I wanted to blog about the outing with my male nano-friends WW and QZ but let me first digress by talking about my new Nikkor AF 50mm f/1.8D (pictured below). This lens is a prime lens which means that you can't zoom it in or out, but you have to rely on your own two legs. A common question is that why is there a need for such things? Can't you get one which can zoom in and out? Well yeah, of course I can but one which is comparable would cost a bomb (a f/2.8 17-55mm lens costs more than $2K =P). Simple logic would show that when one lens can zoom while the other can't and both costs the same, the one which can zoom would certainly be inferior to a certain degree. This is the case here.
Anyway this lens costs only $180 and is probably the cheapest Nikkor lens you can buy new (please to note that $180 for a lens is cheap; $500 is a starting point for 'normal' lens). And what is the main selling point is that the minimum aperture is f/1.8! With such a 'fast' lens, you can create amazing bokeh effects (fast lens means one with large apertures, usually f/2.8 and below). There's also another one which goes down to f/1.4 but costs 2-3 times more. It's easy to see why this f/1.8 lens is so popular that most photographers just buy one of this just for fun. My existing lens only starts from f/3.5 onwards, so before this I haven't seen true creamy bokehs yet. Anyway this lens is just so addictive that I have it on most of the time now rather than my existing one which can zoom from 18-55mm. But there is a caveat though, the focal length of 50mm on a DSLR isn't very convenient. For a normal film SLR, a 50mm lens would be just nice, like what your eye sees. But on a DSLR, you need to multiply that number by 1.5 so effectively the focal length becomes 75mm which is a telephoto range. This means that the view would be quite 'zoomed' in, compared to a wide angle view.
Ok, enough digression. On to the main course. So the 3 of us met at Esplanade with the intention of shooting some photos after I knew that WW is also a photography buff. Anyway this was the first time I saw his equipment. Canon S2 IS with powerful 12x zoom. Man, I really like this feature. Sigh... too bad I already chose the dark side. WW has damn lot of photographic accessories. UV filter, polarizer, tripod, white balance filter, extension ring, wide angle converter, etc.
So when all of us arrived, we moved on directly to the top of Esplanade to do some shooting. Got this threesome of PRCs there, 1 guy and 2 foxy ladies then they ask us to help them take photos. Of coz WW went haha. Think they must be amused to see us with a load of pro photographic gear. Yeah but too bad I din get to snap a photo of WW and them coz QZ was trying to take a photo of me then. :p
Then we used WW's tripod to take a group photo of us which I don't think I shall post here la. As the sky was getting really dark and going to rain soon, so no choice we had to leave. Moved over to Cafe Cartel at Marina Sq coz Espla there nothing much liao.
Cafe Cartel. Time to chit chat tok cok. WW's goin off to Sweden so we need to 'send' him off lah with some chicken wings, which unfortunately turned out blurry (the photo I mean). It was really nice though, very crispy and well marinated. We had lotsa free flow bread though and the photo below nicely illustrates the bokeh effect. Notice how the blurriness increases the further away from the front plate of bread.
At the end we din stay too long. WW had to meet another group of friends at Brewerkz. Here's all the best to him!
