G’day everyone. For some strange reasons our dearest Jason abandoned us temporarily and forced requested me to fill in this awesome place of his for the time being.

I am Robin from robinwong.blogspot.com and I will be crashing here for a bit, also probably trying to steal some of Jason’s limelight away from him right under his nose. Worry not, I am sure he would not mind anyway.

So the question that really bakes the noodles would be: what will I be doing here? Jason did not exactly give me any specific instructions, and basically he asked me to write my usual stuff, like how I would do with my own blog. What I have decided to do originally was to post up entries relating to topics and scopes that Jason has never, and will most probably never post up here. I was supposed to come up with a plan but in the end I was just too freaking lazy I figured out I should just go random and be myself.

In this particular entry, I shall dedicate it specifically on how I got to know Jason, and what horror he has done in my life so far.

We all have been reading this awesome blog for some time now, it has been around for years, and not much of a surprise, it has successfully garnered quite a distinctively respectable reputation. I too, was part of the crowd, and often find his food pictures unbearably tormenting when I was viewing his frequent food entries during lunch time at work, munching away just mere pathetic sandwiches. There were also times when I was not entirely alone, but my colleagues were standing behind me drooling, and somehow we all got hungry again though we had just finished our lunch. This was probably one of the largest sin that Jason has committed, and probably one of the most compelling reasons for many to come back to his blog for more.

One fine day, when I made a spontaneous trip down to Malacca to meet up with a few friends, I bumped into Jason for the first time. It was at the outdoor eatery near MMU, and I went over to his table to say… “Hi Jason, its Robin from robinwong.blogspot.com”. And he replied “Yes, I know.. aren’t you supposed to be in KL?” *gasp… I knew he visited my blog before but little did I know he actually kept track of it until then. And so it began, we kept in touch ever since.

One of the noteworthy traits about Jason is how he has always been persistently nudging me to get a DSLR. It is a known fact that Jason has been progressively improving his skills on camera, and somehow I believe he sees the urge to want everyone to move up the ladder too. He always commented on how I should be using a DSLR instead of a compact (point and shoot) camera, considering my immense interests in photography, and my constant complaints on the restrictions that the compact camera imposed on my pictures. Of course, there was the factor of money-never-enough-to-buy-dslr syndrome, until one day, he cursed my compact camera to die so I can move on and get a proper DSLR.

And my compact camera really died few days after that. I kid you guys not.

At that point of life I knew I could not survive without a camera. Hence the hunt for a replacement was in place, but I was leaning more towards prosumer (higher end point and shoot) cameras. I had my reasons, mainly because I was cashless, and felt inadequate in skills to handle a DSLR. That was when Jason flipped upside down and inside out and spent hours and hours on MSN trying to convince me on getting a DSLR for a few continuous nights in a row. I thought about it, really hard and thorough, but in the end, I decided to just go with a conventional compact camera. I told Jason.. and…

The next thing that happened was.. Jason called me all the way from Malacca and… I got lectured for an hour 20 minutes well it felt like an hour.

I could not get any sleep that night. What a horror !!!

As a consequence, in the end, I got my Ollie. (an Olympus DSLR)

Thanks to Jason, I have progressed much further now in photography having a DSLR in hand. I am still new, but I am learning much quicker than previously. There are many things that I have not mastered in basic photography, but I am steadily improving. There are heaps of “WOW” factor producing pictures from a DSLR, and I guess Jason just wants to share that with everyone.

There would probably be a hundred more things to say about Jason, so many stories too but I think it would be wrong to bore his readers to death. Amongst all the things I have come across with him, that particular phone call that night probably was the most memorable one. Sometimes I still shiver thinking of it.

So people, faithful readers of Jasonmumbles dot com, if you have got something to say about him bad one also can lah please speak up in the comment section. He is away from his blog now, so I believe it would be nice for him to see how he has impacted his readers, even in simple and small ways.

I will be back. Cheers !!

This is my standard kit lens, EF-S 17-85mm F4-5.6 IS USM. A pretty versatile lens, I would say, albeit a little slow but with my Canon Speedlite 580 EXII, it’s not much of a problem.

However, just when I needed it the most for my up-coming “project”, it has to fail on me by giving me this error message. No matter how I clean the contacts, the same error message popped up.

I defintiely have to send it back to Canon Service Center and get it fixed as soon as possible. Still, I doubt they are able to fix it for me before my “project” on October 18 and the Hari Raya public holidays aren’t helping either.

Sighs.

All these crucial “events” have to happen now. F**ked.

Note : The lens fixed in less than five working days! Ha! All is good now.

Desperate time calls for desperate measure.

In order to have enough money to buy an ultra wide angle lens for my Canon EOS 40D before I embark my journey to a foreign land, I resorted to buying lottery.

Numbers bought are 1022, 2201 and 3545.

The numbers are found on a Canon EF-S 10-22mm F3.5-4.5 USM lens, the truly ultra wide angle lens for cameras with a cropped sensor.

The difference of an image at 17mm (with my current lens) and 10mm (with the ultra wide angle lens) is simply huge.

Another example of UWA at 10mm by the photographer Narrowband.

Sighs. Dream on, Jason, dream on.

As most photography freaks would know, getting yourself a dSLR (In my case, it’s a Canon EOS 40D.) is only the beginning of more splurging.

After six months, I finally saved enough to get myself the Canon Speedlite 580 EX II. Yes, the flash gun that could fire up to 13m, according to the technical specification.

It adds extra (a lot of) weight to my already heavy camera but with a flash gun attached, night shots would be much easier. It’s going to take some time to learn how to use it effectively though.

Chong, does my camera still looked small? LOL. Honestly, I still feel it’s small but the weight, is quite a bit.

Three test shot of my Chevrolet 2008 Concept Camaro cum Bumblebee.

Robin introduced to me the Hoya close up filter +4 some time back and I was tempted to get one. With my kit lens minimum focusing distance fixed at 45cm, a close up filter could really close the gap and allow me to focus even closer than before. As I don’t have the budget for a macro lens, a close up filter would be good for the mean time. However, I noticed the sharpness and picture quality have dropped a little. For RM84, I am not complaining.

Focused at 85mm (136mm on full frame) without close up filter.

Focused at 85mm (136mm on full frame) with close up filter.

That aside, again, million thanks to Bryan for allowing me to defer his debt payment and buy my flash gun first.

Yes, that is about it for my camera gadgets, for now. I want to travel, really.

It wasn’t as easy as I thought. Nonetheless, interesting subject. Picture is posted as it is.