give way to the abandoned

In the last few months, I've been thinking of selling quite a few cameras from my collection. Most are manual focus cameras. So far only two had been sold, Yashica T4 and Yashica Mat 124G. What a coincidence that both are made by Yashica.

Only the Yashica T4D is the auto-focus camera and the reason why I sold it because of its tricky shutter button. Sold it to a girl who also owns a Fuji Tiara. Hopefully the camera will be given a good care and use.

The other Yashica which is a medium format 120 film camera, is still in progress of selling. Only waiting to be taken by the buyer. I'm quite sad to let go this camera especially after looking back at the photos produced by it. All I can say is the square format is unique. And this doesn't apply to my Holga 120CFN. The main reason must be the sharpness of the Yashinon lens. The only things that set me back from using this camera are the manual focus using those big viewfinder which is quite difficult to use under bright sun. Then of course it's heavier than compacts and the broken exposure meter which made me bring another digital camera as a reliable meter than sunny 16 rule.

the best of Yashica Mat 124G

The other cameras that I had considered to sell was Olympus Trip 35 and Nikon FE2. The latter was kept for its being my first SLR and of course the quality of an old Nikon. Meanwhile, the Olympus Trip 35 never got a buyer for quite some times already.

a visit to National Art Gallery (Balai Seni Lukis Negara)

This sculpture can be seen from the main road

 

Art cabin along the road to/from Istana Budaya

 

 

Sculpture on the rear entrance

The front entrance to National Art Gallery

This is my first visit to National Art Gallery at Jln Temerloh in Kuala Lumpur. Known in Bahasa Malaysia as Balai Seni Lukis Negara, it sits just next to Istana Budaya or National Theatre where it functions as a venue for performance arts especially theater, orchestras and etc.

I'm eager to visit because at that time, there's an event ongoing which is the the Art Book Festival. From 1st to 15th December 2011. I've visited on 11th. Nothing much to say about the event, there's a booth for books, a live painters, and some seminars.

 What I'm attracted most is the interior designs of the building and the arts on show. Almost every staircase was decorated with art. Where most people will use the centre spiral walkway to floors, I doubt many people will know about the arts on the staircases.

 

On this visit, I mainly use my Olympus mju II with Fujifilm Pro400H. 

One thing to note, this building seems like old building and not maintained properly on the outside.

on my way back home, typical crawl traffic jam in Kuala Lumpur in weekends

eid-fitr @hometown

Eid-Fitr Holiday - hometown - Holga 120CFN - Kodak Ektacolor 160

Holga July 2011

My latest photo from Holga 120CFN. Shooting past afternoon gave underexposed photos, and how do I forgot that mine have color flash (CF)? Next time I'll use the color flash esp indoors.

Over-thinking!

image from http://uhohdisco.com/blog/2010/07/23/stop-thinking/
 

Most recently, I'm very much curious about my surroundings and foreign matters, histories and conflicts. All fueled by the recent natural disaster (for the case of reading local NZ and JP news) and based on article posted in the internet thru my feeds (RSS on my Google Reader).

However knowing something doesn't always good for us. It is good to know about something but not putting the knowledge into something practical in our life will become useless. Somehow it will help us to be more open minded and contribute to problem solving skills.

As I search in the internet about this, I believe the term to be used is over-thinking. Worst is that you wondering around much of your time thinking about something that is meaningless. This article is very interesting and helps me a lot in understanding the situation. -> 9 Ways To Stop Overthinking Everything

Some of the points discussing about time. If I'm accompanied with other things such as watching movies, television, meeting people or any other activities,  the possibilities that I will over-thinking will be low. That's how my habit stops about a year ago when I'm busy with jobs.

And taking advantage of your over-thinking habits into a project will benefit you a lot.

PJ (Petaling Jaya) Walk around

This is my first time walking inside Petaling Jaya (PJ) New Town Centre. Been there before once but hardly know where it is at that time. Also drove thru this town but never intended to stop. This time I just want to walk around the town knowing it existence and to sees what it's look alike in the weekend's morning (not that early morning but still before noon).

In the centre of the town is the MBPJ Tower built in 1987. From the look of the buildings around, the design is somewhat from the early modernization/urbanization of Kuala Lumpur. I'm quite like the way they built this tower, it sits one floor lower than the surrounding buildings. It's like an exposed underground floor.

Another big office building, PKNS Tower next to PJ Police Station

Evidence of an old spelling on signboard. Kelinik means clinic in English. Modern Malay language spelling is klinik, 'c' in English is spelled as 'k'.

Jabatan Kimia Malaysia (Chemistry Department of Malaysia). Forensic sign also visible on the building.

Rounded corner of Standard Chartered Bank building

Yashica Mat 124G and Yashica T4D

Some readers might be aware that my love for my recently purchased camera was not as much as my other cameras. I want to state here that IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE OPTICS, but more on functionality, ergonomics and user friendliness. Those recently purchased camera namely Yashica Mat 124G and Yashica T4D, have great image quality if everything is perfect from focusing, lighting and exposure. I’ll explain one by one.

Yashica Mat 124G

It’s a TLR camera. Being a TLR camera means bigger than point and shoot (p&s) camera and of course heavier. However it’s still small and lighter than Rolleicord. Image quality was great and mentioned almost everywhere you can found on the internet. I did say that there’s nothing special about the image, I WAS TOTALLY WRONG ABOUT IT. When I examine the image carefully, it was very sharp. However some of the photos were seems to overexposed and bleeding (I’m not sure how or why, but it seems like some of the sharp line is bleeding). Overall the image quality is great. On the ergonomics, this thing is heavier than ordinary compact camera or SLR. Composing a picture with this will require a bit more time and effort than compact camera or SLR. It will also be difficult to look into the viewfinder under bring sun. Mine got a broken meter so at first I did use my SLR to meter first. Then I found a DIY light meter and try to only use it, although the photos came out not pretty much accurate.

My suggestion for this camera is to use it under a controlled environment. Be it in a studio, indoor with enough lights or shaded outdoor portraits. Use it with a tripod and timer or shutter release to make it more stable thus reducing shaking. So far I only use it to capture landscapes and street photos. I never tried portrait which is more suited to the lens range.

Yashica T4D

Marketed as “Fast, sharp and deadly accurate – The Eagle Eye”, this camera never short or surprise. From the tag line, I only agreed with ‘sharp’. Is it deadly accurate? Might be true for the lens but not for the AF system. Being fast is not enough if it’s not focusing correctly. On my first roll, 9 out of 36 photos are usable. Others just focused where it should not be. Even if the centre point got object in it, out of nowhere it was focused at back. Seem like the shutter button late at activating the focus mechanism. Luckily my second roll of film did a bit better with more than half of the photos are usable. Mostly because of far focusing distance, landscape photos. On the bright side, I believe that is the best I can get from T4D. So real, and looks like it came out from a SLR. Other comments include hard-to-press button and loud mechanical-alike noise when pressing any button including the shutter button.

I can only suggest to myself to sell this camera. Learning to get the most out of this camera will take some times. I’ve read on the internet that the shutter button is tricky and you need to half pressed it several times just to make sure it remember the focus point, resulting in better photos of my second roll of film. Taking into account of the bad photos will just add more frustration to me.

2nd outing with Yashica Mat

 

This may be the last outing with my Yashica Mat 124G TLR camera. I will not bring it out on an outing again for certain reasons. The first reason is the physical of the camera. Being big and heavy compared to Holga for instance (since both are medium format camera), it’s tiring and a bit messy when used together with some other cameras which I like to do. Second reason is depends on individuals and the condition of the camera, it’s the image from the camera. I found nothing special about the image other than square format. Maybe I’ve favoured the vignette of the Holga a lot.

So I’ve decided not to use it for fast paced street non-tripod photography. Using it demands patience and perfection. Or maybe I’ll just sell it because I’ll not use it often.

On this outing about a month ago, I’ve walk from Dayabumi Complex – Agro Bank - Textile Museum – Restoran Warisan - Kuala Lumpur Library – Merdeka Square – City Theatre - Masjid Jamek.

Other than Yashica Mat, I also brought Olympus Trip 35 and Holga. 1 rolls of film each on Trip 35 and Holga and 2 rolls on Yashica Mat. This walking route was suggested in DK Eyewitness Travel Guide: Malaysia and Singapore. The route as follows: from cyan dot to red dot (Copyright © 2008 Dorling Kindersley Limited, London)

the rest of the photos