Trust Issues

If there’s one thing I really despise in life, it’s empty promises.

Guess I ought to do a better QC on people whom I invite into my social circle.

Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8E vs Nikon Z 70-200mm f/2.8 S

Last year I came across a pretty good trade-in deal at my usual camera store for my 70-200 FL to upgrade to the Z 70-200mm f/2.8 S, so without hesitation I sold off the FL to them as I was more than happy to say goodbye to the FTZ adapter.

Not that the FTZ adapter was underperforming, or that the lens was not up to standard - it’s just that the added length and bulk from the FTZ adapter does make the Z6 slightly unwieldly, and also it does require a bit of a nudge to fit into my bag as well.

So yea, with the new Z lens, my set became leaner, fitting into my bag nicely, and handling was much improved as the overall weight balance and length of the set makes handholding much more comfortable.

I had been very happy and satisfied with my 70-200 FL as it does perform as expected, and I had made over 200,000 clicks on that lens. Until the day I parted with it, it was a phenomenal workhorse lens which I had created countless stunning images with; even more so when coupled with a Z body as front/back focusing issues inherent with DSLRs were no longer a concern.

Hearing that the Z lens performs even better than the FL, I was really looking forward to owning it and putting it through its paces.

However one thing that caught my attention when I first got the lens was that how its performance varied with subject distances; at close distances it performs as I had expected it to - sharp with plenty of details and contrast, whereas at medium to long distances, I find that the FL seemed to have better performance, especially for reproducing minute details.

I thought that it might just that I have not grown into the lens and perhaps I need to change my techniques a bit to get used to it, so I put that aside and just concentrated on using it as much as possible to learn more about its strengths, weaknesses and quirks.

But after 100,000 clicks or so on it, I am quite certain that my lens might have an issue with sharpness - it’s either decentered, or the VR unit is causing motion blur, or a mixture of everything.

Sigh, I should have trusted my gut feeling and exchanged it for another unit when the window was still open.

Guess I’m going to have to pay the service center a visit soon.

Surface Pro 4

I’ve been looking for a solution to get data backup and movie streaming for shoots out of town, as my XPS 15 isn't exactly lightweight to lug around.

And also that I'm kind of lazy to plug and unplug all my peripherals and display cables when I need it for the trip.

My requirements were pretty straightforward - at least 8GB RAM, at least 256GB SSD, at least 1080p display, and if possible, 100% sRGB coverage.

Turns out that Surface Pros do meet that specs, and refurbished Surface Pro 4s are quite a nice bargain now so I snagged one recently.

Being my first Windows tablet, it’s quite an interesting experience per se to try to balance it on my lap when using it with the keypad.

And to be honest I'm pretty impressed with the hardware. The system itself is snappy and responsive, screen is bright enough and covers 100% sRGB, the keypad is very tactile and nice to type on, the body looks and feels polished and I don’t feel insecure about the kickstand at all. The machine itself is perfect for my needs.

But for whatever reason, it feels like a disastrous marriage between good hardware and badly written code - it feels as though the software is bogging the product's greatness down.

There were a few quirks that I had to sort out ever since I got the system.

1: Windows Update kind of needs to be a little smarter in terms of installation. My machine came with an older build of Windows 10 preinstalled, and upon connecting to WiFi for the first time, it just downloaded ALL the updates available and installed them ALL at one shot. I'm pretty sure certain updates require restarts, and certain updates should be installed prior to later ones.. but it was so haphazardous in terms of the order of updates installed that I could not reboot the system halfway while installation/downloading was ongoing. And voila, a couple of cases of corrupted .dll and missing directories emerged.

2: Surface NVMe firmware drivers seem to be bottlenecking the SSD. Yes I don't expect WD Black or Samsung 980 Pro performance, but 300MB/s write speed for a NVMe SSD is just sad. I could live with this speed for my current uses for it, but knowing that the drive could perform better (apparently it’s rated at 1GB/s write speed) just feels frustrating. And nope, never managed to find a fix for this.

3: Ah.. connected standby. Why does it even exist? It felt strange that the battery drain was so bad - even when my machine was shut down about 50% was drained overnight. I went to read about it and found out that connected standby was the culprit, but latest build of Windows removed the option to disable connected standby via registry. I had to use another registry key to permanently disable Sleep mode instead - so now I only have Hibernate and Shut Down options. But the battery drain, while improved, is still there.. perhaps about 5%/day even when shut down?

I really enjoy using the machine, and am really glad that the hardware itself suits my purpose perfectly, but having to work around or find solutions for these software kinks do irritate me every now and then.

Creative Rut

Every now and then I do get into a creative rut, finding the shots I took becoming repetitive and lacking impact.

And once again I find myself in this situation.

There is this urge to create something more interesting, something stunning, something out of this world; yet various limitations kept me going back to my safe zone and opt for non-adventurous shots.

Guess it’s a sign I should take a short break from my paid assignments and just bring my camera out looking for my beloved stray felines.

Nikon Z6 vs Z7 Colors

Most of my assignments shot under the various studios are done with the Z6 + Z6II combo, as the combination of cleaner high ISO images, higher AF sensitivity, and more manageable 24mp file sizes are the more crucial considerations.

However in my personal time (and the occasional odd assignments where high resolution files are needed) I use the Z7 quite frequently.

One thing that has always intrigued me is that the files coming out of the Z7 are richer in color and easier to post process to my taste, as compared to the Z6/Z6II, which usually have a hint of quirky magenta/red tint that I would have to remove.

Not that the Z6/Z6II are slouches; it’s just that I just have a much easier time dealing with the colors of the Z7 files.

While I know that they use totally different sensors, it’s still interesting that even within the same generation of cameras and boasting the same CPUs, the images produced are quite distinctly different.

The Hunt for the Elusive Garlic Chilli Sauce

If there's one craving that I am unable to satisfy, it's having proper garlic chilli sauce to go with my fries.

You know, the tasty spicy sauce that you get for free in SG's McDonald's?

Yea, that sauce.

I’ve tried purchasing various bottles of what are labeled as “Garlic Chilli Sauce”, but none of them seems to hit the correct notes for me - be it the viscosity, or the spiciness, or the acidity, or a combination of any of the factors.

If any importers are reading this, please be a pal and bring in the SinSin sauces at an affordable price. You'll have my eternal gratitude.

Disappearance of an Apple Pie Store

Been talking about apple pies recently which led to me having a craving for it over the past few days.

Thought that since I would be passing by Kita-Senju today, I'd drop by this apple pie store along the sweets corner of Lumine. And having a 10% off promotion for card holders meant that the idea was only more enticing.

Hurried to the corner after work and wandered to where the store is supposed to be.

Weird.

No apple pies.

Now this was not a shop I frequent very often - i’ve perhaps bought from it 5 times or so in total.

Did I remember its location wrongly?

Circled around the entire sweets section a couple of times, and am pretty sure that it was the right spot.

Alas, I went up to the counter and asked the staff what happened to the apple pies.

And the devastating news was delivered to me - apparently it was a sister brand, and they stopped selling the apple pies a year ago.

Sigh.

Uniqueness of AF-S 105mm f/1.4E

I have to admit, I have not been using this lens as often as I should be, but whenever I do, the images produced have a unique look and rendering to it that I cannot quite put into words.

It’s not to say that the Z 70-200mm f/2.8 (or my previous AF-S 70-200mm f/2.8E for that matter) are slouches; but the 105mm f/1.4 just have this little magic in it that translates very well into the images produced.

Guess I really ought to push myself to bring it out more often eh..

Baby Steps (Or Rather, Handprints?)

So after a few months of rolling around, a couple of weeks of sliding backwards, the little human has started inching forward today on all fours.

Really interesting to observe her movements and actions.

Nikon Z 70-200mm f/2.8 S VR - Occasional Rare Glitch/Issue

Last October, I traded in my 70-200mm f/2.8E and FTZ adapter for this lens, and have been happy with its performance - it’s as sharp or sharper than my E lens, but with better bokeh rendering.

However last December, during one of my assignments, I had encountered a weird/rare glitch, where my image in the finder would be jumping all over the place, as though the VR system was having issues.

But after a couple power off/on cycles and zooming the lens, the issue seem to have disappeared and I continued shooting as usual.

While I can’t force a reproduction of this issue, it seems to pop up every now and then (say, on average once per 5000 shots or so?), usually when my lens is set to 70mm when I boot up the camera.

Just wanted to put this out here to see if anyone has encountered similar issues.

Keysticks + Gamepad for Image Culling

A while ago I had this idea about using my gamepad for image culling.

And after experimenting with it with various software, I have to say I am really pleased that it works really well, and has sped up my work flow quite a bit!

The key-mapping software I am using is called Keysticks, a free open-source software, and am coupling it with my Xbox One wireless controller.

My current layout is like this:

• D-pad mimics the directional arrow keys

• Right joystick mimics the mouse cursor movement

• "A" button for 1-star rating

• "B" button for 0-star rating

• "X" button for 5-star rating

• "Y" button for "Hand" tool

• Right trigger for mouse double-click

• Right shoulder button for mouse single-click

• Left trigger for mouse scroll-up

• Left shoulder button for mouse scroll-down

And my workflow for culling is as such:

• After ingesting the files into Capture One Pro, first I press "Y" to make sure the hand tool is selected

• As I go through the images using the D-pad, I use the joystick to move my mouse cursor to roughly where I want to check for critical focus. A tap of the right trigger button will zoom in to 100% at the mouse location, and another tap would send it back to fit screen mode, making it easy to quickly zoom in and out to check critical focus.

• In the first round of image culling, I tag the images that have misfocused shots/blur shots/closed eyes with 1-star rating by tapping the "A" button. In the event I accidentally tag something wrongly, I cancel it using the "B" button (0-star rating).

• These 1-star rating images are moved to a separate folder, and I go through the remaining images in the original folder to select images I want to post process. This is done by using the "X" button to give them 5-star ratings, and cancelling accidental tags with the "B" button as well.

• If I need to check on some small details around the image (without the need for 100% zoom), I can do so with the left trigger button and left shoulder button (which mimics mouse scroll functions), and panning around can be done by pressing and holding the right shoulder button and moving the joystick.

• And finally by filtering to only display the 5-star rated images, I then proceed back to my keyboard and mouse for processing the images (yea I know I know..am just not a huge fan of pen tablets)

Using the gamepad to do the culling is an enjoyable relaxing experience so to speak, as I can literally lay back with a bad posture on my chair while going through the images.

I really want to give a shoutout to Keysticks for the wonderful software!

Now I wonder if a portable version that could run off a USB drive without any installation could be developed......

Nikon Z System Option to Leave d8 Settings On with Strobes

I had been using a D800 + a Z6 for my assignments for a while now, but when the D800 decided to have an early retirement on its own earlier this year (read mirror box started to fail after 8 years of service), I have then since moved on to the Z-bodies completely.

A pair of Z6’s accompany me for most of my shoots, with a Z7 joining in the fray when high resolution images are required.

To be honest I am really pleased with my current set-up. The speed of the cameras (thanks to the XQD/CFexpress cards), live view exposure previews, and autofocus accuracy have all improved my shooting efficiency and workflow.

But there’s just one issue that bugs me a little while using it in the field - the custom setting d8 (Apply Settings to Live View) is automatically turned off when an active TTL-enabled flash is detected in the hotshoe. This is useful when using studio strobes since we’re stopping down the lens and shooting with settings such that ambient light does not affect the images, but when out on location shoots, this automatic turning off of the d8 option makes it very hard to use flashes in conjunction with ambient light.

An example would be a heavily backlit scene. I would usually dial in my exposure for ambient atmosphere, then add the flash as fill light. However the moment the flash is switched on, d8 will be automatically turned off, and I can no longer preview the ambient exposure that I set. Furthermore, at times the automatic brightness adjustments will cause my subject to be so dark that, even the autofocus system starts to get wonky.

If someone from Nikon is reading this, I just hope that you could do a quick firmware upgrade to have 3 options for d8 (On, Off, Auto), with Auto being the current situation whereby a detected TTL flash will turn d8 off, and On and Off options will be persistent settings regardless if a flash was attached or not. This would be really helpful for many of us!

Lifelong Learning

It had been a crazy rollercoaster month with almost no breathing space for me, and finally I could manage some down time here to rejuvenate and catch up with every one around me.

So yesterday I met up with an ex-student of mine for coffee, and one of the topics that we were talking about was career choices.

I told her about my story - my initial plans for a career in science, how participating in the JET program widened my horizons, and the path that I am taking now.

In hindsight, I guess I had never told this in depth to any of my students before, so she was pretty surprised at my thought process, and also at the fact that I was influenced and changed during the time I had spent in the small city where I taught.

I also shared with her how much I was learning from the students from my time spent as an educator, and till this day I am still very grateful to the many people whom I had met and made connections with.

To be honest when I was first tasked to teach them English, I was quite worried if I would in fact be of any help to them. But under the guidance of the veteran teachers I slowly came to understand how to best help the students out in their English education.

And as I found out that I was learning so much from the students just by listening to their experiences, I realized that I could bring more to the table by sharing my own experiences and thoughts as well, so as much as I could, I tried to chat and have discussions that are not academically related with them as well.

If any of my ex-students is/are reading this, I hope I somehow manage to do a good job hahaha. (Or at least I hope I inspired something in you!)

I believe that education is a lifelong process, and we never stop learning and discovering new ideas. By sharing what you know, you would also discover what you do not know, and that would definitely help you mature and grow into a better person.

EIZO CS2410 Thoughts

While I have been using an software color calibrated displays for a long time now, I have been wanting to upgrade to a color accurate monitor that can be hardware calibrated, but had to put it off till we moved to somewhere more permanent. And after moving in to our new place in the late ‘19, COVID reared its ugly head and it was really difficult to justify a purchase as we tightened our belts.

But, ironic as it is, being at home pretty much the whole time due to COVID got me thinking about the purchase of a display again, as I spend more time in front of the PC reprocessing older images that I had previously archived (that's a story for another day), and some new assignments that I am receiving would receive a nice productivity boost from having more real estate for viewing.

And after a month of deliberation with myself, I went on ahead and purchased my first EIZO display - the basic CS2410 sRGB model. While not as slim or light as the wife's BenQ GW2480T (which she also recently purchased for working from home, and is absolutely awesome for its intended purpose and price-performance ratio), setting it up alone was not much of a trouble and within several minutes the display was hooked up to my XPS15 and running.

The build is solid - no rough edges, the base plate locks into place intuitively, all the tilt/height adjustment/pivot actions are smooth, and the base plate swivels around easily. And having an extra 11% of vertical real estate is simply fantastic.

Linked up my Spyder 5 calibration unit next, ran the calibration software Color Navigator 7, compared the calibrated CS2410 and my XPS15's display side by side, and it confirmed what I had been suspecting for a while - my XPS15's display (4K touch version) does have a slight reddish tint to it, even if I tried setting the white point to a higher 7000K rather than D65.

The common consensus seem to agree that the older Spyder units (or Spyder units in general?) are not good at calibrating wide gamut white-LED displays, and perhaps that is the cause of my red tint? I guess I might pick up an i1 Display Pro unit some time down the road..?

Well, at least now that my suspicions are confirmed and I know that my eyes were not playing tricks with me, I have shifted all color sensitive work to the CS2410, which is really a breeze to work with as I no longer have to fight with the red tint (cheers!) or glare from the windows (double cheers!).

Short Local Trip

Took a little trip out of town to the suburbs last weekend for some much needed break from the city.

Stayed in a traditional inn (ryokan) for the first night there. I can't really remember when was the last time we stayed at a ryokan. I'm guessing 4 years ago?

Absolutely wonderful ryokan we had chosen.

When we reserved our room earlier last week, I kind of just left a note at the memo column indicating that I do not take meat or fish dishes, so if possible it would be great if they could remove the meat and fish from my meals and perhaps just replace them with some more vegetables. Never did I expect that they went all out to arrange a special menu for me entirely, matching the normal menu one-for-one as much as possible.

And the meals were absolutely delicious.

The ryokan was not too crowded when we were there too, which I assume was partly due to the off-peak timing and partly because of COVID, so I could take my own sweet time enjoying and relaxing in the onsen - once before dinner, once after dinner, once after breakfast.

Spent the second day (and the third day) with our relatives living in that area, and crashed at their place for the second night. Our relatives are a cheerful bunch, and take things slow and easy with optimism. Really wonderful time spent there with them. Kind of felt so much more positive about things just being around them.

Also, I last met their cat, who was adopted from my ex-vice principal, 5 years ago when he just joined their family. He's much bigger now, and is still such a friendly fluffball. Greeted us in the morning, played with us, showed us his tummy for belly rubs..and never once did he bite or claw us. What a stark difference from the furball I have at home - I am sure to get bitten at least once a day. I'm guessing (and hoping) this is her way of showing affection to us?

Though there is one little issue with their cat - seems like he is wary of big black cameras. The moment I took out my camera he started running away. Sigh. Could only manage to take a handful of shots of him.

Anyway, it is grape season over there now, and my love for shine muscats could not be contained. That juiciness. That gentle grape flavors. That sweet, delicious nectar exploding in the mouth. Totally awesome. I cannot count how many shine muscats I had consumed in my time over there. And that's not including the 3 extra bunches we bought and brought back to Tokyo.

We left on the evening of our third day there, feeling totally revitalized, and stuffed as well from all the eating.

All in all, wonderful and fulfilling trip.

Sold Off My Sigma 35mm f/1.4 Art Lens

Just very recently I had sold off my F-mount Sigma 35mm f/1.4 Art lens.

This lens holds a special place in my heart, so it was really quite sentimental to have to let it go.

Let me start by sharing a little background story here.

Some time back in December 2012, when I just started my first full-time work on campus, I decided that I would splurge on a lens using my paycheck. I had only two prime lenses at that time - the Nikon AF 35mm f/2D and the Nikon AF 50mm f/1.8D, and both were fantastic lenses coupled with the D700 that I was using.

But alas, the lure of the f/1.4 was huge, and since I vastly preferred the 35mm field of view then, I decided to go ahead and upgrade my 35mm lens to a f/1.4 beast.

My chain of thoughts was pretty simple at that time. Nikon only has two 35mm f/1.4 lenses in production then, and I did not want to deal with manual focus, so the logical upgrade path from the AF 35mm f/2D was to the AF-S 35mm f/1.4G.

Headed down to this local store (in Singapore), which was highly recommended by my other photographer friends, and asked if I could have a look at the AF-S 35mm f/1.4G. Tested it out for a while in the shop, and found that while it has a generally pleasing rendering to it, it felt quite soft at f/1.4, and its AF speed was nothing to write home about as well.

I chatted with the staff attending to me regarding my concerns, and asked about the price. And although the price that was quoted to me was the best in town at that time, it still felt pretty steep. Told him that I might need a couple of days to consider, and would get back to him again.

Slept on the thought for a few days, and then went back to the shop. While I could deal with the slight softness since it is part of the lens' rendering character and adds to the overall artistry, I wanted to make sure that the AF could at least keep up with some of my subjects (the fluffy four-legged ones), so I intended to do a more rigorous test on the AF in the shop and would decide on my purchase based on that.

Once again I asked for the demo copy of the AF-S 35mm f/1.4G, played around with it in the shop, trying to finalize my decision on whether to go ahead with the purchase or not.

But what happened next was definitely fate playing its cards.

The same staff who attended to me previously told me that Sigma had recently launched a new series of lenses (their Global Vision lenses), and one of it is a 35mm f/1.4, the first in the Art line. They happened to receive a demo set earlier that day, and he mentioned that it was pretty highly rated by people who have already been testing or using it, so asked me if I wanted to give it a try as well.

Now prior to this, the only fling I had with Sigma lenses was a brief 15-minute encounter - I was trying to get a normal-range DX zoom lens in the past, and was deciding between the Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 or the Sigma 17-70mm f/2.8-4 OS, but among the 3 copies of Sigma I had tested, all of them had focusing issues (jittery AF/back and front focusing), so went with Tamron at that time.

That is to say I did not exactly have the best impression of Sigma lenses then.

So even when he recommended the lens, I was still pretty wary given my prior fling with Sigma. Mounted the lens onto my camera, took a couple of shots, and immediately I forgave every single AF mishap that happened in the past

The lens was impressive - sharp even wide open at the focal plane, with a pleasing rendering as well. The AF was accurate and snappy too, especially when compared with the AF-S 35mm f/1.4G.

I think how I felt must have shown on my face, as he next told me that this lens was actually so popular that there was a long line of backorders for it. I asked for the price, and the price quoted was exactly half (ok, maybe take and give $10) of what the Nikkor cost.

It was a simple decision then - I told him to put my name on the list too.

So fast forward a month, I received a phone call from him, and went down to collect my shiny new lens. Mounted it on my camera again, and felt the same excitement as the previous time as I played back the test images on the back of the camera.

Since then, the lens had been more or less glued to my D700, used in my travels, landscape shots with friends, family events, chasing after the furry creatures at home, etc.

I have made numerous of my favorite shots with this lens.

And tons of memories.

Even though I had added several other lenses to my arsenal in the years to come, this Sigma lens was still the lens I go to most of the time, part of it being that it was the widest prime I had and gave me the most flexibility and versatility.

But alas, after I started working as a staff photographer with a studio, the pace and constraints of most of my shoots meant that a 35mm/85mm prime pair set up was not feasible, and a standard zoom was required.

I got a Sigma 24-105mm f/4 Art as my workhorse standard zoom (this will be a story for another day), and together with my telephoto zoom (was using the AF-S 70-200mm f/4G, before upgrading to the lovely AF-S 70-200mm f/2.8E) I was pretty much set for work.

With that, my 35mm started seeing less time outside the dry cabinet, as I only used it on my off days, but changes in my preferences and the presence of my workhorse zoom lens did affect the use of my equipment.

If I wanted to take landscapes, the Sigma 24-105mm f/4 covers that ground pretty well, since it is going to be stopped down anyway.

My 50mm/60mm lenses saw more action as my tastes in environmental portraits of my cats have also shifted a bit more towards the telephoto side, with the added advantage of being smaller and lighter too. The 35mm was only used when I wanted to include a lot of environmental elements into my cat portraits, which to be honest, did not happen very often.

I tried to make sure that I took the lens out every once in a while to give it a little workout, and even though every time I was still (and still am) impressed by the qualities of the images it produces, my tastes shifting towards the telephoto end does make me find myself losing touch with the 35mm focal length, and unable to frame and compose elements properly at this focal length..

With that in mind, I started dabbling with the idea of letting the lens go.

Sat on that thought for a good 5 months or so.

Thought very hard of finding a way to incorporate it into my workflow.

But it just was not feasible.

Pragmatically I started thinking of what kind of shots I would no longer be able to take, or could not be covered by other lenses. While using other lenses did not produce identical images, I did realize only a small amount of shots were unique to this lens, such as being able to do close-ups at f/1.4, which did not account for much of my photos.

With that in mind, I finally came to the heartbreaking decision to let it go.

It was not that it was a bad lens. It was a good lens. A damn good one in fact.

And it deserved better than just sitting inside my dry cabinet.

Gave it a nice last round of cleaning, packed it up, and brought it down to a used camera store downtown.

Told the receptionist that I was looking to sell the lens, and placed it on the table while they prepared the paperwork for me.

As I started filling out the paperwork, the gentleman at the reception put on his gloves, and gently placed the lens on a felt-covered tray, and told me that he would be bringing the lens to the back of the store for condition checks and testing.

And that was the last time I ever saw that lens.

After about 15 minutes or so, he came back out with only a little slip of paper indicating the results of the screening, with its rated condition and buyback price.

I agreed and signed on the slip, took the payment, and left the store.

If there was one regret, it was that I wished I could give it a proper goodbye - I wanted to at least take a snapshot of it one last time on my smartphone before it got scurried away into the back.

Dear lens, thank you so much for all the memories you have created for me, with me.

Wherever you are now, I hope you are getting your opportunities to once again create gorgeous images.

Starting a New Scribbling Spot

I have another spot to scribble down thoughts and stuff, but recently due to backend PHP errors and what not it is getting really frustrating, especially more so since I do not have direct admin control (am just leasing a bit of storage and bandwidth from a friend who owns the account).

Decided since my gallery is now at Squarespace I might as well look into the blogging tools available here and see if it is feasible to consolidate everything over here at Squarespace instead.

So, without further ado, hello world.