Malaysia Open 2011

Headed down to Putra Stadium yesterday to catch some Malaysia Open action. The place was not as packed as i expected it to be, but the tickets for the semi finals had already sold out. To be honest the tickets were quite reasonable priced.

Premier tickets for RM35 and a very good view too.

There were a couple of good matches as it was at the quarter final stages and most good players had already made it through.

There was our Males doubles, two youngsters who played quite well but were outmatched by the Japanese doubles team who seemed to be more quicker and tenacious with their attacks.

Some words of wisdoms from our National doubles coach Rexy.

A very good match was on of the Men's Singles quarter final mathces which featured Taufik Hidayat against Kenichi Tago.

Taufik was really sharp and his smashes caught the Japanese off guard on a few occasions.

The Japanese did give a good fight but alas Taufik was just too good for him. There were loads of Indonesians there who came and supported their national hero.

Another good match was the women's single which featured Taiwan against China.

The Taiwanese girl was so short and small sized that she looked like she was no match for her Chinese opponent.

She did surprise the crowd by winning the first set to apparently the China's women's 1st seeded opponent

But due to her small stature she was really exhausted by the end of the second set that she eventually lost in the third set.

The women's doubles quarter finals was also a good match to "watch" mainly because of the Korean Women's team. *Ahem

The match between Chen Loong and Lin Dan was apparently really hyped up as everyone was cheering Lin Dan's name when the court was cleared for his match, but he had some injury and he choose to back out. Which leave us to the last match. The Men's singles between our Datuk Lee Choong Wei and some Vietnam player which I have trouble remembering his name.

The "Boss" Misbun Sidek did came to watch his prodigy in action.

And to spare a few words of advice for him.

 1 word for the match: Outclassed

Lee Choong Wei was playing in his own zone and he was controlling most of the game, he rarely made any mistakes and literally in a class of his own.

Great sportsmanship too from the World Number 1 as he gave the crowd and appreciation clap before he left.

That's Phei Yee's Huge crush.

Overall a very fun experience, to be honest i do not have any interest in badminton actually but was persuaded by a friend to go as the tickets were cheap. Oh ya we did manage to take a picture with the Vietnam player who Lee Choong Wei beat, I was surprised by his build as it looked like I could have easily knocked him over. Lol

Sports Carnival 2010: Badminton

My university held a sports carnival for a few weeks and I never really had a chance to shoot anything till the final week. Was invited by a good friend of mine to shoot the finals of badminton as his house had made it to the finals.

The green team.

The red team.

I felt this was a good chance to brush up on my sports photography as I will be attending the Malaysian Open this Friday.

Some words of advice from the "ever-fired up" coach.

First up was the men's singles.

Than the women's singles.

Followed by the mixed doubles.

The green house won the first male singles but loss in the mixed doubles and women's single. 

So all was left was the women's doubles.

Some words of encouragement from the green house captain so that the green house could still have a chance for the title.

They did try their best the girls in the doubles but they were just outmatched by the red house. Even though they lost but the captain decided to have one final match.

Overall green house finished second and the red house came in first. A short update, I finished shooting my first roll on the film SLR but when I developed the film all the shots were underexposed, I'm guessing the film I used was damaged or either the camera's metering system is off.

Back To The Basics

Was given a bag full of old camera stuff by Phei Yee apparently they all belonged to her dad and they are all almost close to 20 years old. 

Upon opening the bag I found a Nikon F401x and a 35-135mm lens attached to it. An old film SLR. 

I really have no idea what the controls meant on the dials or where the mode selector was . This really is an old but a very good condition body.

Than the search for a manual of the camera began. I literally searched on almost every photography website I came across for a manual on this camera, but with no success i couldn't find one the only information I had was the first dial was to adjust the camera's mode, the second still not sure. 

Next the lens, surprisingly it has a very wide aperture at 135mm (f/4.5), I tried mounting the lens on my D90 but my D90 body could not read the lens, all it showed was ERR on the status screen. Weird huh. And this is a push-pull lens had problems figuring out how to zoom the lens as i really could not fine the zoom ring (The bigger ring is for focus and the smaller is for God knows what tried turning it but it wouldn't budge). 

Nano coating?haha i doubt so.

The lens is fungus infested, but I don't think it affects the picture quality that much as when i attached it to the body it does not seem to show any problems through the viewfinder.

Anyway I bough a roll of film to test test this camera, I am afraid the lens does not work anymore so probably i might have to mount my Tammy 70-300mm to it as i intend to do some street photography with this baby.

Oh ya there was an external flash unit too in the bag it was a SB-24.

Have not tested it yet but from what I read this flash was the first flash unit to have an LCD screen. 

Well will conduct some tests on this body and come out with some in depth review on it soon. Stay tuned!




*UPDATE: I JUST FIGURED OUT HOW TO ZOOM..YOU HAVE TO PULL THE LENSE NOT THE RING..OMG!

Going Through My Old Hard Drive

I found my old hard drive where I used to back-up pictures from my previous D3000. Was skimming through the pictures in it when i realized there were really alot of shots which I had not looked at before.

Like this shot of this old lady playing the piano whilst being passed by the huge crowd in Orchard Road which i took while I was in Singapore a year ago.

Or these two shots of the heart of KL.

Looking back at old pictures and comparing them to pictures now i realize how far i had to come from holding a camera for the first time to having proper shoots. Sorry about the "noobness" in these shots they were taken a way while back when i first bought my camera.