "ball" quality is better, we can see more "things" on the ball. If you spend sometimes on the background, the bokeh of this lenses is a "round" shape.

Reflection and Bokeh-licious

Harry Porter Portrait, BUT the focus is actually at the background

Another bokeh-licious shot. My girlfriend asked me, "what are you shooting at?" , i told her, "haha ... just don't care, i'm just trying to get the 'effect' i want ".

This is the in-focus "Hitachi" sign board, the "Hitachi" is "sharp" enough and the background is "blur" enough. Even if the aperture is not fast enough, by appropriate composition, we still can get decent background blur effect :-). Bravo Canon FD and Lumix G1!

A girl selling Christmas hair pin.

Going to toilet and prepare to wrap up my stuff and go back, but saw this special statue and took out my camera to take the last shot! The statue is inside a glass enclosure, the incomplete body make it a special attractive artwork, BUT it seems that nobody bother to look at it!

Overall, the Canon FD 28mm F2.8 lenses is an easy to use lenses. This may not give the best bokeh effect like the Canon FD 50mm F1.4, BUT due to the shorter equivalent focal length and lighter, make it less prone to handshake. If the focusing is done properly, you will be able to get a sharp image.

Pros:

1. Shorter focal length than Canon 50mm F1.4, less handshake blur. theorectically, as long as shutter speed> 1/50 sec, the blur effect should be minimum.
2. 170g , lighter than Canon 50mm F1.4 which is 235g. (For detail spec of 
   Canon FD 28mm: http://www.mir.com.my/rb/photography/companies/canon/fdresources/fdlenses/28mm.htm; Canon FD 50mm: http://www.mir.com.my/rb/photography/companies/canon/fdresources/fdlenses/50mm.htm)
3. sharp image from my perpective, if focusing is done properly.
4. low price (i bought at around SGD110). for anyone who want to try manual focus lenses, this is a suitable lenses due to the cost.

Cons:
1. Bokeh effect is not as good as Canon FD 50mm F1.4.

Panasonic G1 & Canon FD 28mm - orchard christmas light up 2011

Orchard Road Christmas Light Up 2011, Main Road are decorated with blue color light

Went to visit the Christmas Light-Up @ Orchard 2011 few days back, and use my barely use Canon FD 28mm F2.8 to take some photos. I am mesmerized by the Canon FD lenses  after i first tried the Canon FD 50mm F1.4 lenses. The Canon FD 50mm F1.4 lenses really give very good bokeh effect and sharp image at the price of less than SGD200, i think it's really worthwhile to invest in this lenses if you want to shoot great portrait photos.

I bought Canon FD 28mm F2.8 lenses 2 month ago and do not have much time to play around it, so i decided to use in on the Christmas Light-Up @ Orchard 2011. just want to find out how good is this lenses can perform on my Panasonic G1 camera. (All the photos taken here are taken with Lumix G1, Canon FD 28mm F2.8, JPEG straight from camera without post processing)

Oops ... just came out from Orchard MRT station, but the light are all hanging around.

The theme here is yellow light, all the YELLOW light are hanging around, even the Christmas tree also YELLOW color, different from the main road color.

Golden Christmas Tree

I see an old man decorating the lighting on a Rickshaw, no matter how he decorate, the Richshaw still look the same, so i decided he is just a secondary man ...

What can be done?

No matter how, Still look the same !!! BUT the snowman look not bad, huh ..

They are many weird elephants on the Orchard Road, i do not really know their real meaning, BUT they are so special that i take a few shots!

Elephant with flower on body

Another Christmas tree

The Canon FD lenses are all manual lenses, i will miss some shot unintended sometimes. The photo here is out of focus BUT i still like it. This photo is taken at the junction of Orchard road, the whole road is decorated in this way ...

Out of focus BUT still nice shoot to show Orchard Road

Ooops... some of the lighting is using Swarovski Elements, should be quite expensive?!? BUT i can't appreciate them ...

 A decoration by HTC. Christmas becomes HTC - mas ...

Panasonic Lumix G1 and Canon FD 28mm F/2.8

Just bought a Canon FD 28mm F/2.8 lenses. The lenses is very cheap, around SGD120. I own a FD 50mm F/1.4 lenses also, just trying to get a shorter focal length lenses and see what are the different in performance for this 2 lenses.

photo taken using Samsung Galaxy S2 - G1 with Canon FD 28mm F/2.8

Comparison of Canon FD 28mm, 50mm and FD to M43 adapter

Due to the time i have (super busy for exam and assignment now ...), i run a few quick test for this lenses on my Panasonic G1.

When i hold this lenses on my hand, it really much lighter than the FD 50mm F1.4, due to the internal construction of the lenses (please find more detail here: http://www.mir.com.my/rb/photography/companies/canon/fdresources/fdlenses/28mm.htm).

I like the lens flare which produce by many old lenses, i spotted some lens flare which are produced by this lenses.

Canon FD 28mm F/2.8 lens flare - 1

Canon FD 28mm F/2.8 lens flare -2

This lenses is equivalent to 56mm, F5.6 in 35mm format, what is the bokeh effect that we can get from this lenses? i am quite like the bokeh effect created, and it is defintely better than the kit lenses 14-42mm F3.5. If compare to the FD 50mm F1.4, the 28mm F2.8 is definitely still far behind.

Canon FD 28mm F2.8 Bokeh Effect

Overall, the lenses produce very sharp picture as compare to the kit lenses, and compare to the price of this type of lenses, i think it really worthwhile to play with.

Canon FD 28mm F2.8

Melaka Trip B&W

Very busy for work and study assignment recently. Suddenly feel like posting few photos that i had taken during the Melaka trip, i selected few photos which i would like to post in B&W. All the photo are taken using Panasonic Lumix G1 and Canon FD 50mm F1.4 lenses.

A more than 100 years old cafe which built by English in Equatorial Hotel, Melaka. Another fantastic bokeh by Canon FD 50mm F1.4

An Old English Style Chandelier

Nice Melaka Gula Durian Chendol that can only be found in Melaka

A Very Famous Melaka Native Product Shop

Any Antique Addictor Should pay a visit to Melaka

Canon FD 50mm F1.4 in Action - Part II Melaka Street Portrait B&W

Continue from my previous post, some interesting photos to share, please note that i did some cropping in order to get rid of the objects that i do not want :)

A special Auntie with a special hat

Reflection

The beauty of Canon FD 50mm F1.4. The sharp photo with nice bokeh! Keep Quiet! Ok?!?!

The Different between a couple of SHOPPER and a couple of LOVER

See something interesting or yummy ??? Why not stop here?

Silhouette of Busy Shoppers

Canon FD 50mm F1.4 in Action - Part I Melaka Street Portrait B&W

Happened to have chance to go to Melaka, Malaysia on 16/9/2011 after getting some good deal from website (Melaka is entered to become one of the World Heritage site in the world in year 2008, so i think a lot of story to tell in this place). Shoot some street portrait using my Panasonic Lumix G1 and the lovely Canon FD 50mm F1.4 lenses.

Before i proceed to the street portrait talk, i would like to share some of my experience in Canon FD 50mm F1.4 lenses. During the 2days 1nite trip, i forced myself to use this lenses. Even though the lenses is F1.4, due to the equiv. focal range of 100mm (by rules of thumb, the shutter speed has to be reciprocal of focal length which is 1/100sec to prevent the image blur caused by handshake), i found this lenses is quite hard to do photo shooting in low light condition. In low light condition, it's very easy for the shutter speed to be 1/20sec, and the sharpness of the lenses is compromised.

Just to have a quick compare of my Lumix 14-42mm F3.5-5.6 lenses, when i shorten the equiv. focal length to 28mm, a shutter speed of 1/20sec still give me a reasonable sharpness (i think it's because of the Mega O.I.S, light weight of the lenses and the short focal length)

Overall, I think that i face some difficulties in using the canon FD 50mm F1.4 in low light condition because of the lenses heavy weight, long focal length and without Image Stabilizer. Nevertheless, this lenses actually produce very creamy bokeh effect and high resolution which is totally impossible from the lumix 14-42mm lenses. I really enjoy using this FD lenses in bright outdoor shooting, because it gave me the sharpness and the bokeh effect that i like.

My experience in using this lenses in streetphotography :
1. step down the aperture to F2.0, you will get reasonable bokeh effect whilst easy to do focusing. F1.4 will give you very shallow depth of field which will make you very difficult in manual focus especially when you want to capture "decisive moment" which happened in a very short time frame.
2. use ND or circular polariser to help to reduce the shutter speed as sometimes my shutter speed reach 1/4000sec but the whole image still overexpose due to the reason of fast aperture that i am using.
3. Use Viewfinder ! It's very important of using high quality EVF of 1.44 Million dots in my Lumix G1. It's added extra stability and ease the process of manual focus.

(Most of the photo taken here had been cropped for the intended composition, so the quality of the photo may drop somehow, but the bokeh effect still very good.)

(to be continued ...)

A Way to Street Photography - from B&W and Sepia

Read a number of street photography blogs recently, it's enjoyable! I like the B&W and sepia color setting of many street photography that i have seen. It's inspired me to do some similar style of shooting in my recent visit to Rochester Park, Singapore (1/9/2011).

Besides the photos I have taken in the restaurant - Krish. I really have to share some of the experience that i have in the restaurant. They have many good special style indian foods, nice environment and good service which is difficult that seen in S* recently .. please see my photo below.

(Lumix G 14-42mm, 17mm, f/3.9, 1/2sec, center-weighted average metering)

This photo is taken handheld, I'm very satisfied with the Mega O.I.S performance of the lenses. I think it pretty sharp at a shutter speed of 1/2sec. BUT please note that i used the EVF which added some additional stability to the camera. (SO keen to try the new Lumix lenses which adopted Power O.I.S which they claimed the I.S. is 2x more effective than Mega O.I.S)

(Lumix G 14-42mm, 14mm, f/3.5, 1/15sec, multi pattern metering)

A nice photo which contain three countries clock, and comment left by the customers. Most of the comments are giving credits to the restaurant.

(Lumix G 14-42mm lenses, 14mm, f/3.5, 1/20sec, multi pattern metering)

The restaurant feeling is exactly the same as the photos that we can see from the photos here. Another advantages of the B&W and sepia photo is the ISO noise can be neglected at some extend.

(Lumix G 14-42mm lenses, 42mm, f/5.6, 1/4sec, multi pattern metering)

Just to share some of the good free ebook from some of the great street photographer ...

1. http://erickimphotography.com/blog/2011/09/new-street-photography-magazine-radiate-released-issue-1/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+EricKimStreetPhotographyBlog+%28Eric+Kim+Street+Photography+Blog%29
2. http://erickimphotography.com/blog/2011/07/download-going-candid-a-free-street-photography-e-book-by-thomas-leuthard/
3. http://erickimphotography.com/blog/2011/08/download-thomas-leuthards-85mm-new-street-photography-book-collecting-souls-what-street-photography-means-to-me-for-free/

Those ebook provides some very good information of street photography to beginner like me ...

Generally, I like the street photographer Eric Kim style. I learnt a lot of street photography shooting style in his blog, maybe can try some in the near future ...

(Lumix G 14-42mm lenses, 14mm, f/3.5, 1/6sec, multi pattern metering)

Generally, as the photo demonstrated here, the Lumix G1 and Lumix G 14-42mm lenses are really good and the Mega O.I.S is performed very well at least to my standard (very little image blur at handheld 1/2 sec at 17mm as demonstrated in the first photo here).