Friday, June 30, 2006

A Promotion!

As I'd mentioned in earlier entry, my training period ended yesterday when my instructor finally promoted me as a co-pilot. Yeah!!

Tuesday, June 20, 2006

SEIKO Fireworks


SEIKO Fireworks
Originally uploaded by bitslice.


I just had a chance to shoot fireworks last Saturday at Sanam Ma Nang Lerng (Nang Lerng Horsetracks). There were actually 4 fireworks events held during the past week in order to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the king's accession to the throne. I wasn't in town the other 3 nights so the SEIKO Fireworks event was the only one I could join.

The firework were from many award-winning Japanese fireworks artists. The hilight was, in my opinion, the Thai and Arabic "60" which represented the anniversary. (Unfortunately, I missed that set.) They're so large that they'd look beautiful only when looked from a distance. I was lucky enough that my mom's colleague had an apartment in Hua Lum Phong area, which was a perfect place to watch and take photos.

I had never shoot fireworks before so I did some Google-ing just before I left home. It didn't sound hard at all when I read those articles: you just make a long exposure with smaller aperture. But later I realised it's harder than I thought. With real fireworks, you wouldn't know what pattern or the location or how high or how large that shot was gonna be, until it was shot which would be a bit too late. You wouldn't know how many shots there were on each set. etc.

Anyway, the result came out better than I expected. Some pictures were blurry because I didn't use a shutter cord and I just couldn't hold my hand steadily. Check them out at my Flickr album.

Sunday, June 18, 2006

Just PASSED!

I just passed a flight exam last night. So glad I made it. If nothing else goes wrong I'll be based as a co-pilot by the end of this month.

By the way, at about 8pm last night I flew over Bangkok and saw fireworks at Muang Thong Thani. View from above was very beautiful cause you'd also see a lot of flashes from cameras of people trying to take pictures.

Friday, June 09, 2006

Fisheye 2



I was about to blog about a new Fisheye 2 camera a few days ago, when I decided to order it from a website abroad. Fisheye camera is one of lomography.com's products. My earlier entry features sample pictures taken with the original Fisheye.

What's new with this version 2 are a flash hotshoe, multiple exposure mode, and bulb exposure. These features make it a lot better, in my opinion.

And, this morning a DHL guy came with the package. I was so surprised that it took only 3 days to arrive (placed order on June 6th, got here June 9th). However, fast and reliable shipment came with price. Apart from USD 25 I'd already paid for the shipping, they just charged me another THB 626 for Thai tax and tax handling(?).

The package included 1 Fisheye 2 camera, 1 Colorsplash flash, and Fisheye Circle Cutter, all for USD 77. I used my USD50 gift coupon I got as a prize from LHTD so it came down to USD 27. S&H was USD 25, plus tax THB 626 (approx. USD 15). That means I paid more for the shipping and tax than the camera itself! Very crazy.