Test Day

The day had finally came, when I went out for the sole purpose of snapping some photos and testing the features of my new-found gadget in the real world.

First stop was to Botanical Garden, however the weather was not that dry, and I had to keep my camera snuggly in the bag to avoid premature damage ; ) However still managed to get some quick snaps of one of the most shot topics:- floras.

Shame to say, most other pics didn't turn out that well, better stow it away as reference for next upcoming shots ; ) Still got lots to learn and experiment. Shots shown are without postprocessing, however some suffered from major cropping. Still working on getting better composition and framing.

Went to Orchard road after that, the weather improved and its not too sunny as to create harsh lightings. Now comes the time to test the 55-200mm lens to see how it performs in well-lit condition. What I did was, found a comfortable bench on the pavement, and start snapping and whoever that walked in front of me. (as much as practical, of course)

* Snap Snap Snap *

I was actually overwhelmed by the fact that there are so many settings that can be tweaked, which presents limitless possibilities. So many options that can be used to interpret how you see it, what kind of emotion that you want to create from the photos that was taken.

That same evening, the 13th Ngee Ann City National Lion Dance Championship. Time for some low lighting shots. Witnessed something different in this championship, maybe it was due to my ignorance in lion dancing for the past few years. As usual, the routine revolved around the 'lion' getting from one end of the stilts to the other to retrieve an auspicious items, suchas a scroll with greetings/well wishes, and returning with it to the beginning point. However this time around, the stilts changed in terms of heights and combination during the routine. Halfway through a routine, their team member remotely triggered a release, lowering one of the stilts. Another version was with a trigger, the stilt fell to its side. Initially I thought it was an accident, however on backstage, I noticed some other teams trying out their mechanism before their routine. Interesting..