12 June 2010

Visual Journey: Sabah

I have recently visited Sabah, Malaysia with my family during the short mid-year school break. It is a paradise for scuba divers as the world beneath the water is literally untouched. On land, there is the Mount Kinabalu which is the tallest mountain in South East Asia. Sabah is famous for the Orang Utan and Swallows that produces bird nest. Unfortunately I did not manage to get to these places... The trip was short and unplanned but I did get some interesting pictures while I was there, predominantly street photographs and architecture. The hotels we were staying were very nice indeed.

Fisrt of all we stayed at Tanjung Aru Resort. The architecture here is very rustic and warm with the clever use of materials and structural elements that also become part of the aesthetics.


Refreshments from Tanjung Aru reception





Then we headed to the Sunday Street Market. There are interesting things sold here.








Locals petting stranger's dog


Local handicrafts from Sabah


Local beggars. They don't look very poor, do they?


Interesting that a broken chair can be used as leg rest...


Massage service by the visually impaired. A very good idea actually...



Then we headed to the local market...



Then we decided to viist the local zoo...






Ahem, ass licking?





Back at the hotel, we were greeted with local music...




Scenery from the hotel window...

On the last night we stayed at Sutera Harbour Pacific...








Clean waters with colourful fishes at the marina...


A HDR attempt of the marina...


Sutera Harbour Magellan, our neighbour hotel...




Interesting play of natural light...




Huge lobby with high ceilings makes the whole entrance grand with only natural ventilation...



Then we headed to the Sabah Heritage Museum




Sabah Long House



The Sabah Museum is just nearby, no cameras were allowed though...


Very interesting cantilever...


The Sabah skyline...

Hope you enjoy my pictures....

05 June 2010

Visiual Journey: Queensbay Pt 1

Queensbay is a relatively new development in Penang, Malaysia and I happen to just live 3 minutes away... It is still undergoing development at this moment. It comprise of condominiums, low rise houses, offices, shop lots and one big shopping mall.

These are all shot with Olympus E-30 and the Zuiko 9-18mm f4.0-5.6 wide angle (only 18-36mm in full frame equivalent, a wide angle range I find very useful; 18mm for architecture and 36mm for street shooting)























03 June 2010

Adjusting colours when scanning film

Most digital cameras have AWB (Auto White Balance). This ensures our pictures are neutral, meaning no visible colour casts. And in digital, we can always use the camera white balance presets or dial the temperature manually in tricky lighting conditions.

Well, in film, it is a different story. Most films are rated for daylight use, around 5000K (the temperature rating), so colour cast is always there, nothing can be done except to put a warming or cooling filter on the lens. However if you are scanning your films, you can adjust the colours accurately in Photoshop using the curve tool.

I use a Plustek 7600Ai film scanner for my scanning needs and although it comes with presets for negative films, colour casts are inevitable. I used to tweak it in the scanner, but adjust each pictures individually took to much time, I need a better solution. I tried the Auto Adjust function in Windows Photo Gallery, which was alright, but the colours seem dull.

Recently, I found out that I can use Curves in Photoshop, you can use the presets, the auto function or the white, grey or black balance dropper tool which adjusts the colours of the whole image based on the selected point that resembles closest to the colour white, grey or black.

Here's a comparison between the colour balance dropper tool and the Auto function.


It is difficult to set the colour balance using the dropper tool, because they gray is often not the middle gray. As seen in this picture the gray in real life it is slightly warmer, so it makes the overall picture slightly cooler. Of course you can tweak the colour balance from here to get the best results but this requires a lot of time, finesse and experience of the trained eye...


The Auto function adjusts the colours that feels just right, just by looking at the green we know that this is a much more balanced picture and it is easy to achieve, just click on the Auto tab in the Curves tool and there you have it...