Scout Images

I have been very quiet on the photographic front lately, so I thought I would share some of the images I have snapped in my day to day wanderings. Nothing special.

Mamak is a Malaysian restaurant in Sydney that I really love (for more information please visit their website), fast paced food that is simple yet delicious. Here are some pictures taken using my Fuji F100fd.

More recently, I had some fisheye fun in the Queen Victoria Building. My Nikon D60 + Tokina AT-X 10-17mm. These were taken more for myself than for anything else, and experiment with zooming whilst shooting, often used with other lenses.

Just thought I would share some of the dodgy photos I took on New Years Eve and some that I took today whilst at Mamak with my baby Fuji F100fd.

I have to admit that I have often underestimated my needs, and NYE 2009 was just another occaision. I was thinking travel light, travel discreetly, so as a result I kept my gear to the smallest, most unassuming kit that I could. This resulted in:

• Nikon D60 – light and unassuming
• Nikkor AF-D 50mm f/1.8 – small and light, BUT manual focus on a D60
• Nikkor AI 135mm f/2.8 – small and light, BUT manual focus and no metering on a D60
• Tokina AT-X 10-17mm fisheye – small and light, BUT manual focus on a D60
• Nikon SB-400
• Nikon ML-L3
• Phottix Duo Cable
• Joby Gorillapod (Thanks Mr Ken)

With this kit, I assumed that any fireworks images would not be a big problem, unless I wanted a longer exposure to get trails (which you would when your friends are doing so). But this was not my largest problem, whilst setting up for the midnight fireworks down at Darling Harbour, a group of young ladies asked us to take a few pictures of them (using their compacts). After the fireworks we took a few more photos for theses ladies, afterwhich we asked if they wanted us to take some photos for them using our cameras (they will be getting their photos soon). This is when I found myself caught short, really short. The AF-less lenses that I had with me were fine up until that point, but for portraiture they proved to be a nightmare, esepecially since my saving grace (the SB-400 on the Phottix Duo Cable) required a hand to hold off camera. In the end I had to borrow my mates 18-200 and eventually comandeer his D90 (Sorry Mr Jod).

Here are some of my dodgy, hand held fireworks images (I used the Joby for some of the Ferris Wheel shots).

As I have mentioned earlier, I was at Mamak today and took a few images of what I ate. I have to admit that they make a damn good Roti, and I am addicted to their Sambal. These were taken with my now found again Fuji F100fd.

After a long period of debate (refer here) I have finally added a fisheye to my kit bag. It has not been smooth sailing, with the process of obtaining this lens having been a bit of a rollercoaster ride in itself (with a DOA lens and a bit of wait before a replacement lens could be sourced), however I am glad to be able to say that I am very happy with my purchase and have to send a huge thank you the folks at HK Supplies who have made what could have been a stressful situation somewhat easiser.

As the title suggest, I am now the proud owner of a Tokina AT-X 10-17mm f/3.5-4.5 Fisheye…the only zoom fisheye available (the Pentax 10-17mm is essentially the same lens in a different shell). This lens gets me out of trouble with my film/DX digital kit as it is fishy on both formats.

I just wanted to share some of my first pictures with this lens, taken a few days ago, along with a few from the Sony Cybershot Twilight Cruise event, where the TX-1 and the WX-1 was introduced to retailers in the Sydney region. Unfortunately I do not have any sample images from these cameras.