Working with one light is easier because you only need to worry about the colour temperature of that light. Whatever it is, don’t mix light sources unless you plan to shoot in b&w. The different colour temperature will make you pull your hair. Even if it’s another similar lamp, the bulbs do not necessarily give the same colour. So make life easier and work with one source, and use light modifiers. In this case, a styrofoam board.

Learn to use the custom white balance to get a neutral tone under your light. The info is found in your camera’s manual. Essentially it involves setting the white balance to custom white balance, shooting a piece of white paper, and using that setting. This is only neutral under that lighting. So you see the problem if you mix light sources? If your camera is tuned to warm light, any daylight that is captured will appear blue.

Here’s what the setup looks like. The velvet cloth sucks up light so shooting against it makes it easier if you don’t want to worry about shadows.

You can use this same setup for shooting small products. I wrote about something similar awhile back about shooting products at home with a simple setup.

Have fun!

Perhaps in a couple of weeks, this cityscape series will be featured. Anyway, here’s an image from this series.

Stay tuned for more images to come!

I’ll be first to admit that this is not a great shot. Too tight. With the ‘fingers’ of the burst above cropped away. So I guess the important lesson would be to shoot wide. Makes sense since you have no idea how high they’re gonna hit. This was one of the first few shots before I recomposed. The other better ones will be on Samsung Facebook hopefully next week.

Here are a few more tips to help you get the shot you want. Shooting fireworks takes a lot of luck and practice but once you nail that shot, it’ll be a real keeper.

1. Location
You’ve heard it many times before – location, location, location. I was fortunate enough to meet Ben, a total stranger and super helpful guy, to tell me I was pointing the camera in the wrong direction. Yes that was how way off I was! Someone told him the main display will be above the buildings from where we were. And not where the stage was. If you plan to shoot outside the MBS and opposite the stage, point your camera towards the buildings. You will have a rough idea when you see the barges and cordoned off area in the bay. That’s where the fireworks are fired from.

2. Exposure
This is a bit tricky. Fireworks are bright so keep your ISO to lowest. The NX11 I was using gave me ISO 100. To cut down exposure even further, try F11 or F16. You’ll notice your shutter speeds will drag to seconds. That’s how you can capture the streaks. If you use a wide aperture and high ISO, you’ll get a lot of smoke and dots of light. Not exactly what you’ll expect to see in a fireworks picture.

A lot of compact cameras have fireworks settings. In the NX11, that gives the following settings: F9 at 2s and focus locked at infinity. That works too but you’ll notice that in that 2s maybe nothing is happening or the burst is after the 2s and you’ll waste precious times just saving the image to the card. I’ll teach you a method below you can try.

3. Focus
Focus at infinity. If you are using a compact camera, just focus at the buildings and make sure you lock that focus. Use Manual focus or switch off the auto focus once you’ve locked focus. And don’t touch the focusing ring after that! If your auto focus is on, the camera will waste precious time trying to lock focus before each shot.

4. Equipment
Unless you want really arty shots, a tripod is essential to prevent camera shake. Bear in mind the shutter speeds will be in the range of a few seconds.

Cable release or remote shutter release. This allows the shutter to be fired electronically or mechanically. Every time you press the shutter button, you risk camera shake so these devices prevents it. If you don’t have it, you can use the timer. Or just be as careful as possible not to bang hard on the shutter button.

Black card. Just a piece of card to cover your lens. I’ll describe this method in detail below.

Lenses. Zoom lenses are useful to allow you to make quick final changes to your composition without moving yourself. Get ready to shoot wide. I was using the kit lens 18-55mm throughout the whole shoot. There just isn’t enough time to play with lenses and moving around.

5. Technique
This is where it gets interesting. You can just bang away the shutter at a fixed shutter speed and hope for the best but that’s just like a ‘Hail Mary’ situation….you know, when you just fire away above your head without live view. And hoping for the best.

Or, you can try to get a higher hit rate with a black card. Actually anything will do, even your hand. I use a black (black is preferred to avoid reflection) piece of foam coz it’s easy to stuff into the bag. The idea is to cover the lens when there’s nothing happening. And then open at the burst to get multiple exposure. Takes a bit of practice to know when to block and withdraw.

So what I would do is use the BULB mode. If your camera doesn’t have one, you can use maybe 10s shutter speed. You can only do this in the Manual Mode. Throughout the shutter duration, open the lens at the burst and close when there’s nothing.

With the NX11, I had one hand on the shutter button and another holding the foam.

And that’s about all there is to be done. Remember to make sure everything is within the frame! Don’t follow me on that one.

All the best and have fun!

The verdict. I shot aperture priority throughout with a -2/3 EV at some point and the exposure was pretty spot on despite the tricky spot lights. Image quality was quite good. I’ve been pampered by my 5D Mk2s so I had to get used to the higher noise but compared to a lot of other cameras in the same range, I’m very happy with it. Because of its compact size, it’s not a problem holding the camera at low shutter speeds. The above image was taken at a focal length of 137mm (35mm camera equivalent) at F5 and 1/20s. I could easily hold this rig at even lower shutter speeds with its OIS (image stabilizer on). Colour reproduction was good. I shot mostly with AWB and looking at the images in Aperture, I’m seeing quite accurate colour. In the picture above, I only added a bit of sharpening and reduced the saturation a little. Just a preference since I don’t like overly saturated images. But straight out of the camera, it looks good.

More images will be available in the Samsung facebook page at a later stage.

So far, I’m quite happy with this camera indoors. I didn’t use the flash at all though since I work a lot with available light. Will have to find an opportunity to test that out one day.
My next shoot will probably be fireworks over at Marina Bay. I think I’ll be there this weekend. If you like to join me, please let me know.

I was shooting mostly with the electronic viewfinder to conserve batteries and that didn’t disappoint me either.

At first glance, I’m impressed. The 14.6 Mpix NX11 kinda sits in between the DSLR and the micro-four thirds of the Panasonic and Olympus. It looks like a small DSLR and size-wise, the body is slightly larger than my Canon G9. I’m a sucker for well-built. well-balanced and ergonomic cameras so the NX11 feels perfect in my hands.

The images below are taken with the 30mm f2 pancake lens.

Focusing is fast and silent. Actually I was a bit surprised at how fast it is. This should be quite useful in taking action shots. I’ll see how true that is when I start shooting moving objects. Shutter is triggered almost instantaneously. Everything works like a DSLR does.

With the pancake 30mm f2 lens, it is probably the size of the micro-four third cameras but once you fit the kit 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 and the 50-200mm f/4.0-5.6, it tends to be bulkier than the MFT. This is also because of the APS-C sensor which is physically the same size of sensors used in entry-level DSLR. I love the layout of the buttons. Very easily accessible and I really think the i-Function on the lens is god sent. It’s a button on the lens that allows you to change settings like aperture, shutter speed, ISO, EV and WB without lifting your eye off the viewfinder. The focus ring changes the variables. Of course, like any SLR user, I tend to use the viewfinder instead of the bright AMOLED screen behind. It’s just habit. Like any other mirrorless system, the viewfinder will be electronic since, well, you don’t have the mirror. As for the electronic viewfinder, there’s a slight lag when sweeping the camera fast but I have yet to see if it bothers me later.

My first impression is definitely positive. I think I’ll be using the 30mm pancake lens a lot. It really suits my style – shooting with prime lens with large aperture.

Read more about my experience here.

And yes if you’re wondering, the bigger ring is for my finger and the other one’s for Lydia.

So new toy = new pictures to shoot. I fired a few test shots with this lens and I’m impressed with the speed. I’ve used the older non-L version before so this new lens is quite a jump. Focusing is very fast considering the elements having to travel from 1:1 range to infinity. Of course, selecting the range with the selector switch helps reduce the ‘hunting’ time.

I wished the aperture is bigger than the f2.8 though. The IS really helps in low light but only to reduce camera shake. Moving subjects would be a problem at shutter speeds as low as 1/15s. I’m planning to use this for portraits mostly and the occasional macro work. Looking forward to using this lens the next few days.

1. Shooting a triathlon in Bintan in heavy rain. Mid-way through the race, a thunderstorm developed. What started as a light drizzle turned into a fierce tropical thunderstorm which blew my makeshift shelter, made of black trash bags, away. I was in the middle of nowhere and my 1D had a 70-200mm lens coupled to it. Together they formed a completely weather-sealed system. So here I was in a thunderstorm, with my camera exposed to the elements, still shooting away. Onlookers would’ve been amazed at this sight. I was strangely confident that the rain would not get into the camera and lens and I was right. I wiped them dry in the hotel room and went on shooting the next day.

2. I was shooting for a magazine in Phuket. The story was on canoeing. We were canoeing around the islands when we encountered huge waves and rain. Sea water flooded the canoe and would’ve capsized it if not for good drainage. My camera was constantly showered with both sea water and rain. I kept shooting and when I went back, I literally washed the camera under a running tap to get rid of the salt. Brought it back to Canon when I returned to Singapore to check and got a clean bill of health.

Those were the few extreme weather conditions I encountered. Not to mention dropping the camera a few times. This is a truly remarkable camera and it lives up to whatever marketing stuff Canon says. Extremely sturdy and weather-sealed. I just wished it didn’t weigh so much. Or I have a few extra kilos to make lugging this fella a breeze. Since I use prime lens mostly nowadays, I want both cameras to give me the same stuff. An 8 Mpix camera is too far away from a 21 Mpix camera.

So I’ll be using 2 5D Mark 2s from today. Actually from tomorrow’s shoot onwards. And I’ll be missing my 1D….