Life Through the Lens

Farmer’s Market @ The Grove, L.A.

I finally ran across a photography meetup that lined up with my schedule and was interesting enough to get me to drive out to LA.  We met up at the Grove where there’s a Farmer’s Market.  What’s interesting was that the market doesn’t allow “Professional” looking DSLRs, so we had to bring point and shoots/cameraphones/anything that doesn’t look professional.  I figured this would be a good chance to try out the new lenses I bought for the M4/3 GX1. Met some cool new people and got to stretch the legs on my Panasonic GX1.  Here’s some photos from the outing.

Japan 2012

Life seems to have gotten in the way of my blog posting lately.  But now I’m finally caught up and ready to post a flurry of adventures.  The first week of October is Golden week in China, so my friends Mike and Kim had planned to bug out to avoid all the local tourists.  They suggested that Brian (Detroit) and I (O.C.) meet up in Tokyo and go on a Japan adventure.  Of course we said yes!  Anyway, we started out in Tokyo for a few days and made a few day trip excursions to Yokohama, Harajuku, Tsukiji Fish Market, and Akihabara…as well as enduring a Typhoon to retrieve a hat from a bar.  Then we headed to Kyoto for a few days with a side trip to Nara.  Then we ended up in Osaka to visit my Cousin Vi and her husband Daniel.  It was a pretty epic trip.  Good times with my peeps.  Definitely have to do it agian soon.

Harajuku…

 

Aaron and Mitch happened to be in Tokyo on a layover from Korea, so we met up for some food and beer.

We got to Tsukiji Fish market way too late, but still had a chance to walk around and explore.

Then it was off to Ginza for some shopping.

Our attempt to see the Imperial Gardens.

 

Boss before our trek to Yokohama to see the Baystars!

Tokyu Hands…Tempura and a pet store.

Shibuya.

Shabu Shabu

Mustache ride to Kyoto.

Nijo Castle.

The cast of characters, Brian, Kim, me, and Mike.

Geisha District.

 

Getting our Temple on.

The Golden Temple, if you couldn’t guess.

Nara, home of the largest Buddha in Japan and free roaming deer.

Osaka – Meeting up with my Cousin Vi and her husband Daniel.  1 Michelin Soba Restaurant and Sake Tour time!

Kobe, Mike and Kim head off back to Osaka for their Anniversary celebration and fly out early the next morning.

Yakitori!

Osaka Castle.

My 6 hour layover in Seattle to visit my parents for Dim Sum.

Yongnuo YN-560 II Review

 

This is just an update to my original review of the YN560 mk1.

http://vbanh.typepad.com/blog/2011/07/yong-nuo-yn560-speedlite-review.html

There’s quite a few usability improvements that YN made to the YN560 II.  Most notably is the addition of a backlit LCD screen.  The text is huge and easy to read.  When a button is pressed, the LCD backlight (orange) comes on automatically. 

The modes are the same as the MK1: M, S1, S2, but now has an additional stroboscopic mode.  The left right buttons control full stops, the up down buttons control 1/4 stops.  The zoom angle now has it own separate indicator and is infinitely easier to check and see what your zoom is set to.  The audible beep is still there, but sounds significantly different than my second YN560 II unit.

In field use, the power level seems to be similar to the YN560, and most of the external housing is the same.  The PC port and external battery pack port are the same.  The front optical sensor seems to have a cutout with an darker IR filter on it.

Carlsbad Caverns & Guadalupe Mountains Roadtrip 2011

This was the first Thanksgiving that I wasn’t able to go to Big Bend with Doug and Jim.  It was kind of a bummer, but I essentially ran out of vacation this year…although that doesn’t matter anymore.  I then planned a trip to Carlsbad Caverns New Mexico, and asked Yama if he wanted to come along.  After work in Wednesday we headed west.  As it turned out the drive wasn’t much longer than the typical traffic filled drive to Dallas.  Click here for all the photos.

 

I picked out this cool hotel called the Trinity…it was the only non chain option, but seemed to be the nicest option in Carlsbad.

The room was pretty swank, but they only had one bed and a sleeper sofa.  We alternated who had to sleep on the sofa. Still it was worthwhile.

Especially since the room came with free coffee and pastries in the morning.  I was expecting danishes and some french toast, but got lattes and scones/muffins/cinnamon rolls/strudel instead.

 

We decided to hit Carlsbad Caverns on Thankgiving as the crowds would hopefully be smaller that day, and it turned out to be a pretty wise decision.  There were so few people there, we could easily setup tripods and shoot.

Here’s some highlights of the Caverns

 

Being that everything was closed on Thanksgiving, we made our way to the Best Western for the Thanksgiving buffet.

 

The next day it was raining in the morning, so we headed up to Roswell to look for some aliens and see the sights. First stop was the visitors center to get a pic with aliens and figure out what sights there were to see.  Needless to say, it was a bit disappointing.  We checked out the Bitter Lake Wildlife Refuge and saw nothing but birds. Then went to the Lea house to see the house of one of the founders of Carlsbad. Also saw the POW memorial, where WWII German POWs built an iron cross into the bank of the river while working on the chain gang.

 

The next day, we went to the Guadalupe Mountains to hike the Devil’s Hall trail.  Its freezing in the morning, but warmed up a little later.  It was an awesome hike with some sweet sights.

 

Sunday morning, we headed back to San Angelo, but on the way we stopped off at the Living Desert Zoo.  It was pretty cool, but the animals were less than active.

Adorama Tri-flash FLH8

Browsing around the Adorama site for cool stuff that I couldn’t live without, I ran across this little hidden gem.  Being a hard core speedlight user, I had always needed ways to get more power out of little flashes.  Way back in the day, I made up a triflash adapter of my own, instead of paying $80 for Lastolite’s version.  Downside was that it was made of 1/4-20 bolts and didn’t look really nice, and was a real pain in the butt to assemble and use. So imagine my surprise when I found this Adorama Triple Shoe Adapter for $16.  It is pretty decently made of high quality plastic.  It takes the weight of speedlights without any creaking or free play.  The best part is that it has an 1/8” phono jack for triggering with a wireless trigger or optical slave.  At full power it gives me 1.5 stops over what a single speedlight can provide. Definitely useful in a pinch or when E-TTL is more convenient.

Austin Photo Expo + Anne and the Frenchies

Last weekend I headed out to the Austin Photo Expo that’s put on my Precision Camera.  It’s a fun and informative weekend of free seminars and a large floor where all the major camera and accessories vendors come to sell some goods at discount.  It was kind of last minute, as I didn’t get the email until the Wednesday before.  I tried to convince Doug to come out, but he had made plans already.

 

After I filled my brain with photographic knowledge, I met up with my friend Anne to grab some Thai food. Afterwards, I had to twist her arm into taking some portraits…so that I could use my photo knowledge and play with some new lighting techniques.

 

On Sunday before I had to leave for the Taste of Asia festival in San Angelo, we went out to brunch for Anne’s friend Aurore’s Birthday.

Around the Texas Horn

I felt like I was running the bases at a baseball game played on the state of Texas last weekend.  I had planned to be in Dallas for the last weekend of the state fair, then my buddy Derek called up and said he was going to be in Austin that weekend.  Being that I haven’t seen him since last Christmas in Seattle, I made the trek to Austin to hang out for the night.  It made for a tiring triangle of long distance driving, but it was worth it.

First stop to the Congress Avenue bridge to see the bats.  I’ve ventured down there many times, but never saw any bats.  Guess that night was my lucky night.  I was really surprised to actually see bats and then actually be able to photograph some.

Then it was off for some Shinerbock and dinner.  Derek wanted Tex-Mex, but I never ate Tex-Mex in Austin before…usually too busy eating stuff I couldn’t get in San Angelo.  I Yelped some place called Corazon, but it had maybe 2 mexican dishes on the menu.  It was expensive, but not fantastic.

After the somewhat disappointing meal, we went off in search of dessert/pie.  I took him to Gourdough’s, but they had take off to a festival of some sort (should have checked their twitter first). We ended up at Magnolia Café South, where I had a delicious Pecan pie. Afterwards, we stopped off my friend Anne’s place, where she was having a dinner party with her French grad student posse.

 

The next morning, we hit up Flip Happy Crepes for some lunch before I had to leave for Dallas, and he had to catch a flight back to Seattle.

 

Driving up to Dallas, I saw this 458 on I-35W…looks like its brand new.

 

I had planned to meet up with Dave and Ali on Sunday for the Fair, then we could convoy back to San Angelo together. Saturday night Ryan, Nicole, and I headed out to a Tornadoes Hockey game.  They are an NAHL team, but provided plenty of exciting hockey as well as a full on brawl.  Before the game, we got some dinner at Fadi’s Mediterranean Grill.  The food was delicious, but I got way too much…damn cafeteria style restaurants!  We also saw some weirdo superfan dressed in this yellow zentai suit.  Here’s all the photos.

 

Sunday was fried food day, all day!  There were so many delicious concoctions to try out.  Pretty much everything I had was good, except for the deep fried beer.  It was just warm Shiner in a ravioli…it was gross.

Deep fried Frito Pie was the best

Critter Fritter (beef stuff jalapeno)

Chicken Fried Bacon

Deep Fried Beer – the worst

Buffalo Wing in a Flapjack

El Bananarito (banana in a sopapilla)

Fried Cookie Dough

Deep Fried Autumn Pie (pumpkin pie)

Fried Autumn PIe, Butter, & Cookie Dough

Low Key Panasonic GF1

I was reading the latest issue of American Photo and saw the coolest lighting treatment on the new Sony A77.  So I reverse engineered the light to see if I could reproduce it.  I decided to retake the photos of the GF1, since the first ones I posted were more or less snapshots.  See the results below.

 

So how did I do it?  I figured out that there had to be an uplight from the bottom directly opposite and in line with the key light.  I used a 24” Qbox with grid to control light spill and a Lumiquest Softbox III just opposite and down low to give that extra contrast and sparkle to the hand grip side of the camera.  Here’s a setup shot below.  Its pretty easy to do in a small space and with only two lights.

Family Portraits

Did the annual family portraits for my friends Joe and Amber last weekend.  These are usually for the Christmas cards that Amber sends out every year, but they also wanted to document their daughter Carlie growing up.  Last year, she was barely crawling, now she’s talking and running around.  Amazing how quick a year goes by.

(click on photos to enlarge)

 

Here’s the family from just a year ago.

Scott Kelby Worldwide Photowalk & Big Android BBQ

I’ve been a bit behind on posting to the blog lately.  Last weekend I was in Austin for the Kelby Worldwide Photowalk and the Big Android BBQ.  The weekend contained three of my favorite things, photography, smartphones, and BBQ!

I had a great time meeting up with fellow photogs and running around the University of Texas campus taking photos of things. This is Simi, the leader of our photowalk.

 

Here’s a couple of my favorite photos from the walk.  Nothing spectacular, but decent.

 

The Big Android BBQ was right after and was pretty informative as well as a lot of fun.  Got lots of free swag, got to see hot tech blogger girls, and eat some tasty BBQ. We even had a totally disorganized google maps scavenger hunt to win a Galaxy Tab 10.1. Not only was there a wrong address on the map, but the contested started 30 min late, and the URL for the maps was posted at a hotel 10 miles away, which we didn’t find out about until the organizers tweeted it 30 min late. In which time, someone who was staying at the hotel handily won. I wasted a quarter tank of gas driving around Austin, but did get to make some new friends. 

The LG Girl

 

Cyanogenmod himself

 

But the best part of the weekend was getting to eat at all the Food Trucks.  Since I was ridin’ solo, there was no compromise when it came to what I wanted to stuff my gullet with…and boy was it awesome.  Has some pork belly ssam and ribs (so good, it was like meat candy) at East Side King @ Grackle.

 

Kim Chi fries with Pork bulgogi @ Chi’Lantro

 

Steamed Pork bun with hoisin sauce and Bacon fried rice w/fried egg banana ketchup and sriracha sauce.

 

Chicken Tiki Masala and Garlic Naan at G’Raj Mahal (sorry no food pick, I had to get it to go)

 

Migas and Monk Special @ Torchy’s Tacos

 

And last but not least, the Pulled Pork BBQ sandwich at the Big Android BBQ.