I must write about you soon.

Love ST.

This time I’m looking at a Sony DSLR Camera, while they may be quite new on the DSLR block – they did originally adopt their technology from Minolta, so they had a good start. And they sure have made a big splash in the camera scene and have themselves a very devout following (check out the local forum – Alphanatics, which is pretty active).

The model I had a hands-on with is the new Sony SLT-A55, brief specs as below:

• 16.2MP (effective) APS HD CMOS sensor
• Maximum ISO 12,800
• 15-point phase-detection AF array with 3 cross-type AF points
• Electronic viewfinder with 1.15 million dot resolution
• Built-in GPS
• Electronic level in EVF/LCD with pitch/roll indicator
• 10fps continuous shooting rate
• 1080p AVCHD movie mode with continuous AF
• More at the site

It’s a decent looking camera, fits well in the hand and is loaded up with new and fairly innovative technology. Honestly some people might some of the things gimmicky, but for the new shooter it sure saves a lot of studying.

And well looking at the above, those are some pretty loaded specs for something which is an entry level camera. It’s somewhat of a hybrid between a traditional DSLR and the new type of mirrorless cameras like the GF-1 and the EP-2. This makes it small but still gives good autofocus in live-view mode and excellent pictures quality, plus it shoots Full-HD video!

Using it (especially with the Auto+ mode) is really like using a point and shoot camera, but you get MUCH better picture quality and the Auto+ mode is quite intelligent. It can do auto-hdr, multi-frame noise reduction and it knows when to use slow-sync flash in dark situations giving you more ambient light as below:

Ergonomically it’s ok to use but being from a background of mid to high end DSLR models, I need more buttons and dials! I find it a little limiting only having the front dial, but that’s a normal thing for Canon users and users of entry level cams from other brands. What I did love however was the super flexible LCD screen which enables you to easily take pictures from all kinds of funny angles using live-view and shoot accurate videos holding the camera high in the air or down low on the ground.

It allowed me to tilt the LCD parallel to the ground to take a shot like this:

Normally you’d have to use an angle-viewfinder or lie on the floor in some rather compromising position.

Of course in bright light it performs extremely well, I’d like to try it with a sharper prime lens but the kit lens is capable enough for most people. This is shot at midday ISO100 f/6.3 and 1/100s:

And a 100% crop:

The detail really shows in the 16.2 megapixel sensor.

The high ISO performance is actually pretty good, although the noise-reduction can seem a little heavy after ISO400. In saying that though, it’d still produce fine looking prints and I have to say the white balance and colour rendition is really very good. This is an ISO1600 shot (f/5.6 – 1/15s):

And a 100% crop:

All in all it’s a fun camera to use, it’s very easy to get going and the Auto+ makes it easy to get good results straight out of the camera without fiddling with any settings. All of the above pictures are straight from the camera without processing and shot in JPG not RAW.

If you want to see more technical testing info and a complete review you can check here:

Sony SLT Alpha A55 In-depth Review

For more info, videos and specs you can check here:

http://www.sony.com.my/dslr

Established in 1962, this was one of the first memorials to commemorate the brave Australian and British Prisoners of War who died in Sandakan and during the infamous death marches to Ranau during World War II. The memorial also remembers the people of North Borneo who risked their lives to help the POWs.

If you are interested to learn more about the marches you can read up on Wiki here: Sandakan Death Marches. Some pretty gruesome events with very few survivors, visiting the war memorial is a stark reminder of how cruel human beings can be to one another.

There are various flags around the place including British, Australian and Malaysian flags.

When you go in you are shown a video about the events that took place, it’s a very moving documentary and brought my mom to tears. After watching you can then take a walk around the grounds. The memorial is split into 4 gardens – the Australian Garden, the English Garden, the Borneo Garden and the Contemplation Garden & Pool.

There are various placards around the place such as this one, which explains some of the happenings. The motto is “Lest we forget”.

The pool in the contemplation garden.

And a poem/song by Nelson Short, one of the death march survivors.

It was a very misty day and we had a lovely soft view of the Kundasang valley and houses of the native people whilst we sat and thought about what had transpired over 60 years ago.

There were beautiful flowers and tributes all over the war memorial.

After that we headed on down to the famous Kundasang market, which I have to say was rather underwhelming. There was a lot of stuff there, but all the stores basically sold the same stuff and there wasn’t anything super interesting. Mostly fruits, vegetables, honey and flowers with a few other things like the odd cactus.

It was good fresh stuff though grown in the area and there were a few odd local fruits that aren’t found in Peninsular Malaysia. The honey looked tempting, but not being a big honey fan I gave it a miss.

And of course the Malaysian favourite, the king of fruits was seen in abundance.

For the lazy tourist (or for those with no idea how to peel/open the fruits) there was a good selection of pre-prepared, packaged fruit for your consumption. I gave that a miss too, if I’m eating it…I may as well open it myself!

Spotted this young fella too who didn’t look to pleased that his dad had left him to go and buy some groceries.

And well that was the end of that, with a last glimpse of the magnificent peaks of Mount Kinabalu shrouded in clouds we headed off back to civilization. We just made a stop at Menggatal for the most AWESOME beef noodles (ngau chap mee) I’ve ever had in my life. Makes me hungry now thinking about it, argghhh!

Anyway that’s the Sabah 2008 trip wrapped, maybe I can get around to writing about Sri Lanka now!

You can find all the posts from this trip here:

Sabah 2008 Trip – Sandakan and Kota Kinabalu

You can also view the complete set of pictures from this trip here:

Sabah – March 2008

Our guide was friendly with the people who stayed around the area that Jackie inhabited so he asked them to let him know when she came out, sure enough she did, they gave him a call and we headed on over.

First though he had to buy his secret stash, he knew what Jackie really loved..she snubbed bananas and all the other normal things but she has a real addiction for Betel Nut!

Although she’s comfortable around humans it’s still a little scary to know she’s strong enough to rip your arm clean out of its socket and beat you to death with the bloody stump…and well I can’t imagine that being very pleasant!

She seemed pretty chilled when we go there though, which was nice

Of course she was even happier when our guide busted out her version of crack, the betel nuts!

When she wasn’t been fed she was fairly interested in the surroundings, but well she was more interested in when the next nut was coming.

She would patiently wait while the guide peeled the tough outer shell so she could chew out all the good bits.

After a fair dose of nutty goodness she wondering round to the back in a fairly stoned manner and promptly lay down on the floor.

And yes she really did look high, glassy eyes and all!

I think she found the floor a little cold though because after a little while she got up, went inside and grabbed a piece of plywood from the building supplies.

She put that on the floor inside…then lay on that.

Looks comfy eh? She had so many human expressions and gestures…it was quite incredible.

A really amazing experience all in all being so close to such a powerful creature. We wondered back out after that and there were some other smaller monkey around, but after chilling with an Orangutan they just weren’t that interesting.

But well they weren’t so lansi and liked bananas at least..so we had some use for the bunches we brought along.

The trip was drawing to a close…just Kundasang market left to go. And well seen as though it’s March 2010 now I thought I’d better get these posts finished before 3 years passes since the trip!

Blogging about it kinda makes me miss the place, that’s why I prefer to write much later too…brings back different feelings and memories rather than writing about a place immediately after getting back.

Also I still haven’t blogged about Sri Lanka…so I need to get these posts done first!

You can find all the posts from this trip here:

Sabah 2008 Trip – Sandakan and Kota Kinabalu

At the time the two contenders were the Canon PowerShot G10 vs Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX3 (LX-3) which I compared in the linked post.

Myhorng was in the same situation, he had the Fuji F31fd previously and had just bought the G10, which gave me a good chance to test it out.

I decided to get the LX-3 as it was smaller than the G10…in the end, it turns out it just wasn’t small enough with the protruding lens and very annoying lens cover.

I wanted something that could serve as a backup for the dSLR I use to snap ‘serious’ pics, it turns out (of course) that the LX-3 still can’t even come close to the pics from my ancient D200 and it was just a little too bulky to pocket which turned me off from using it too much.

Then along came the Canon S90, the reintroduction of the legendary Powershot ‘S’ series. Almost everyone I hang out with jumped on the bandwagon and grabbed on (KY, Ringo & Jac for starters).

This little monster comes with:

• 10 Megapixels
• 3.8x optical zoom (35mm equivalent: 28-105mm)
• F2.0-4.9 stabilized lens
• Digic 4 Image processor
• Dual Anti-Noise system
• ISO 80-3200
• Manual Control
• Raw Shooting
• 3.0 inch PureColor LCD II (TFT) screen

The camera measures 100 x 58 x 31 mm and weighs 175 g

Yes the Lumix was wider (24mm vs 28mm) but I actually found in reality that works against you unless you shoot mostly landscapes/cityscapes it’s better not to have such a wide lens as it gives more distortion especially when taking close up shots.

And the S90 – an f/2.0 lens with ISO3200! Wow who needs flash and seriously you don’t, this camera can take pics sans flash is almost any level of light. It even has a candlelight mode on the dial for super low light situations, yes it’ll be grainy…but through experience I’ve found pics from this kinda camera are for blogging and sharing online not printing A2 posters or billboards so it doesn’t really matter.

So far after using the S90 for a few weeks, the only thing I’ll miss it from the LX-3 is the really nice 720p video it takes (some can be seen here).

The S90 only takes normal VGA video, but for blogging use it’s fine enough, I’m no movie maker anyway. In low light it wins, the auto mode is super smart (you rarely have to use anything else) it has a dial on the front AND the back (two dials is more than the low-end Canon dSLRs have ) so changing settings is a breeze.

It doesn’t come with any funny dangling bits, the pouch is nicer and the camera really is pocket size.

If you’re looking to buy a compact camera now I’d say get the S90!

I’ll take some more pics with it and give it a better review when I’ve used it for a few months.

We had a free and easy night so we asked the guide and some others where we could get some good seafood, we should have Googled it first of course but we didn’t have any access to the net and forgot to check before leaving. Our guide recommended some seafood restaurants just down from our hotel, so we checked those out.

They seemed well recommended by locals (Located at Sedco Squared named Twinsky Seafood/Suang Tain), but well we didn’t fare so well paying over RM400 for a mediocre meal for 3. After checking of course tales of people being slaughtered there. I didn’t take any pics cos the food didn’t look particularly good and well I was slightly pissed at having to fork out so much.

We headed back to the hotel for an early night and up in the morning to head out to KK National Park where we would be spending the next evening. We took a leisurely drive with our new guide Saat up to the park and stopped off at a few interesting sites and viewing points along the way.

Our first sighting of the mighty Mount Kinabalu was from quite a distance and it was still extremely impressive. It was around midday though so the light photography was definitely against us, in person though it was a fantastic view.

On our way we stopped off at the famous pedestrian suspension bridge Jambatan Tamparuli. It’s quite a spectacular structure.

And people really regularly use it!

This is our great guide for the KK/Mount Kinabalu leg of the trip Sat.

We stopped at another viewing point along the way just before reaching Kinabalu park to take some snaps of the mountain.

The contrast was way too high for normal photography so I tried a HDR blend, even then the mountain is a bit washed out because of the mist/clouds.

This is my mom enjoying the spectacular view.

Our next activity was to visit Poring Hotsprings and the Poring Treetop Canopy Walkway, we had to hike in a little way as the canopy walkway is at around 650m elevation. It was a really beautiful area.

The trees are CRAZY high.

The Canopy walkway is a MUST do when you’re in Kinabalu park, but it’s not the feint hearted or those scared of heights as these trees are seriously high and the walkway is seriously narrow. It was quite terrifying for me actually as the guide ropes at the side only came up to my waist height! They are obviously meant for far shorter people..it’s quite cheap too only about RM3 entry for locals and RM5 for foreigners.

The really scary thing? We weren’t even at the top of the trees! We were only 3/4 of the way up (which was still well above 100ft in the air).

It was a great experience indeed, after that we headed right into the heart of the park to check into our hotel the Kinabalu Pine Resort, a truly beautiful place and reasonably priced. It’s actually located in Kundasang where the famous market is.

We had a great steamboat dinner there and headed to bed early after a long, tiring day! The next day was to be our last in the wonderland that is Sabah before we headed back to the metropolis we call home.

You can find all the posts from this trip here:

Sabah 2008 Trip – Sandakan and Kota Kinabalu

The current teams are:

• Philippine Patriots
• Satria Muda BritAma (Indonesia)
• Singapore Slingers
• KL Dragons
• Brunei Barracudas
• Thailand Tigers

I used to play basketball quite actively and represented both my secondary school and college teams until I sustained a serious knee injury playing and well that was the end of that.

So being a fan and hearing good things about the KL Dragons a group of us headed over to the MABA stadium in KL this past weekend to catch the second leg of a battle between the Philippine Patriots and the KL Dragons (KY watched the first leg in the Philippines). The stadium is the home of The Malaysian Basketball Association (MABA) and located near the Pudu area of KL.

It was jammed like crazy and raining so we reached there a little late, but managed to get inside whilst the players were still warming up.

Shortly after that it was time to get serious and the coach gathered the players for some strategy talks.

Then some entertainment and of course the national anthem of the home team. I was slightly surprised, but very glad to see the 3000 capacity stadium was almost full to the brim! The turn-out and atmosphere was really electric. The KL Dragons certainly do have a strong following and I hope in the future seasons they will have even more.

As the game kicked off you can see the fully packed crowd behind the court.

Basketball by its very nature is a very exciting game to watch as it’s extremely fast and end to end, it’s high scoring and fairly physical with some very fancy moves like slam dunks and spins to add to the excitement.

It was a great start with the home team taking a fast lead of 12-7 before the first quarter was over.

Unfortunately the star scorer for KL Dragons (Chris Kuete) got ejected due to some on-court scuffle

Being a more physical game than usual, there were a LOT of free-throws.

With Jason Lamar Dixon being the star, I’d estimate his free-throw hit rate to be over 90%. Our Dragons of course popped in plenty too!

The game was pretty intense with some incredible skills being shown by KL Dragons players Rudy Lingganay & Roel Hugnatan.

The Patriots were fighting hard too of course, but KL Dragons maintained their lead through-out the the game. It did get VERY close a couple of times with the Patriots coming within 2 points and for quite a while then drawing even for a short time. The KL Dragons supporters were pumping the crowd up though with chants of “Defense! Defense!”.

It was an intense game and a fantastic experience, even if you aren’t really a basketball or sports fan at all – I suggest you go check it out!

Extremely entertaining to watch!

In the end the KL Dragons won a convincing victory over the Philippine Patriots with a score of 77-59.

I grabbed a quick pic with the KL Dragons star player, the only guy in KL who doesn’t make me feel tall

If you want to support them at the upcoming games you can find the full schedule here.

The full set of pics is on Flickr here:

KL Dragons – Jan 2010

Or some pro pics on Shutter Asia here:

ABL KL Dragons vs Philippines Patriots

Then each day after that was a long and event packed day, fulfilling but very tiring.

I’m truly exhausted now! Anyway happy new year! And more about the Nuffnang Friso Family Day Out that happened on 2nd Jan 2010 at Kizsports and Gym at 1-Utama.

It was up early and off to 1U at about 9.30am for the event start at 10am. People were very early (I guess folks with kids are up earlier anyway) and the queue was pretty big by 9.45am.

Yes that’s Tony Pua there at the front.

Everyone had to sign up with stickers for both parents and kids and the kids got a t-shirt too.

Parents were having great fun taking pics of their kids.

The kids were very excited about playing in Kizsports too.

There were some big family groups too with 3 generations in attendance!

Of course there were femes bloggers there too like the most femes parenting blogger Redmummy.

After that the activities started, with the same emcee as last year.

There was quite a good turn-out! You can see the full crowd from the side here:

The kids had a great time playing in the gym.

And of course with the bubbles!

They all seemed to really enjoy the sand art too.

Of course there was some super cute kids!

And some which could dance!

There was a magic show, which was ok..at least it was 100x better than the one last year.

Then after that something for the adults! The prize giving ceremony, here’s a group pic with all the winners.

And that was that, grabbed a quick lunch at Pasta Zanmai then had to head to Balakong to pick up my car.

The full set of pictures can be found here:

Nuffnang Friso Family Day – Jan 2010

I went again this past weekend, we planned to go towards the end of the year this time to catch the paddy fields just before harvesting when they are more yellow.

We were still a little early though as most of the fields were still green, I think the first week of December should be better. Unfortunately though this time of year is the rainy season, luckily in the morning we had fantastic weather and we left after lunch this time and avoided the hideous thunderstorms on Saturday afternoon.

The group picture, it was a big outing this time with around 10 cars.

The paddy fields were a little more yellow than last time and we had beautiful blue skies to compliment the colours, it was blistering hot though.

I found this interesting tractor outside one of the houses which reminded me of Mater from Cars.

A closer look at the yellow paddy.

The good thing with paddy fields is there’s an abundance of drains and waterways to give glorious reflections of the fluffy white clouds in the deep blue sky.

An identifying sign-board for one of the paddy lots.

Busy photographers everywhere.

This field was lalang not paddy, but it still made for some interesting shots.

The Airtrek baking in the sun, the disadvantage of having a black car in times like this.

After lunch at Restoran Chai Lee we headed over to the fishing village, unfortunately it seems to be off season for the fishermen and it was low tide so there was very little activity there.

We did find one place open making yong tau fu and fishballs.

They were very quick and nimble, the speed with which they carried out their tasks was quite amazing!

Making dumplings..After watching the food handled, the dogs sniffing around and the general cleanliness after seeing this you make think twice the next time you eat steamboat or yong tau fu.

Seen as though there was nothing much to shoot at the fishing village, I ended up shooting myself. Cam-ho ftw!

You can see the full set on Flickr here:

Sekinchan – Nov 09

And everyone’s pictures from the outing on Shutter Asia here:

Shutter Asia Outing to Sekinchan – Nov 7th 2009

Shortly after landing we headed on over to the Monsopiad Cultural Village, which was an interesting experience to say the least. They say you haven’t seen Sabah if you haven’t been to the Monsopiad village!

We arrived just in time to catch the end of the dance performances, so we checked that out before going for the tour. It was pretty dark in there and it was overcast so it was pretty hard to capture things clearly (someone donate me a D3s please ).

Very colourful costumes and energetic dances, they are great performers. If you’ve seen any of the Sabah Tourism adverts on TV you may well recognize some faces.

We continued on the tour after that visiting various parts of the village where they still use original methods to make things and of course they place where they keep the real human skulls.

They have the famous sago worms there too if you fancy trying one out, juicy little fellas they are.

No…I didn’t eat one, but my mom chugged one down after she dropped it because it bit her hand. Yes folks they eat tree bark so their pincers won’t have much of a problem puncturing you.

Frankly, we sucked at the blowpipe..but I wasn’t too bad with the old catapault.

At the end we headed back to watch the performances again as we only caught the very last part, and there are a lot of different styles and costume changes so we watched again from the start.

The girls are pretttyyy.

And the dudes quite scary.

Especially when they stick a blowpipe in your face..and they are REALLY accurate with those things.

My Mom got head-hunted too!

All in all it was a great experience, I was really glad we went. It may be a tourist hotspot but it was enjoyable either way, the guides are knowledgeable and you can get a real taste of the Sabah tribal culture.

You can find all the posts from this trip here:

Sabah 2008 Trip – Sandakan and Kota Kinabalu