ROBIN WONG

It is always so fun shooting my dear friend Lily (IG @lilyayumiii), even if I am using just a humble old Nikon D50! This session was the same shoot as the previous blog entry, she changed to her second outfit for the day and we roamed the streets of Petaling Street and Masjid Jamek area in downtown Kuala Lumpur. Lily is always such a sport, full of energy and enthusiastic, hence it was easy getting great shots of her portraits. The beautiful morning light helped in getting that warm skin glow! Of course, the 6MP CCD sensor may be looked down by many today, I still think it produces excellent results! Who needs 100MP? 6MP for the win!

I have had the Nikon D50 and 50mm F1.8 D for a while now, which I bought for about USD50. The camera is old, we are talking 20 dinosaur years old, only has 6MP and 5 focusing points. Many would not even want to touch the obsolete camera today, opting for more advanced, latest and greatest gear. I believe if you cannot shoot good images with older gear, your images won't improve a single bit by upgrading to the latest gear. The pixel count, dynamic range and AF speed won't make your lighting control, composition, and creative execution better. I believe it is more important to upgrade our skills as photographers first, before we upgrade our gear. The Nikon D50 is a great reminder for me to put that in practice. I made a POV video to share how I got these portraits of beautiful Lily (IG @lilyayumiii). 

Special thanks to my friend Raja Indra Putra (IG @ripi888), he loaned me his Leica X2. I brought the Leica X2 to do some street shooting, and through my brief experience using the camera I cannot help but to notice some resemblances between the Leica X2 and Fuji X100 series cameras. They both share similarly sized APS-C image sensor, same field of view of equivalent 35mm focal length lenses and made into stylish, compact form factor. I must say, the Leica does a few things better - it is smaller, it has a better lens which renders sharper images and the AF is faster than what earlier Fuji cameras can do. I wish Leica brings back the X series cameras - having large APS-C sized sensor and a fixed 35mm-ish lens, with updated tech like faster AF, image stabilization and maybe tiltable LCD screen, that would be really amazing. I made a video to share my thoughts about the Leica X2 here (click). 

The last day of the Tekka festival was especially fun, even after 2 full days of shooting, I was surprisingly not too exhausted and was still running around at good energy levels. I guess I have slipped into shooting routine and can pace myself, prepare myself mentally for the shoot, compared the days prior. I particularly appreciate the powerful 5-Axis Image Stabilization built into the Olympus E-M1 Mark II's camera body. For shots that I do not need to freeze movement, I can intentionally slow down the shutter speeds to dangerously slow numbers, like half a second, or longer to gather more light, consequently getting clean images with lower ISO numbers used. This also applied to use of longer lenses, though I need to be more conservative, for example, the 75mm F1.8 lens, I went down to 1/15-1/25 second shutter speed, all done hand-held. Instead of using impossible numbers like ISO12800, I can get away with ISO1600 or lower, and to me, that is a lifesaver! I just cannot shoot with another camera for a job without similar or better image stabilization, it just makes things so much better. 

This is a continuation from previous post, sharing more images from my recent shoot for KLPAC (Kuala Lumpur Performing Arts Centre), the Tekka audio visual festival 2025. Basically, the festival ran for 3 consecutive days, and I was shooting nonstop for almost 3 full days. Despite the challenging low light situation, I managed to get some really good shots with my Micro Four Thirds setup. I brought along the Olympus OM-D E-M1 Mark II and prime lenses, Panasonic 9 and 15mm F1.7, and Olympus 25mm, 45mm and 75mm F1.8 lenses. I just find it so much easier to handle smaller lenses, allowing me to change them around quickly and more efficiently, and of course, all that (camera + 5 lenses) being fitted in my shoulder bag, they weighed less than 1.4kg only! If I were to use any other systems, no matter how minimal and lightweight the setup, it could easily double or triple that! I really appreciate how I don't have to suffer all kinds of discomfort or aches after long hours of shooting, handling Micro Four Thirds super light gear! These images I am sharing here in this blog entry were from the Day 2 of Tekka!

I was shooting an event for Kuala Lumpur Performing Arts Centre (KLPAC) recently, it was an audio-visual festival called Tekka, and boy oh boy was it a challenging shoot! Not only was the light so dim most of the times, but there were also times when all lights were turned off, and to get some images I need to balance the overly bright projector against pitch dark audience! While this seems like a nightmare and most people would prefer to shoot with full frame cameras and ramp up the ISO to impossibly high numbers, I'd like to argue that Micro Four Thirds is actually more suitable in this particular shoot. I talked about all my reasons in my latest video, which I am not going to repeat here, as these reasons have been said several times before already, and honestly all I want to do is just to share the images from that job here. Images were shot with Olympus OM-D E-M1 Mark II and Panasonic 9mm F1.7, Panasonic 15mm F1.7, Olympus 25mm F1.8, Olympus 45mm F1.8 and Olympus 75mm F1.8. 

I honestly don't know what happened, I made this video about why Panasonic should bring back the GX7 more than a year ago, and never got to publish it until today. You can check out the video here (click). I guess there were more urgent and time sensitive videos to publish at that time, and the old, non important video got pushed further and further down the buffer list, I almost forgot it ever existed. I think Panasonic GX-series cameras will do really well today, there is a massive demand for compact sized classic styled camera with high imaging capabilities, and the GX series fit those criteria. If only Panasonic could bring out the latest GX10 with updated image sensor, better AF capabilities (with phase detect) and some newer modern tech, the GX10 will fly!