canon ef 50mm f/1.8 II vs 50mm f/1.4

This post is a reply to Calvin's query on my c-box. Since it's a little long to type everything in the c-box, I might as well make it an entry to reply him.

I own a Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II, which cost me about MYR 310, if I remember correctly. On the other hand, I haven't tried using 50mm f/1.4, so I don't have first hand experience with the f/1.4. I wouldn't know how the lens performs.

Based on my personal usage, I find f/1.8 is fine enough, providing excellent photo quality. I believe f/1.4 should have better edge in producing the bokeh. Price wise, f/1.4 costs about 4 times more than f/1.8. Based on Shashinki's price list, a f/1.4 costs about MYR 1200. The notable difference between the two is the built, f/1.8 is a standard auto lens, while f/1.4 has a USM built in. (f/1.2 is of the L series).

I managed to google on the lens comparison, the exact comparison, between the two lenses, 50mm f/1.8 II vs 50mm f/1.4 USM. Here's the entry I found on the comparison, which will eventually lead us to this forum.

There isn't much input from my own experience, but I sure hope the information would assist you in your findings.

happy birthday

I wanted to to put this as a short birthday note in the previous post, but I forgot. Anyways, Happy Birthday to Louis. Have fun in KL!

extra feature: irene at lake park

Short note: I had a small gathering with a few old bunch of buddies couple days ago, and man, the girls are already sharing about their thoughts and plans for the wedding day. They actually have their wedding date set. Look at me, where am I now in life? Must face the wall and reflect on what has gone wrong with me.




Some of the extras from the shoot at Lake Park.

"A must see, highly recommended." -- SomeInternationalBrand Time.
"Two thumbs up." -- Try-to-make-this-sound-cool.com

Pazuzu doing what he does best, demonstrate how the posing should be done.


I left out some of the closer look of the people there in the session.

The ever-so-cool Pazuzu.

Jimmy the JimmyChin.net

Edwin with his Nikon.

Love Journey with.. someone ahead? Ahem.. :P

Pazuzu showing his ultimate skill, can easily pwn you, k? Don't play play.

That's all, and that concludes the shoot at Lake Park. So what's next?

My new toy? Paul's Birthday? Or something else? Let me think about it over my sleep.

irene at lake park

After some delay, here are Irene's photos taken from my 350D.

At first, I wasn't able to make it to the outing. But since there were slight changes to plan, I managed to squeeze this photo session through to my Sunday schedule.

I was inspired by one of Jenny Sun's recent posts in her blog, so, I took this opportunity to test it out. I would like to see how the end result would turn out to be myself.

Jenny uses her 50mm f/1.2 for her shots, and since I don't have a f/1.2 lens, I used my EF 50mm f/1.8 with my 350D instead. My personal main objective is to experiment shooting portrait with widest aperture at f/1.8. Here are some of the results.

Image properties:

ISO: 100

Aperture: f/1.8

Gotcha!

Seduction?

Look, Ma! A heart!

Played with bit of desaturation, actually more like blending a black and white layer on top of original shot.

Adjusted the Levels properties.

Weee....

I used my EF 90-300mm f/4.6-5.6 for this shot.

EF 90-300mm f/4.6-5.6

All photos were taken straight to JPEG, instead of the usual RAW. There were only minimal enhancement added to the photos, e.g. Adjusting levels, exposures, etc. No major alteration was performed.

Up next, some of the blooper shots from this session.

behind the scene: irene at lake park

Okay, finally. I'm the last to post about this. Gee.

So, I have to squeeze this one in, between my pending stuff.

One fine Sunday morning, there was a photo shoot session at Lake Park, Pazuzu and Edwin arranged for the shoot. I couldn't make it at first, but somehow, I could spare some time that morning.

So, there I was, making a cameo appearance and snapped few shots.

I will show some behind-the-scene shots first.

Pazuzu.

Shen.

The big gunners - Edwin, Pazuzu and Shen.

Up next, some of the shots I took that day.

1st big apple donuts & coffee in kuching

I know, I'm late in posting this.

Big Apple Donuts & Coffee has commenced its operation since 10 or 11 April 2008, and I only get to post the pictures now.

I was happened to be in the Spring one fine Saturday night, and coincidentally, I have my camera with me. I then snapped a few photos, and now, here they are, posted nicely in this blog.

The pictures here couldn't really show how crazy Kuchingnites really were, the line wasn't clear. You can't see how long the line, people could actually wait for 30 minutes and more just to buy the donuts.

I thought this could only happen to J-Co in KL.

Big Apple in Kuching.

Can't see how long the queue was, but there were surely a lot of people there!

Oh, and I didn't try the donut that night, only get to try it for the very first time when I accidentally met Irene, Jimmy and M few days later.

not quite complete

Short Note: My desktop PC seems to be okay now, it isn't as slow as it was yesterday. And, I didn't do anything to fix it. Weird, huh?



I feel that it isn't quite complete without some of these shots, so I'm just gonna do a final, final round up for umm.. this entry, stretching back for about 3 weeks ago.

I must warn y'all beforehand, scroll down at your own risk. This is a PG-rated post! LOL!

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Guess who?
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I think it could be his trademark thing to do already.. -_-

Nana with a tiny, tiny cross.

I seriously find the pointing arrows weird. Hmm... Why ah?

Last but not the least, a picture with the birthday girl is a must!

Me + Nana.

a series of problems

Due to the reason mentioned above, I was unable to update anything. My desktop PC is show a series of problem. For some reasons, the performance was really slow, even after defragmentation, and hard disk clean up. 

I haven't had much chance to use my newly acquired Mac-hine yet. And for that reason, I haven't been able to download something, and will not be able to play DOTA with someone.

Last resort to solve the slow PC performance issue is to go through the Format + Re-install/Restore cycle, which I would love to avoid very much. 

I guess I will have to put my desktop aside for now, until I got all the pending issues cleared.

Posting will resume by tonight, I hope, with my Mac-hine.

happy bud-day to ahpaul

Let's take a break, cos it was ahPaul's birthday couple days ago.

I'm late in posting this, and i should add a 'belated' in the caption there, but I know ahPaul wouldn't mind. Hehehe..

Birthday boy with victory sign, posing with his birthday tiramisu. He's only one-year-young.

ahPaul turns a year bigger now! :D hehehe..

You will have to man man wait for the banner/poster from me lar. Will post more of the pic that night later. Time to sleep



End note: It's already 20 days past April. Dang! Time sure flies! >.<

i'm sorry, but i don understand..

I received a call yesterday around 3:50 p.m. 

The display screen on my mobile phone showed this number - +601626137xx. As soon as I answered the call, a lady greeted on the other end of the line, in a Malay language (Bahasa Malaysia). 

"Hello, boleh saya cakap dengan En. Allen?" she asked.

"Yes, speaking." I said.

" Saya bla bla bla bla.... daripada ... bla bla bla.. " as she murmured away, I took another look at the caller number. It was a mobile number, and at this instance, I recalled an entry Ann did a while ago. 

I put the earpiece back to my left ear, and she was still talking there. I tried hard to catch what she was trying to say, and serious, I was trying very hard!

I was just so nice, and didn't want to waste her time, so I interrupted. 

"Er... I'm sorry, but I can't understand what you're saying." 

Then she sounded as though she was stunned by a stunner skill in DOTA, and tried very hard to say this line, "Er.. I will call you back later.." 

"Okay."

Then the call was ended there. Haha.. well, it wasn't really my intention to end it that way. I was curious what trick they wanted to put up, but I just couldn't understand what she was trying to say. 

And, guess what I never received any call after that. Haha. 

There you go, something out of the ordinary to share with. 

TGIF!

revolution begins here

I have converted myself, by walking to the dark side in white.

The revolution has just begun.

Remember the teaser I posted couple days ago? Well, this is what it's all about. I have Apple-lised myself already, by stepping a foot into the Mac world.

I bought myself a Macbook.


More on Nana's my Macbook next.

update delay...

I've been trying to defrag my Drive C since the weekend, and never got to complete the defragmentation even till now. -_-

Initially it stopped at 16%, and says that there are some files there are some files cannot be defrag. Then I had to do the disk cleanup, and I managed to free up to around 4GB space. Gosh, temp files stored in your Windows OS can really kill, or at least slow down your PC performance.

Since the built-in Defrag Tools ain't working, I've decided to download a third party Defrag Tool, and give it a try.

So, there will be no update just yet. It's pretty late now, so must sleep first.

Here I include a photo of the day to make up for the no update I have had since Saturday.


Photo Note: Taken at the Spring.

teaser

behind the scene - speedlite: the wireless way 1.0

When we run experiments, it's absolutely normal to have failed trials. 

I'm gonna post few of those examples here today.

For some reason, the lighting wasn't bright enough. The slave unit was pointed directly towards the camera, and the master unit. 

Lens flare resulted from the slave unit's flash. We should really avoid that.

And this too, look at JF's face, very ghouly felt, isn't it?

Scroll down to check out the behind-the-scene for this picture.

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JF's the man behind the 'back'. 

Another flare.


KY Chen, flash from beneath him.



The effects for both the photos are pretty okay.

This shot could have been executed better. If it's executed better, it would have created nicer silhouette of the object.

A little too dark, would have been nicer if the background is brighter. 

That's all for my sharing this time. I hope that I can play around with wireless flash more. It sure is fun. Too bad a speedlite can burn a big hole in my pocket, so getting another unit is almost impossible at this stage.

speedlite: the wireless way 1.0

I had chance to play with wireless flash when Pazuzu's Speedlite 580EX II showed up. We had experimented wireless flash before, coupling Pazuzu's unit with a Canon Speedlite 430EX, but the success rate was awful. We weren't sure why it's like that, what we did was just some trial and error experiments. 

This time, we're using two units of Speedlite 580EX II, with mine as the commander/master unit, and Pazuzu's as slave unit. I must say the success rate was much better than our previous attempt. 

Here are some of the photos taken that night, most of the time, we tried with the backlit effect.

Backlit = Glow.

(Above) Slave unit was placed behind Rose, and with my master unit bouncing 45 degree upwards. With the slave unit firing behind Rose, it looks as though her head was glowing.


(Above) Slave unit was again placed behind the model, I think the master unit was bouncing straight up towards the ceiling. However, the aperture for this was increased to F/8 or F/10. 



(Above) Both the photos have similar setting as the one taken on Anna's.

(Above) This was one of the very first attempts that night. The backlit effect wasn't as strong as I hoped for. The aperture for this was around F/2.8.

(Above) Aperture was increased, or was it the ISO setting lowered? To be honest, I can't remember. EXIF was stripped off the image after I saved this as "Safe for Web.."


(Above) Not exactly a backlit, the slave unit was placed on my right, but behind the subject in this picture. The Speedlite was directed towards the back of the subject.

Multiple Wireless Flash.

(Above) We tried to emulate a studio's lighting setup on strobes and flash, with one unit of wireless slave flash, and the master unit bouncing towards ceiling (or was it to the right?). The flash coming from the right was a bit too much, causing some over exposure. This shot was achieved with aperture at F/2.8, and high ISO. I think it was taken at ISO-800.

(Above) Similar composition, with similar setting, except that the Aperture was tuned to higher number at around F/10.

I had fun, but Pazuzu was high. Hehe.. Just look at him on the right there. =P 

p/s: The wireless flash fired off in the last picture there.