ROBIN WONG

This is a continuation from the previous post, my friends Van and Jojo decided to explore a second cafe and we went to Bricks and Bread which was situated about one LRT station away. We got there just in time for lunch hours, and continued our camera clicking spree attacking the food before devouring them. My friends were focused on getting their best shots for the Fujifim Malaysia contest, but as for me, I just wanted to enjoy the moment, had some good coffee, food and conversations with my friends. It all worked out, what a way to end the week, and the start of this week has been crazy hectic. All images shot with Nikon Z5 and Meike 50mm lens. 

I always allocated some time in the weekends to catch up with my wonderful friends. Me being a freelance photographer, my timetable is quite unpredictable, I can get shoots at any day of the week. Most of my recent jobs have been concentrated on weekdays, which was a good thing, as most of my friends work the normal 9-5 jobs, and the only time they have is in the weekends to hang out. My friends Jojo and Van wanted to explore a few new cafes and join the on-going Fujifilm Malaysia photo contest that requires them to shoot on these specific locations. I merely tagged along for the delicious food, and of course, I brought my camera long for some clicking action. Van actually vlogged this particular session, you can check out his video of us having too much fun with food, coffee and conversations here (click). 

During my recent trip back to Kuching, Borneo during the Chinese New Year festivities earlier this year, I managed to squeeze a bit of time for shutter therapy action. I went out with my friend Kieron Long to the streets of Kuching and had a casual street shooting session. The local folks were really friendly, I got some very nice portraits of Kuching strangers, and you know what, we even got invited to have coffee with them! All that and more in my latest POV style video here (click). I brought home the Pentax K-01 and I thought it was quite a fun camera to use - I love its quirky design, the challenges to operate and oh, the super awesome colors the camera renders! The 40mm pancake that came with the camera was not too shabby either, producing sharp enough results, and the unusual 60mm equivalent focal length was a joy to use. I had an issue, I brought back the wrong charger, not sure how that happened (not even sure how I got two Pentax chargers, since I only have one Pentax camera) and I had limited battery charge left, but it lasted the entire session and I had so much fun, shooting on the streets of Kuching! I know I have been receiving some unreasonable complains about my images showing too many males, well, you know what, here are some females this time. 

If you have been following this space, or my YouTube channel, you would know that I have recently added a Nikon Z5 into my arsenal. I have explained my reasons why I did so, you can find it in my previous blog entry here (click). There was something unusual that happened during the acquisition of that camera. Long story short, I brought the camera home without the charger and battery, a mystery which I have not solved until today. I thought this incident was quite interesting and worth sharing here. 

Blogging was where it all started for me. I started this blog all the way back in 2005, sharing stories and adventures as a university student in Perth, Australia. Little did I know the blog would go this far, as I dived deeper into the world of photography, and it has opened so many doors for me over the years. As I got involved with Olympus on an official capacity, and subsequently left, and then started my YouTube channel, the attention was taken away from the blog. It is no secret that YouTube pays a lot more than blogger, when it comes to ad money, and it has become a sustainable source of income during the dark times of Covid/Lockdown. YouTube was the sole reason I survived the pandemic. It was no coincidence that I poured my heart and soul into growing my channel in the past 4 years, and only recently I have surpassed 75k subscriber count on YouTube, which was no small feat for this Kuching boy. Nevertheless, the blogger in me is yet to give up on blogging!

Most of my friends work normal 9-5 jobs on weekdays, and the only time I get to catch up with them would be in the weekends. A lot of my friends already have their own families and usually are tied down with their commitments, which I can fully understand, family first always, I would have made the same decisions. However, the close friends which remains a few, would always make time to catch up, no matter how busy life gets, and I appreciate them doing so. Last weekend, I had brunch with Jackie and Jaslyn (I think we have been friends for almost 12 years at this point?) and boy oh boy, did we feast! I brought out the Nikon Z5 and 40mm prime just for a few quick shots. It was nice seeing everyone again and hearing individual life stories and dramas. Indeed, real life is more exciting than fiction. 

Insect macro is so fun, and I can spend the entire afternoon hunting for bugs and spiders. Besides the thrill of discovering new insects that I have not seen before; part of the excitement was also experimenting with different lighting alternatives and gear setup to boost magnification. The quickest way to do macro is to get the rather expensive dedicated macro lens, but if you are not shooting macro a lot, and it is not what you do 90% of the time, yet you want to achieve some high magnification shots, there are many options for you to do so. The Olympus M.Zuiko 12-50mm F3.5-6.3 has a dedicated macro function, once enabled can give you about 0.72x (equivalent to 35mm format) magnification, which is quite incredible on its own. I decided to amplify the magnification further by adding extension tubes, and this was quite an interesting trial, with really decent results. The image quality, especially sharpness and flaw controls (spherical aberrations, purple fringing, corner softness, etc) are far from the level of a true macro lens, but on a pure budget standpoint, the images are satisfactory. In my latest YouTube video, I also demonstrated my gear setup which includes wireless flash and all my camera settings, you can find it here (click). 

Summary of gear setup: 

OM System OM-1 with 12-50mm kit lens with Meike Extension Tubes

Olympus FL-50R external flash fired wirelessly, triggered by on camera flash FL-LM2

Softbox attached to the wireless flash, and flash power controlled manually. 

Camera settings: 1/250, F8-11 (adjusted as necessary), ISO200