After a long and frustating consideration about what camera to buy, at last I have made my mind yesterday. I bought a Nikon D90 digital SLR. So I went to a place named "Passer Baroe" and go to "Aneka Jaya Photo". This place have the best bargain prices on nikon cameras in entire Indonesia. And it supply you with the white market official guarantee camera and not the grey market or black market stuff. So I purchase my new D90 over there.

Great, after initial test was ok, made the payment, and I went to seek a watch repair store because my watch stop ticking, it seems run out of the battery. I found one store with a good bargain , so I agree to do the battery replacement with him, and while he was just done with my watch, he got a phone call, The phone call was from his wife telling him that a fire blaze near his home. So I paid him and it seems he is going to rush to his house. I went to the parking lot, with question where was the fire happened??

As I exit from the passer baroe's parking lot, I saw couple of firefighter trucks, Instantly I followed them to the blaze location.  It was very crowded, and chaotic, I couldn't ressits to do the photo shoots, So I park my bike, and I get my brand new Nikon d90 out of the box, insert a 8G SDcard, attach  a Sigma 10 - 20mm. dial to P, and I blend in to the crowd.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At last everything it's ok, symbolized by the fireman's thumb up. Because the battery is depleting, since it has not being charge before, I decided to go home, while i walk to my motor bike, I so this bizzare looking man. his name is "E' eng".

He got blister all over his body since he was a child, and he stated, that he had try all medication with no luck. So I ask permission to shoot couple of shoots, just after about 5 frame, battery runs out. Time To go home.

On the way home I can't stop thinking, How good is a D90 was. It really satisfied me right out from the box, and I don't regret that I choose it.

Later on, while writing this blog, I just discover I haven't do the date and time adjustment while taking the shoot above. :D

Look at this motorcycle rider in Bali have, he got a rattan weaved helmet, The most unique helmet I ever seen in my live so far. Bali people are trully creative, and really have a good sense of art. This picture was taken on a motorcycle ride. I couldn't resist not to document this unique item, only in Bali. I love Bali. You should pay a visit to Bali.

 

 

 

 

Hot pixel and Dark Pixel is a single cell in your CCD or CMOS sensor that failed  to carry out correct data acquisition needed to represent a pixel in digital picture. Mostly people only aware about Hot Pixels rather that Dark pixels, since hot pixels are more easy to detect or recognized in long exposure picture taken with digital camera. Dark Pixel are appear in darker pixel if you expose highlights in exposed picture. Hot Pixel often apear in bright white, red, blue or green pixel in the long exposed picture. that a look at this star trails picture taken in 30 minutes with a nikon D40x.

You can see in the image above the little white dot is the hot pixels. The upper corner of the pictures have two bright purple area that over exposed, which will appear in every single long exposure in D40x. I don't really know what is the problem, seems it not appear as the hot pixels, I have mail the nikon about this issue, but as ussual no respond. maybe I have address the wrong mail.

At first I really annoyed with all kind of hot pixel in my D40x, later on, I get used to it.Since it appears as the common issue to all digital camera sensor to date and ther is way to deal with it. Imagine 3 pixels that failed in 10 million pixels. Even in more expensive camera will encounter this problem also. And now I believe every single camera have defective pixel in their sensor. even it appear don't have any, because it is has been calibrated or programmed not to deliver the defective pixel in the final picture exposed, by the firmware from the factory.

While as the usage of the camera increased you might later discover hot pixel appear in your picture taken with your previously hot pixels free camera. this is common if it's only a few and not many many of them. So how do we know that we have hot pixel in your camera? how severe is it? it's easy, you just to follow this steps:

• Put the lens cap or body cap on your camera.
• Set the ISO numbers to the lowest first (eg, 100). 
• Turn off the noise reduction.
• Do the 30 seconds exposure.
• Examine the picture for the hot pixels.
• Repeat the steps with higher ISO.
  

If your camera have hot pixel at 100 ISO, i think you really have a bad copy product. Mine have began to clearly appear in ISO 400. So if you have some of them, don't worry, just send it to your authorized camera service center. They will do the defective pixel compensation adjusting and your camera will hot pixel free again. Your camera will  be lens caped and connected with a computer and all process will finished in minutes.

What if you don't have time to go to service center, or they have charge a large amount of money  for the repair. Well you should not worry to much, program like adobe lightroom will automatically wipe out some minor hot pixel for you, or you can manually fix it in photoshop, but both of them gonna cost you money.

Any free solution? yes there are, you can use a software call pixel fixer. It has RAW file features that will fix your raw file for the hot pixel. just check out the link.  Before you use the software you should carry out the hot pixel area identification procedure. The software will guide you thru the process. If not the pixel fixer cannot identify the defective pixel.

Well do you still worried about the hot pixels? you should not now...

Greg is my good friends, I know him since we are still a little boy. This session was shoot in a remote island paradise lies north of Jakarta in 2007. With about 2 hours of a speed boat ride from Ancol marina, the Sepa Island has beutiful scenery, on  surface and under. The water is crystall clear and reef still intact.

We planned to shoot this session in two days, but unfortunately, in the second day I got a fever and too ill to continue this shoot. It is really hard to shoot with your hands are shaking, and headache that makes you cannot think. So Aftermath, I only got a few frames from minimal 60 good frames.

Also thanks to mr yossie yono for assisting this shoot with the reflector. Bro, you have done a good job.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

Since I have just sold my beloved Nikon D40x Digital SLR and planning for upgrading my gear, Now I'm photographing without any camera in my possesion. Why don't I buy one right away? well pretty simple, I haven't make up my minds which camera I will buy. since these thing aren't cheap. So i really plan it carefully.

Getting bored without any camera  that operational, I'm inspired to fix my dad's coolest belonging ever, a Yashica SLR. This camera is older than me so  I  Should call it brother. I still remembered I shoot it when I'm 13 or something. where in 36 frame I only get 12 prints. At that time I really don't understand how to operate it properly. That was  16 years ago wow... nostalgic antique.

So I woke up yesterday and before I go to works I told myself to buy a set of screwdrivers, but what happened when I got home, I don't bought any screwdriver, totally forgoten, so it's still 9.45pm, I walk to carrefour supermarket just a block away in central park, but It's just close, darn. Never Say Give Up, so I patrol around the neighbourhood ended up with no luck of finding the screwdriver that i need.   whew... so tommorow I will get the Screwdriver.

Suprisingly, even this camera is an antique, I still can found The User Manual and The Dissasmbling Manual on the Internet. It look like this camera really a fvorit or somekind of bestbuy camera of it's era. you can read a review by Karen Nakamura here.

So tommorow I will get the screwdriver, and try to fix this nostalgic jewel. That's it.. :D

Well instead of writing new post i guess i continue the story here, the yashica really hard to disassembly, Now I'm nearly destroyed a bolt, the bolt was made from bronze, It really stuck and jammed. not moving, Every twist i made, is just destroying the bolt further so I decided not to continue the process, because i don't want it at unreversibble point. so right now I will put this yashica  aside and think how to deal with the jammed half destroyed bolt. Do'oh..

Well, somehow I  have decided to start a blog, later on, I just realize it is a kind of comitment to be a good blogger, but uh oh.. dunno what gonna happen in the future but hope fully i get it started. it seems fun.. So here the kick start and take off...

Right now i going to explore and construct this web blog, so i will play with this blog for a while. So I have nothing to yap on this first not so Important blog that i post now and see what will happen if i post it, so consider it just a test post . . .