Baku-Bigshooter]] *Sakasama No Chou*

Sentosa with the Yaggers

Went to Sentosa with some Yaggers today heh, after a retarded taxi joy ride where the bugger didn't know the way, so it cost me a whopping 20 bucks. Damn, I really need my own transport. The goon ended up dropping me off at Palawan beach instead of Siloso like I wanted but eventually I got to Siloso by taking a short walk. It was actually a good thing because I managed to get an ice cold drink to ward off the blooming heat at the Palawan 7-11.

I wound up using a Nikon D40 kit today, the cheapest DSLR set up available on the market today, which I highly recommend since it only costs $900 for the body AND lens; definitely cheap by DSLR standards since some of my lenses cost more than that second-hand. I borrowed the cam from my uncle, since my 5d took a trip to Laos with my parents. I could have rented, since it's so cheap nowadays, but I wanted to get the D40 out for a field test, since I've heard so much about it. The functions is has is actually incredible and Nikon's policy of not crippling their budget equipment held true all the way. Things like spot metering that Canon conveniently leaves out on their cheaper bodies were a welcome sight, as was the full +- 3 stops of exposure and flash exposure compensation, which doesn't even exist on my $4k+ 5d. The large LCD was a joy to view the photos with and using the camera was in all, a very positive experience. The D40's AWB and exposure isn't quite spot on though, and I had to make quite a number of corrections in the later stages. However, the output from the camera met my stringent standards, which some more costly set-ups don't even do, so kudos to Nikon for this release. The kit lens only costs a paltry $100, but the quality it produces is real solid stuff. Naturally it's not as good as the lenses I use for my Canon body, but in most cases there I paid more than 10 times what the Nikon kit lens costs, but they certainly aren't 10 times as good. If you're thinking of getting a prosumer, run out and get the Nikon d40 now! It makes great photos, nuff said.

You can actually see Nikon's colour difference from Canon, but I still prefer the Canon colours since Nikon tends to render skin tones a bit greenish(Canon renders theirs more yellow), which you may pick out from some of the images here where I failed to correct the colour bias(it's not always possible to do so). I used the same technique to achieve the blue sky here as I used for the POP post 2 posts down, however, this was all done with the 90% smaller onboard flash the D40 had, so I wasn't able to make the sky as dramatic as in the POP post. However, some may prefer the more "natural" result due to the lower flash output.

Ok nuff tech stuff said. Photos from here on out.

Pick of the Day: A Light moment with Nicky, just after he got buried in sand to the neck. We gave him an artificial body with abs and boobs too(Joshua made sure they were D-cups, well now we know what gets him going)!

By the time I got there, they had started to go on rides at the Sentosa Luge. I managed to catch them on their second round in the waiting area. Here's Ian with Esther in the background.

And here's Esther again, being herself.

We later trooped down to the beach to cool ourselves off in the water; the guys did anyway. Here's some shots of the gang at the beach, sans me as usual.

Back Row From Left ( Joshua, Hubert, Deb, Esther, Sarah) Middle (Ian) Front (Nicky)