Posts tagged Travel

Olé! – Spanish bullfight! (blast from the past)

Travel

Back in 2001, I had the opportunity to travel to this fantastic country where breakfast would be cerveza (beer) and jamón (dry-cured Spanish ham) and where many restaurants don’t even open for dinner till 8pm.

The story has been recycled and slightly tweaked from a long time write-up posted on my photo-sharing site (webaperture) which I’m closing end of this year. I figured it was a good time again to dig through my old scanned archives, process them a bit differently and in Photoshop CS4 — I was using Photoshop 6.0 then! I shot about 6 rolls of film (gasp!) within the hour-long event. I would have shot more but light levels were dropping and I only had ISO100 left after exhausting all my ISO400 film! Shooting digital, I would have just jacked the ISO up! Film was Kodak Supra 100 and Supra 400 (I later switched to Kodak Portra series). Cameras & Lenses: EOS-30 with 70-200 f/2.8 with 2X teleconverter, resulting in a 140-400 f/5.6 lens and an EOS-50E with a 24-85 f/3.5-4.5 lens. This was before my big shift to transparency film (aka slides) such as Fuji’s super-saturated Velvia 50 and Kodakchromes (along with ekta and elitechromes).

The bull ring at Madrid

The Iberian Peninsula forms a link of sorts between Europe and Africa and that makes it not only an interestingly unique country among Europe but one of the most culturally rich as well. Strategically located, it was invaded and visited by many, the Celts, the Phoenicans, the Greeks, the Romans, the Visigoths, and the Moors. It is also the home of the fierce Iberian bull. This also makes Spain such a historically rich country that one can be really confused where to start. I mean look at the depth of this country’s history and cultural roots. Many consider bullfighting as such an essential part to Spanish machismo. So one day, while we were stuffing ourselves with tapas and beer in Madrid, we decided that we’d watch a bullfight. Bullfighting would be quite an exciting start to our cultural tour of Spain since it is so much a part of Spain that almost everyone you meet will associate it with Spain although some Latin American countries also do it. Famous Spanish painters like Goya or Picasso have glorified it. If you drive around Spain, it’s unlikely that you’d miss these huge billboards in the shape of a bull.

The bull ring at Malaga

Now, don’t get me wrong. Even if you’re against this event, I still think you should go watch one. The problem is, how do you go about watching a bullfight. I mean most Spanish cities have these huge bullfighting stadiums called Bull Rings, all of which probably hearkens back to the decadent days of the Roman Empire where slaves and gladiators fought each other and animals in such arenas. When I approached the first bull ring I saw in Seville, I saw this long winding line of people. What they were queuing up for was never apparent to me despite walking around the entire ring and looking lost. The signs were all in Spanish and I gave up — hey, these were the days before google, mobile internet! Now, you’d just pull up your iPhone and google translate it. Anyways, call me lucky or whatever but it just so happens that my Uncle was posted to Spain as an ambassador. I figure he’d we able to get me some tickets. What’s the use of being an ambassador if you can’t get tickets to a bullfight. Again, I was fortunate to be in Spain in April since the bullfighting seasons starts after Holy Week which ends with Easter Sunday in April and continues until August. Any other time, and it doesn’t matter who you know because you probably won’t get tickets. Anyhow, so I got my tickets.

A good friend of my Uncle’s, who is a true-blooded Spaniard commented:
“The bullfight is the essence of Spanish-ness and it’s good for you to see one.”
His lovely wife, with a not-so-strong-but-you-can-recognize-it welsh accent replied:
“Ghastly. Cruel.”
Obviously, she wasn’t Spanish by birth. He continued:
“It defines Spanish culture and who we are!”
But she wasn’t finished:
“Atrocious”

Oh well. I have a fight to catch. Click on the Entry to read more…

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Back in OMF, Camerons

Travel 1 Comment

A lot of my life seems to revolve around Cameron Highlands. No reason why but it’s been the place for a lot of interesting and life-changing events in my life. One reason could be that I’m kind of a winter person. Anything above twenty-one degrees celcius is warm and I think the sweet spot is a lovely fifteen. Camerons, being at an altitude of 5,500 feet above sea level makes for a more pleasant temperature for me.

Anyways, this time round, we returned to my favorite place to stay, the OMF bungalow just outside Tanah Rata (flat-ground in Malay). OMF trumps every hotel I’ve stayed in Camerons mainly due to it’s lovely caretaker and surrounds. The old bungalow still has charm and Mrs Chye, the current caretaker serves up good old plain home cooking and unbeatable scones. Don’t waste your money on those pathetic scones at Ye Olde Smokehouse. This one’s made with love and freshly baked. The only other scone worth spending money for in Camerons (my opinion anyways) is at T-Cafe in Tanah Rata. T-Cafe is going to be renamed to Lord’s Cafe soon. All the best Terese!

Secondly, this is a great place to unwind from the hustle and bustle of any city. There’s only 8 rooms and the nearest neighbor is about two miles down the road. Being on an isolated outcrop, it does get windy and cold but get yourself a mug of steaming hot chocolate, a good book and you can enjoy the great outdoors.

It was a good getaway and as usual, was filled with quite a lot of good food. Probably overdid it but don’t you always overeat on holiday anyways? The Sungai Palas Tea plantation has now been upgraded and it looks fantastic. It looks awesome but I didn’t take any photos of the exterior because the excitement has now been spoiled by stupid drivers who don’t know how to drive on single lane roads. I mean if you see an approaching car and you’re at a section which permits passing, stop the car and let the incoming car pass. Seems like all the good drivers are long gone and we have city folk who think that giving way is a weakness. Pure stupidity which results in a fifteen minute journey taking over half-an-hour. Not recommended if you’re not a good driver! Looks like all that off-road driving on even narrower trails had some benefit after all!

That’s it for now, more photos to come…








{edit}
Since this posting, I’ve received a dozen inquiries on the OMF Bungalow… I guess my blog’s pretty heavily indexed by Google 🙂
Anyways, here’s a low-down on the bungalow if you’re keen…

OMF BUNGALOW, CAMERON HIGHLANDS

This Bungalow is a place of rest, refreshment, fellowship and spiritual renewal for Members of OMF (OMFers) as well as local pastors, leaders and other cross-cultural full-time workers/missionaries from other Christian organisations. It is not a guest-house nor is it a business enterprise. It is a self-financed ministry and pretty booked out well in advanced.

Meal times are fixed and guests are asked to vacate the dining room as soon as they finish their meals to allow the helpers to clean up. Meal times are: Breakfast: 8.00-9.00 am; Lunch: 12.30 pm; Dinner: 6.30 pm

Panasonic GF-1 – real world experience

Photography

I’ve had my little Lumix GF-1 for two months plus now. This is not a technical or “proper” review of the camera but it’s more like my experience using it. My GF-1 comes with the 14-45mm stabilized lens. I might add the 20mm pancake lens at some point but for now, it’s a one-lens camera. My reason for the GF-1 is purely to complement my full-sized 35mm DSLR. I use the 5D Mark II by the way so the GF-1 is not a replacement for my main cameras. The GF-1 is used for situations where a larger DSLR and lenses are not required. For me, it’s primarily for travel and all-round carry with me camera. My need for the GF-1 comes from situations where I would like a better camera than my iPhone but the situation doesn’t warrant me carrying my 5D.

Stabilizer worked well here – ISO 800, 1/10s, f/5.1

Travel. I always travel with my full kit of photo equipment. However, there are times the GF-1 gets used such going down for the hotel breakfast, on the flight, serious hiking when my DSLR is stowed because I need my hands. Since the GF-1 is lightweight, I can have the GF-1 around my neck, ready to shoot something. It’s also less intrusive when doing street photography. As the GF-1 can look like a little point and shoot camera, more likely everyone’s going to ignore what you’re doing. When not traveling, the GF-1 goes with me to little restaurants, coffee shops, work (sometimes), and all sorts of places. Currently, either I carry it naked as is or in my ThinkTank Photo Speed Changer. I’m looking to get either the Trim Changer or All the Other Stuff as a permanent GF-1 case though. It’s a relatively hardy little camera though and fairly well built.

A small camera is less intrusive and hence, most people will allow you to take their photo. ISO 100, 1/125s, f/4

Performance
The GF-1 is pretty much fast enough for almost everything I use it for. From street photography to people and a little bit of action. Yes, the buffer is small when you shoot raw but if I’m shooting fast action, chances are, I’m using my DSLR. Quality is good if you keep the ISO below 800 and if you shoot raw. In well lit scenes (i.e. outdoors), the quality can be comparable to a cropped sensor DSLR (i.e. 500D, 50D, etc). In low light, the sensor does struggle but you can have everything. Battery life is amazingly good — I do have a spare and I only charge it after three days. Note that I do use my DSLR as well so remember that this is assuming a second camera. That said, I have the camera power save set to five minutes and it’s hardly turned off. Auto-focus is mostly good with occasional misses. The stabilized lens helps here. The lens hood works well to minimize flare and I’ve used the GF-1 in light rain, heavy wet fog without problems.

The ability to shoot HD movies is great although audio capture is just average without an external mic. The wind-filter works to some extent but it doesn’t help stop user and other little sounds from being captured. The AVCHD lite codec is a pain in the ass to work with though.

Nanjing Road night scene, ISO 1600, 1/200s, f/4.5

Ergonomics and usability
The menu system is overly complex and the usage of icons and abbreviations doesn’t help. I find it easy to inadvertently set something up when the camera is bumping around powered on. The small size however makes camera shake more pronounced. The shutter lag is almost negligible with the camera focusing and taking the shot almost as you press. That can’t be said about the video though. The dedicated video start/stop button is great but it’s laggy and sometimes takes a second or two to register. That said, if you ensure the shutter speed is relatively fast (1/100s), you can get great results. It’s also the camera I let other friends, local guides or strangers to take photos of myself or our group.

Image quality
In China, I shot RAW exclusively. While noise levels above ISO 800 was fairly high, it definitely beats any point-n-shoot’s pixel dense sensor out there. The ten-plus megapixel (I’m no fan of 4:3 ratio images so the GF1 is set to 3:2 ratio) images are quite awesome – with some processing, they look great. With ISO 1600 or 2500, a bit of noise reduction processing (I use Noise Ninja), the output is still pretty fantastic. With ISO set below 800, prints up to 12R (12″ x 16″) are quite achievable and look indistinguishable from any mid-range DSLR.

Discrete shooting at the Nanjing Mass grave site, ISO 2000, 1/30s, f/3.5

Crowded & packed train stations means the GF1 is always on-hand. ISO 1250, 1/13s, f/3.5

Or even hiking. West Sea Canyon, Huangshan, China. ISO 100, 1/200s, f/4.5

For some real reviews, you can check DPReview or Steve’s Digicams.

Disk storage and travel

Photography

Looks like wet weather put a damper on my predicted shoot rate. The other factor being the red-eye flight contributed to a wash-out day in terms of photography. How much was I off? Well, I predicted for 10-days I’d shoot approximately 280 Gigabytes. I returned with 93 Gigabytes. Looks like off by quite a bit but then, we had spent over 12 hours and 1500km on the road and rail. How much can you shoot from a moving vehicle? Also, I realized that my GF1 cannot be counted to be a third camera when estimating disk/shoot usage. You can’t use two cameras at the same time so the 60 gigs I estimated for the GF1 dropped to only 21 gigs — and I had 30 gigs of SDHC available. Anyways, always good to be prepared so while I could have saved some cash by not getting my 320Gb Seagates, they always will come in handy next trip… or anyone interested buying them off me? They are in black and silver colors.

Downloader Pro running at Hongcun Village with my two FreeAgents…

Back from the Middle Kingdom

Travel

With over 94Gb (or approximately 5,800) of photos and videos, it’s going to take sometime to get through and process. There’s also lots to do around the house at the moment along with a wedding PhotoBook so please be patient while I get the backlog cleared!

Few things about China for those uninitiated for the Rise of the middle kingdom is now due.
1) If you still think China is a 3rd world Country, pay a visit.
2) Like America who thinks Europe is quaint, China will be advertising “quaint” New York and ancient Europe.
3) People (or society) needs some catching up to do but they are a nation of fast learners.
4) For overseas Chinese, it’s sometimes a shock but it is awesome to see the land where our forefathers once fled from.


p.s. It was too early and foggy — the Maglev only hits 430km/h between 9am and 3pm

Cards, and more cards…

Photography

It wasn’t very long ago that RM1,000 (about US$300) bought you a 128Mb Sandisk Compact Flash card. Go a bit more and that same amount got you a 1Gb Sandisk Ultra II that wrote at about 5mb/second. Today, you can get a 32Gb Extreme IV (the Extreme Pro’s are a bit more than that) that has a 60Mb/second speed. That’s the good. The thing also is that when I had a 128Mb CF card, I had a 1.6 megapixel digital camera, shooting JPEG only. I think it also only had ISO 100, 200 and 400. Those images were about 500 Kb in size. Now, I shoot 21 megapixel 14-bit RAW images, ISO 50 to 25,600. Oh, plus HD movies that chew 320Mb per minute. So, the point is basically this – you can never have enough storage cards. I’m packing over a hundred-twenty-odd gigs (CF and SD combined)… and sure, I could use a couple more 16-gig cards 🙂