Posts tagged 4×4

A 900km sunrise to sunset drive

Travel

And also why I really need a small camera (The Lumix GF1 comes to mind… my Birthday is coming you know)…

Anyways, it was an interested drive down south and into areas unknown. While the highway stretches were ridiculously boring (how exciting can highway driving be), there was a short stretch of about 15 kilometers of plantation track where going at dust storm churning rally speeds provided a bit of thrill. All for a bit of fresh (live) fish. Really awesome considering that they survived the trip home. Well, not every fish though, just the ones we wanted. The rest were mercilessly packed into ice. Surprisingly though, they survived till the Pagoh rest stop, or maybe beyond, I don’t know as some were still flapping around at the stop. Probably expired between Pagoh and KL but I wouldn’t know.

RadioPoppers rock!

Photography

Took my RadioPoppers into the jungles of Pahang over the weekend and they absolutely rock! One time, I had them on two lightstands at a distance of 400 feet and they still worked flawlessly. With e-TTL to boot! They’re so awesome I’ll be getting another set next month plus a pair of 580s to go with them.

For me, range is not that important, well, anything up to 100 feet is good enough for me but e-TTL is. The ability to have exposure control plus the ability to remotely control the slaves is important. However, more importantly, reliability is the key. The existing Canon wireless system is too dependent on line of sight and is quite easily confused when in bright areas, especially outdoors. I even had problems one time I did a portrait shoot where the left flash unit was fired through a translucent reflector and the right-side flash was bounced off the right wall and ceiling and one of the flashes wouldn’t go off 100% of the time. I shot forty frames with that configuration and ended up with 9 frames where one of the flash units did not fire properly. This is indoors with a full height glass wall on one side. Maybe the infrared beams went through the windows but who knows.

In a wooden shack building 40 feet by 70 feet, I had 100% trigger rate no matter where I placed my two slave flashes. I had them outside the building firing through the side windows, left and right of the main hall, anywhere basically and all seventy frames fired successfully!

Changing Tires in the Muck!

Travel

Sheer coincidence or divine plan?

When my friend’s brand new Triton’s spare tire was stolen in a shopping mall two years ago, all he can do is curse the thief and go buy a replacement. Since the original rims and tire cost a fair bit, he bought a regular steel rim and tire. After all, a spare tire is for emergency use so who care’s about bling anyways. For us off-roading for God’s work, bling and vehicle looks are the last thing on our minds. Anyways, just last Saturday, the Pastor’s Hilux had a shredded tire valve. His spare tire had about as much air as the replacement plus he had forgotten his jack! With my hi-lift jack and hydraulic jack from the triton, we managed to get the car lifted out of the muck to change the tires… BUT where do we get a second replacement tire ten kilometers deep in the rain forest. Our stock rims wouldn’t go onto another makes (we’re on Mitsu’s BTW) wheel hubs plus the bolts and nuts wouldn’t fit.

And behold, the steel rim, in the exact size, fitting and tire as the wheel on the hilux. Oh, thief, you’re forgiven and How great is our God? They say that often, we can’t see beyond the next bend — how true when driving off-road in the darkness (it’s actually just 7pm) and visibility is just over thirty-feet — and God sees the entire journey so when things happen, it might feel terrible at that point in time but if we can step back and see from God’s point of view, I bet we all will think differently. Similar entry on our OA Ministry Blog.

Been busy

Don't Panik

I know I’ve not made any updates for over a week but there’s been a whole lot of activities that just leave me totally zonked out by day’s end. Good thing is that I finally got my wife’s PC up and running. Everything’s sort of installed and in place except for a few minor utilities like DVD authoring software and the like. Then came the big bathroom leak incident. For poor workmanship (gone are the good old days), the master bathroom of my condominium started leaking into the unit below. We’ve been using the second bathroom for a week now and that doesn’t help my weariness as I’ve got to boil water to get hot water since I don’t have a water heater installed there.


Loading durians for the trip home!

Last weekend was Sanofi-Aventis’ Corporate Social Responsibility trip into the SEMOA villages and we did eat lots of durians and donated some needy supplies. And I had to rush to deliver the photos for their marketing department within 48 hours! Oh well, I still have got two weddings to process, a photobook to complete by next week and another wedding shoot the week after!


Yes we ate all that!

Expedition XI

Life

Just got back this evening from an all day outing with the team from our Chinese Church. We led them to show them our OA Ministry efforts at Sang Lee. They helped conduct a two-hour mandarin tuition session. Why mandarin you ask? Well, the local Chinese school was helpful enough to let them attend class and offer them extra classes after school. Anyways, we also took them to see the interior villages. The Sungai Dalam track was in great shape and we were flying in at rally speeds. We also found a great coffee and roti bakar place at Bentong town.

Anyways, while tuition was being conducted, KW and myself took some time to head into Sinai Baru just to check up on them. That trail has always been tough and I managed to put a second dent in the front skid plate under my left tire. Anyways, since there was only two of us, we got some great action sequences. Only got time to do three, need to wake up early tomorrow for airport shuttle service!


Zoom & snap method – no Photoshop!