Upgrayyd

The idea to upgrade my photo gear came last month where I'm thinking to start my own micro stock by early next year.

For that reason, I planned to sell most of my current gear before I'm going back to Malaysia this end of November.

For now, I had already sold :

- Nikon D90 body. The new buyer is a friend of mine here. Sold for $900.

- Tamron SP AF 17-50MM F/2.8 XR DI II LD IF. I really like this lens and it was the best lens I ever used, but had to let it go since it doesn't suit a full frame camera. Sold for $520.

- Nikkor 35mm AF-S f/1.8G DX. Sold last two weeks for $300.

- Nikkor 55-200mm AF-S f/4-5.6G DX. Sold for $200 to a Malaysian girl in Auckland.

- Nikkor 18-105mm AF-S f/3.5-5.6G DX. Sold for $360 to Fairuz Sallehuddin.

I have bought so far :

-Tamron SP AF 70-200mm f/2.8 Di LD (IF) Macro. Bought this from Lutfi when he offered me last month.

- Sigma 24-70mm f/2.8 EX Aspherical DG DF. Bought this from Trademe. I was surprised when acknowledged the seller as Andy Belcher, one of the NZ famous photographer. You can go to his website HERE . He said that this lens was custom made for him from Sigma Corp in Japan when he did his product shooting at Sigma's factory.

- 82mm UV filter for my new Sigma lens. Cheap filter, perhaps.

- Kingston 16GB CF card.

I retained :

- Nikon SB600. Might want to sell if anybody interested.

- Nikon Camera Bag.

- Tripod.

- Monopod.

So, the only thing that I have to do right now or when I get back to Malaysia is to get a new camera body. It's Nikon absolutely.

P/S: Would interested in the future to get a cheap or second hand DX camera body as well for sports and wildlife.

Farewell Kuala Selangor

- It's been two years since me and my family living in Kuala Selangor because my father working there.

- Now, my father's contract will be ended this coming December. So, it's time to say goodbye.

- We are moving back to Taiping, Perak. The place where I was raised up.

- No more sea breeze and scenery of lighthouse on Bukit Malawati in sight.

- No more groups of silverleaf monkeys that coming to my house every evening.

Will miss you fella :(

- Hope everything going to be alright and I hope a better life awaits, at Taiping..

Super Six Cricket Tournament 2010

Yesterday, there was a cricket match being held at the Oval, Massey University. Being an official photographer for MUPSA (Pakistani Student Assoc. Massey), I was involved too. There were total up, 5 teams competing for the championship. This time, Pakistan Green won, thus defending their title that they won from last year.

Hamid Irshad, organiser of the event

Faisal Rana

Young talent. City Guys

The best player of the tournament, Abrar

Throw made by Saleem

The championship trophy

Zabardast bhaijaan!!

Pakistan Green's captain, Zakaullah with the trophy he and his teammates won.

Off from camera and photography stuff. Let's prepare for exams. Two weeks to go....

Noiseware

I already aware about this plug-in, last year when I read tutorial about HDR. Noiseware, according to the writer of the tutorial is very effective, especially when we need to reduce a significant amount of the noise / grainy effect in the picture, resulting from the lack amount of light and when you use high value of ISO when shooting.

But, I didnt take it seriously to use it, since it is quite complicated to understand about noise. You need to know basically two things in order to remove noise ; luminance and color.

Yesterday, after installing Portraiture 2 plug-in for my CS5, I did find for Noiseware and installed it too. I try snap random picture using the highest ISO available for my D90 ; 6400 and this is what I got, before and after editing and retouching with CS5 and Noiseware.

Before retouching with Noiseware

After retouching with Noiseware. Looking good aye?

Now, I feel confident to shoot with high ISO when needed since I have to worry no more with noise. You can get Noiseware and Portraiture HERE

Home Function 2010

Last Friday, there was a Home Function program being held at The Centre, Massey University. It was organised by International Student Support, to celebrate those (international students) who are going to complete their studies here by next year or early. They were given an opportunity to wear graduation robe and mortarboard, and also receiving token of appreciation for their studies here in Massey. It can be said that this event is actually a pre-graduation ceremony, special for international students here.

Few of my mates were involved in this ceremony and all of them are final year students. There were some random photos I take during the event. And I'm using my 70-200mm f/2.8 lens.

Zuriawati, final year engineering students


Khuzai and Ayu


Afnan, final year Bsc Maths. Will grad. by next year


Haizat and Zuria, Final year Engineering students


Present give-away


Grads and Grads to be


This is the token of appreciation given, a paua - sea shell.

Congratulations to all who were involved.

Portraiture Photography

Yesterday, Yasir asked me to join him on an outdoor photoshooting. It was being held at a ground behind Kairanga Court (where I was living there for the past 1.5 years). This time, the subject is one of our friends from IPC, Adlina @ Ed.

This is also my first time on shooting people as a subject (apart of the candid one). I'm used to take animals and flowers' images before. I brought together my 70-200 Tamron f/2.8 and a monopod that I bought last week (desperately need it since my lens is quite heavy (1.4kg) and it tends to shake, resulting a blurry images when full-zooming is used).

What I did during the photoshoot :

- Using "A" and "P" mode, depends on the situation

- Ensuring that the lowest ISO is used to prevent noise

- Shooting in RAW format.

- Rule of the Third (sometimes it is useless)

- Making sure that the pictures taken are not too vivid so that a fair, soft skin tone obtained.

What I did after the photoshoot :

- Editing stuff, using Adobe RAW Editor via Photoshop CS5. I did recovered some under or over exposed region of the images, adding or removing vignettes and noises as much as possible.

- Save the edited images in 16-bit TIFF format so that the details in the images preserved for the next editing stages.

- Used "Portraiture 2" plug-in via Photoshop CS5 for toning purposes.

-Using main Editor of CS5 for masking and layering before save it in JPEG format.

Here I posted some of the pictures I got during the photoshoot:

There are supposed, four people in this picture.

Self-made "Gothic" tone

Two point eight.

Shoot quite few pictures, but I think this is the best of all

Thanks Yasir for inviting me. Next week, I'm going to have Triple I final presentation on Monday, followed by Written Practical Test on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Hope I can release tension by taking pictures of the Pakistani Cricket Tournament next Wednesday (after lab).

Will Saleem and his mates defend the tournament's cup they won last year? We'll see.

Nadly Aizat's Photoblog

As a beginning, I'm using wix.com (again) to build my own photoblog. Maybe in the future, I will use my own domain (hopefully it's gonna be www.nadlyaizat.com) for that purpose. You can access this photoblog HERE.

And from now, you can access it via this blog because I have embedded it on the top of the blog's page.

MUSA Champions League 2010 kicked-off today. May the best win!

Financial Report September 2010

Income

- I got my allowance quite late for September. But I got my October allowance quite early, so total income for this month is quite high compared to last month.

- I'm selling one of my lens to Fairuz for $360.

- Rumah 10 = Money that I got back after pre-buying stuff (groceries etc) for my flatmates.

Expenses

- Rumah 10's still the highest expenses for this month.

- Others, are usual with usual proportion. But, this month was the first time I spent on watching movie at the cinema. I spent 3% of my income to watch "Inception" with Lutfi last week :D

Summary

After all, I'm still financially stable. Looking forward to manage my money carefully for October so that I can have adequate saving for next year.