J - A letter that's worth 8 points on Scrabble. But now we have so many popular singers who are using the letter J in one way or another. Here's Agent J. I can almost hear this song each time I drive (cos of 933). And it's obvious which cola company sponsored her.
Lens Review - El Cheapo Telephoto shootout 1 - 300mm Indoors
0 comments Posted by Mastermind at 9:45 pmVersus
Minolta 75-300mm f4.5 - 5.6 (latest version)
Ok, so I had the Minolta lens for quite a while and it did serve me well over the year with my Alpha. It was the first lens I picked up after getting the Alpha kit last year. A second hand but in brand new condition lens. Now I have another similar lens that costs twice as much second hand compared to the Minolta version but still cheap because the Minolta one was unbelievably cheap.
The Sigma I got may not be the latest version with the digital coating and macro at 200-300mm but it's still quite a performer on my Alpha. And here's the photos for comparing the two lens
The not so controlled home tests with the classic undergrad text, the Feynman lecture series collectible hardcover with tips on problems version.
At this point, I noticed that the focusing speed and accuracy of the Sigma is much better than the Minolta at low light. The f8.0 shots that I got from the Minolta were soft and so I retook them.
All shots were taken indoor with built-in flash with no post-processing done to the raw files. Care was not taken to ensure that other factors are controlled. I don't pretend that I'm doing an objective assessment of the lens. I'm just trying to figure out with lens to keep and at the same time share some of my findings here.
Let's face it, we get telephoto lens mostly for the telephoto range and would use it at 300mm more than the 70/75mm end. That's why I only see what the lens are capable of at 300mm. Its performance at 300mm is the deciding factor in which to keep.
Comparing the 100% crops. There isn't much difference in both lens at 300mm. The Sigma may have the edge in image quality that I have in these batch of shots but I have another batch that may proof otherwise. For this round, I guess Sigma is the clear winner, especially in the focusing speed and accuracy part. I just don't understand why the Sigma could focus on the spot most of the time without the flash assist strobes while the Minolta tend to miss a bit even with the flash assist strobes on. But I know the Minolta is a good performer outdoors, the situation where we use such lens most of the time so it's not that bad but clearly Sigma is better in this aspect.
Hopefully I will have the time to share my 2nd batch of test photos...
Only with in-body stabilization can you spend about a $120 on a el cheapo telephoto lens with stabilization...
One thing that you can't predict is my random sickness... it strikes whenever I have some time to relax... grrr.... and now people wonder why I'm such a 'workaholic'. It keeps me healthy...
One thing that you can predict is that I will sooner or later get my hands on the A700, the advanced amatuer camera to upgrade my A100. Yippee.. Must wait for price drop next year though.. Sigh... but at the rate that I'm working, I get less and less chance to use it for taking photos as my hobby. Though I do get lots of chance to use it for covering of school events.
Meanwhile, some more snapshots.
First, a photo of regular visitors to this web space. Guess this will cheer up superchatty a lot.
The Shrek sisters...
The "I will drop dead before I get caught with these green horns ears"
The magic show
The balloon show
It's amazing to come out with so many stuff in such a short period of time. Though I think we are trying to do too many things with our students nowadays that they, and hence us too, get very very busy.
Rainbow connection always remind me of Kermit the Frog... hmm....
Eager to leave some evidence behind
Hmm... fringe touching eyes.. must tie up in term 4 liao or trim it away altogether
Chinese, English host... reading from paper
The 'Santa Clauses' of the day
Ms Leong took my camera for a 'spin' while I was busy with stuff like examinations meeting (sigh... teacher's day still got so many meetings). So please pardon the out of focus shots... Should have left it in auto mode to make it easier for her.
What's left of the fruit cake
Pussies.. that so man..
3L
Happy day for students, a break from EOY exams for year 4s
Year 5 busy with work
For once I did not take most of the photos in my camera... simply not free to take photos that day... a well deserved break for me.. if I manage to find time to take one that is.. sigh...
Loads of photos to blog, and I might have some time to blog too now that we are having our much deserved term break. Yippee... Less words, more pictures.
Every event, no matter big or small, will definitely have a photo of super chatty here
The 5 beauties of year 5 students
The guy with only 3 roses, not enough for the 5 beauties. No wonder he looks so sad
Have a heart
5 Beauties plus 小宝 and Mr Fortunate
Eh, how come some students didn't tie their long hair to the back arh... don't you know about the school rules.. 
Maybe we could get student hosts for Teacher's day dinner in the future... hmm...
Many generations of education
More to come soon
Singapore!
2 examples.
Some observations from a fellow blogger when he read the local english newspaper he dubbed "Good News Times" on the topic of inflation. Actual statistics - The poor getting poorer and the rich still getting richer. Singapore styled statistics - The rate of poor getting poorer is not so much greater than the rate of the rich getting richer. Good news indeed.For the lowest quintile, the compounded price increase from Jan 2004 to June 2007 was 6.7%. On the other hand, for the highest quintile, compounded price increases amounted to 1.3% over the same period.
Readers may recall that the bottom 10% of households in the period 2000 - 2005 had virtually no income, and the next 10% saw household income fall 19.7%. See details in the article Income inequality widens markedly.
During that same 5-year period, the top decile (i.e. the top 10% block) saw their household income increase 14.8%, and the next richest decile gained 12.5%.Yet these are the ones who hardly saw inflation affect them.
You would think, wouldn't you, that a more appropriate headline and lead sentence would be something like "Bottom income groups suffer markedly more inflation than top ones"? Because really, that's what the table as a whole shows, doesn't it?
Instead the Good News Times squints into the 0.4 difference between the figures "1.1" and "0.7" on the last row of numbers in order to proclaim "Hail the benevolent king!"
Second case from our local political website
Minister: Lim Hng Kiang
Headline: GST’s up but not hawker prices
Paper: The Straits Times, Wednesday, 29 August 2007
Most hawkers have not raised their prices despite the 2% GST increased on 1 July 2007, said Trade and Industry Minister Lim Hng Kiang.
The Department of Statistics surveyed 1,300 hawkers across the country and found that more than nine in 10 did not raise prices after the GST hike. Most businesses have not used the tax increase as an excuse to raise prices, said Mr Lim.
I noticed that quite a few hawkers increased their price before the GST hike while other raise prices by reducing the quality and quantity of their products, i.e. 1 less prawn for your hokkien mee etc. What about subsequent price increase in the future partly due to GST hike? And the issue of price increased by more than 2% after GST hike?
There are many ways to make use of statistics. These are just 2 simple examples.
According to this guy's theory, I jumped the gun in today's moral lesson.
Basically, when we make a decision when faced with a moral dilemma, we make one based on one of the reasoning above. Did we do the 'right' thing to avoid punishment and receive rewards? Did we do so to maintain a certain 'image' or because of rules and regulations? Did we do it to make the world a better place for everyone. Kohlberg's theory is that you can't jump ahead and attain higher levels without sorting out the lower level stuff.
- Level 1 (Pre-Conventional)
- 1. Obedience and punishment orientation
- 2. Self-interest orientation
- ( What's in it for me?)
- Level 2 (Conventional)
- 3. Interpersonal accord and conformity
- ( The good boy/good girl attitude)
- 4. Authority and social-order maintaining orientation
- ( Law and order morality)
- Level 3 (Post-Conventional)
- 5. Social contract orientation
- 6. Universal ethical principles
But that's social science. No theory is 100% in social science and depending on the era, they tend to say very different thing. After all, the society is changing, so is the science of society. The beauty of Physics is, even if Newton was proven to be wrong in his idea of dynamics and gravity, but we still apply them in modern physics calculations because it is always a good approximation. To send a man to the moon, all we need is Newton's physics.
Enough of crap, my nose is clearing, after getting blocked for 1/2 a day due to the foul air in this 15th day of the 7th month in the lunar calendar. I shall rest...
So, Keely lost and I thought I saw some familiar faces in the audience area yesterday. Wonder what happens when that boy, Shaun?, grows up and his voice under goes some expected changes. It's the end of another season of money spinning youth attention grabbing event by mediacorp.
Anyway, here's the prep work of our own 'superstar' event. Amazingly put up in such a short notice.
Much more work needed in post processing. Guess I'm too busy lately. Maybe will do it end of the year. Maybe will work on something else then.
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