Today 2 of my classes asked if there's anything wrong with me. Guess I became a bit more cranky and crappy when I'm tired... Well, I just gotta stay awake and be energetic for my class right? Otherwise I might students might fall asleep. Zzzzzz...

Think I'll give myself a deserved rest tonight and start work only tomorrow. There's such a big pile of late homework to grade plus so many other stuff to do that now I feel like my students... lol.. working so hard and no time for anything at all. Well... at least I don't have to take any examinations at the end of the day (until I start my course that is... sigh...)

Oh.. yeah.. here's some more pretty pretty pictures...

No nice sunrise pics there this time round cos of the clouds.. so took some nice sky photos instead in the morning

Xiaobudian brushing her teeth in the morning


That's her having breakfast...


The arrival of yuxin and parents..


Exploring the island. The 2nd pic here looks like some model shoot kind of expression you see from magazines right.. cute...

Father and daughter


It's easy to get acquainted with Sultan Shoal...

Oh.. catch xiaobudian on TV this coming Tuesday in either Channel 8 or Channel U (can't recall which) as her house was chosen to be in some variety show about doing stuff yourself.. She managed to charm her way into TV and I think the commercial includes footage of her too. Not that I have seen it myself cos it's like a decade since I last watch TV regularly? Internet RULEZ, someone record it and put it to youtube? lol..

Managed to finish tonight's pile of marking load earlier than expected so resume normal service of dishing out random photos taken @ Sultan Shoal. Still at day 1 pics but this time round it's those close-ups and macro photos. Looking at the tiny world at a different angle / size.




This is literally some grass.. yes, when you have a camera with telephoto lens attached with a close-up lens you would want to walk around looking for some grass to take pictures of too. Taken with the alpha but the H1 would be better in image quality when it comes to macro due to the smaller sensor size but the difficult in getting the H1 in focus is much much higher especially when its the great outdoors




The all so common army of red flowers that can be found everywhere in Singapore. (Just hope that someone wouldn't come and tell me that those aren't flowers but leaves pretending to be flowers) I'm so hopeless when it comes to biology, especially with the part about naming them, latin or not.


Tiny tiny flower... a bit soft because it's so hard to get the whole flower within focus distance




The all so common household lizards... this one is baby size so it's willing to pose for a few shots for me.




Photos like this won't be complete without a couple of 100% crop to show you the eyes of that lizard and the amazing details captured. I can imagine girls complaining about these photos again. Ah well, this will be great for biology class right?

There you have it, some very ordinary stuff taken with my ordinary camera with the ordinary Minolta 75-300 mm f4.5 - 5.6 lens with the Sony M3358 close up lens with a 55mm to 58mm step up filter.

Time for bed...

Begin Function (Random Rant)

Having 6 (going to 7 soon) assignments/practicals/class work etc to grade this week. 3 chapters to prepare for lesson including the year 5 Work Energy Power lecture/tutorial notes and tons of administration work such as level camp stuff, CHAOs competition, work review blah blah to do this week...

Have no choice but to bring work home...

But nothing perks up my night when I mark something like this.

Question: Describe how is the sound heard affected by the change in (i) frequency and (ii) amplitude?
Answer: (i) The frequency affects the pitch of the sound and (ii) the amplitude affects the loudness of the sound.

Technically correct answers but not so relevant in Physics context. Just like the joke about a helicopter lost in a fog and asked someone in the building where is he. The guy answered "You are here" and the pilot knew exactly where he was.

End Task (Random rant)

Photos of the lens taken from www.dyxum.com

Easily the most expensive piece of lens bought for my camera and only my second brand new lens (after the Sony kit lens), I got this for a clearance price that is well below the 4 figure mark which is remarkable. Reason why it is so cheap?

Tamron - SP AF 70-200 F2.8 Di LD IF MACRO

Because they have a new lens announced.

Now back to this mini review of my new baby. In terms of features, it has a non-removable tripod collar, focus limiter on top of what you can read from the title, fast constant f2.8 range and the low dispersion glass to reduce those fringes. But the important thing about using such a heavy and big lens (as heavy as the Sony 70-200 f2.8 SSM) is that the quality must be good at f2.8 otherwise I'm better off with my Minolta 70-210 f4.0 beercan. So... I brought this rock to Sultan Shoal and had some time to play with it both wide open and stopped down. Results of this lens when stopped down to f4.0 compares favourably with the beercan which is expected.

So I used this piece of glass and took some wide open shots with it and that's what I'm sharing.


First, I have my longest serving model, xiaobudian in this shot @ 210mm f2.8

I don't like to give much comments about qualities such as sharpness and bokeh because what works for me may not work for someone else. So what's better than putting some samples up here for all to see together with some 100% crop

100% crop of xiaobudian's rainbow tee. With a bit of sharpening

We can still see the texture of the t-shirt's fabric here so details is definitely around wide open. Also, bare in mind that pixel for pixel, if we are looking at 100% crop on your monitor, the entire image will be like 3 times wider and taller (total 9x larger in terms of area) than if you print in equivalent quality. For most purposes, this is sufficient for me. Side note is that one side of xiaobudian's tee was not in focus simply because the depth of field of this lens is in the cm to mm region.


Another wide open shot @ 150mm f2.8

100% crop on one eye with a bit of sharpening

Old folks are great for photographing simply because their life experience can be found written on their faces. In this shot, one of her eye was out of focus if you look at it at 100%. This is the one in focus. Judge for yourself if you would like the quality of this fast lens.

The greatest challenge any photographer using this lens wide open will be depth of field. And if your focus is not right you will find your image to be a bit "soft". And remember this lens is less than 1/4 of what I would have paid if I bought the Sony 70-200 f2.8 SSM lens. Am I satisfied with it? Of course I will. Will I pay a bit more for the Tamron - SP AF 70-200 F2.8 Di LD IF MACRO? It depends on how much I will value 1.) removable tripod collar, 2.) Digital coating on the lens, 3.) Internal focusing, 4.) Close focusing distance for macro mode and finally, how much better will the image be. But I suspect that any other fast 70-200 lens will not beat this in terms of bang for bucks.

Suddenly got some extra money for retail therapy. So I went out and became VIP members of 3 different stores with a total damage of about $500. Wow! And my Dad came back with his too. So funny...

Hey hey... I do take photos of over-aged kids too okay.. And some of them turned out pretty well too. Time to drool at some of the photos...

Sure catch fisherman

When the wind blows... nice windy feel


Thinker

H1 also got one... wanted to get with the lighthouse filling the other part of the frame but a nice blue one will work too.. too bad don't have polarizer for my H1 else the sky would be prettier

There's a short 15-30mins frame per day to take all these shots

Any earlier and the sky would not be as blue, any later and the setting sun would not be as bright to lit things up nicely


Break time


Happy times


The flattering down to up angle

Okay.. the last one includes a kid as well but who cares... they are cute right...

Almost forgot about this load of photos in my harddisk... Found it while clearing my harddisk of photographs to archive in DVDs cos that trip really took up like 4-5 gb of space coupled with 1 month worth of photos means my harddisk was down to just 3 gb free. A new low.


I remembered a special request for a large version of this from the camwhore/radio DJ of the school

Field cooking for the first time for many of the lower sec students. Supplement meal with packet rice



Faces of students who may not be so eager to have seen me there


Other random photos

Was back at school that day for many different reasons like SJAB, this camp, Chaos and work stuff... so had to split myself into 4 areas so that I can go for my course and chalet during the rest of the holidays.

P.S. Just got a surprised call asking me if I'm free to tutor Physics at night. Apparently some of my students passed my contacts to her. I'm flattered by this act but unfortunately, I'm not able to commit any time to do tutoring because

a) I'm all tied up with lesson preparation (and blogging at times) since I have like year 3, 4 and 5 classes to teach

b) I'm all tied up with exercising because my IPPT is coming (due exactly a month later) and I'm most likely going to fail it but will carry on training everyday nonetheless (weights and running every alternate day) Subsequently I will have to go for training with SAF 2 to 3 times a week in the evenings for 2-3 hrs after I fail my fitness test.

c) I have signed up for part-time Masters in Physics course and I'll have night classes starting next semester so I can't do long term tutoring which is not beneficial to the my students

Looking at my commitments, I can't be a good tutor without sacrificing my other commitments. But I can still provide free tutoring in the school during school hours though. Which reminds me, I know of fellow physics friends who does tutor students and is now teaching in TJC but forgot to pass contacts over. So if anyone is interested can just pop me an email or sms to ask.