Arthur Chang

Nikkor 85mm f1.4G AF-S

I've been waiting for this lens for a long time now.  If I had an all time wishlist, this would have been the #1 item on the list.  Yes, it would be above the Aston Martin One 77!

I've been looking for a replacement for my current AF Nikkor 85mm f/1.4D, which is nice but painfully slow to auto-focus and inaccurate in really crazy situations that my D700 camera body excels in.  I'm finding myself in awesome low light situations, but hindered by the 1.4D's inability to focus that quickly and accurately in the same conditions.  With AF-S lenses, like a 50 1.4G, it's magnitudes faster.  I love the D700 + 85mm matchup, this just makes it an even better tool.

The key differences between the two lenses at first glance are:

AF-S vs. AF
Way faster auto focus is key here.  I'm totally excited about this.  Low light shooting will be revolutionized! 

Weight, 1.4G is 23.3 oz, the 1.4D is 19.4oz
Gosh, the 1.4D was already heavy enough, but with better technology in lenses, usually means heavier.  I'll have to hit the gym even more. 

Size, 1.4G is smaller in length by two whole inches
Even though the lens is heavier, it's smaller by more than 2 whole inches! Going from 5.7" down to 3.3".  That's great. Much easier to pack and much more subtle.

1.4G has a longer minimum focal length, 3ft vs. 2.8ft
Which is fine, not that big of a difference here

Cute lens nano crystal and silent wave things
Whatever these are, who cares.  If the picture quality was at least as good as before, then this won't make them any cooler!

I'm already deciding which kidney to sell in order to fund this purchase.  I'm already really poor due to starting Fanvibe.com, so hopefully kidneys still go for at least the going rate of these lenses of $1700, slotted to be available this September 2010.  I bet the backordering will be painful.  I'm guessing I won't get a copy of this lens until January. 

We'll just have to see if this lens can hold up to my hope for glory and enlightenment.

Three Different Kinds of Photographers

There are three main kinds of photographers: Film, Digital, and Did not answer.

Film photographers are usually hardcore film people.  Almost all of them do not have any form of Digital SLR, nor do they have any plans for ever owning digital.  These Film photographers pride themselves in processing film, and using super old tools to show that they are far superior to digital photographers, since it's more difficult.  They also believe that photography as an art, is still just being able to process film.  Most take their film to Costco unfortunately, or have those "mom and pop shops" process them because that's way more hip.  If any processing is done by themselves, it's usually in black and white.  They generally don't do Flickr, but hitup forums talking about how old their equipment is, and what cool camera body they found at a garage sale.  The older and more plastic the camera is, the cooler they are.  They try to find digital photographers in order to show off a superior skill.

Digital photographers love their gadgets.  They always ignore and try to avoid talking and mingling with film photographers, mostly because they don't want to realize that their photography skills might just be because of their awesome digital tools, and not their actual ability to take photos.  Thus they avoid film photographers if they can help it, and flock together in packs, usually picking fun at those who have a different brand of camera than them (Nikon vs Canon is a usual argument starter).  Digital guys usually have a Nikon or Canon strap that they uncomfortably use, but must wear to show off their gear brand.  Digital photographers also almost always use Flickr, and brag about the exif information and like to tag their photos with their equipment information.  You're a good digital photographer if you know how two use all sorts of equipment, including flash, strobes, white balance techniques, etc.  Conversations you will hear include: "crop and full frame sensors," "Nikon is so slow to provide updated lenses, hence my photos are being hindered," "Canon's quality control has gone down, I might have to switch if it wasn't for their awesome 1080p," "read the manual, it tells you how to set your white balance".  In order for some digital photographers not to feel like they totally depend on technology, they claim to only shoot in JPG and not RAW because they're hardcore and a pretty big hypocrite (analogous to film photographers resistance towards digital film in the form of RAW).

Then there are the photographers who didn't answer if they were film or digital, mostly because they're actually out taking good photos that everyone else is missing.

So don't be like me, sitting around writing blog posts and reading about gear, get out there and take good photographs.

(photo taken of issa when we were at Sterling Vineyards in Napa)

This is how I shoot

A few people have been asking me what equipment or how I get the photos that I get.  I used to say that equipment didn't matter, but I now believe that's wrong.  It does depend on the equipment, and how little you fiddle with it in order to concentrate on capturing the moment.  It all comes down to how you see the photograph after it is taken, after the post processing is done, how it shows up on a website or in a frame, and what story it will tell, all before you even take the shot.  If you're totally preoccupied with all your cool new gear, your fancy flash unit and gels, getting white balance right even before you take a shot, you're going to get distracted.  That's not to say all this gear is good, but you have to really practice it so that it's second nature on how to use it all, in order to really get the pictures you want.  That said, I know plenty of awesome photographers that use a nice medley of gear really well, so well that they can give 100% of their concentration to the composition.  For me, I keep it extremely simple:

Equipment:

Nikon D700
Nikon 84mm f/1.4
Nikon 20mm f/2.8

Settings:

Camera body:
Aperture Priority
Auto ISO (200-Hi.2)
Min-shutter speed (1/100s for the 85, 1/30s for the 20)
RAW lossless

Lenses:
85mm: f/1.6 - f/2.8 for most shots, landscapes get f/8 +
20mm: f/2.8 - f/4 for most shots, landscapes get f/8 +

That's it =)  I set all the above, and all I need to play with is aperture, which even stays consistent unless I am changing what I'm shooting.  I rarely take any other lenses out anymore, except a macro lens when I need an extreme closeup. 

My Sister's Wedding

My sister is absolutely beautiful. And one could argue that the dress, the hair do, the makeup, her amazingly warm and thoughtful heart really makes her that beautiful... but I am going to let you in on a secret. There's something that sets this moment apart from her usual and perpetual beauty, something that's far more powerful yet simple than the love she spreads around to whomever she can reach out to: happiness.

I have known my sister before we were both even born. We were probably eggs back then in our mother, but she was that one egg that kept looking out for all the others. She made sure that every other egg was happy, and knew what was going on. I'm sure that when it was her turn to become the beautiful person that she is today, she gave me a reassuring nod that everything would be ok. And it would be, because of her. Yes, super strange egg story, but let's continue =)

Since I was born, my sister has been there for me. I lived a very spoiled life, and still do! She has been my role model, my inspiration, and my sister, the best sister ever. She's taken care of me beyond anything I could even imagine. Even through her shouting and yelling at me whenever I turned her "My Little Ponies" into my Gi-Joe's warhorses, and when I snuck into her room to look at all her cool stuff when she wasn't home, she always took care of me.

And it wasn't only me, everyone she met was touched by her kindness. She also attracted the most awesome friends ever, and with them they became successful in their own ways, but the closeness and unconditional care for each other always makes me look on with awe. Her friends and our family were there for my sister as much as she was there for us, but she has always been incredibly independent and strong.

I remember when she wanted to scan negative prints of her film camera into our computer at home. She struggled with it for hours and hours, and when I came home she had given up. It was a simple and trivial thing, but when she saw me she smiled and went to her room. My mom told me she had been trying to do something with the computer all day, and said I should go help her. I realized what she was trying to do, and at that point, I felt sad that she wasn't able to do it for so long, never asked for help, and now that it didn't work out, she was able to calmly go on to something else. Me? I would've asked for help within 10 seconds of something not working, I would've screamed and shouted. But she was strong.

When she got into college, it was all her. My parents didn't even know she was at the age for college. I remember the morning when she went to my parent's room, and I was able to her. She announced that she was going to a college called "Columbia." My dad said, "South America? College already?" My sister had applied and gotten into one of the world's best colleges, all on her own. The frustration, stress, and everything she took on herself. I couldn't be any prouder than that. My parents were amazed. She got as many scholarships as possible to pay for it, and she made the most out of her education. I never heard a single complaint from her through anything.

After graduating undergrad, she went on to Boalt Law School, and while there she met Pete.

The only times I see my sister stress out, is when she's trying to figure out something for me (like college apps), or if she's trying to help parents or friends out with something. When she went to Law School, that was the first time I saw her stress about something for herself. Studying and all that was hard on her.

When she graduated, she went on to a huge law firm in San Francisco. She quickly took on big cases, one noteable one took place in Los Angeles. I went to visit her one day, since LA was pretty close to my college (UC Santa Barbara, go gauchos!), and expected to see my usual friendly sister, who went way out of her way to make me happy. She was the one person I could turn to, no matter what, to make me smile. But when I saw her, I was scared. She was stressed, she couldn't smile, and she was frustrated at everything. Never did I ever think or even expect the world to come to a point where she was beyond calming herself down.

I didn't know what to say or do.

It was around 9:30pm, and she just had a 14 hour work day (or so). Her company gave her a really nicely furnished temporary apartment while she was working on the case in LA. I was just gonna hangout and crash with her over the weekend since I wanted to be wherever my sister was. Heck, I was even planning to goto Law School myself, so why not try to shadow her?

By that time, Pete was already with my sister, and he had come down to LA to visit her as well. I wondered if he was just there to hangout as well. I liked Pete, but I didn't know exactly why yet, it was just a feeling.

The whole day while my sister was at work, and while I was waiting for her to get back to her apartment, me and Pete hung out. We walked around downtown LA, and just chilled at the apartment. Pete had been checking the T.V. throughout the day, and was doing some work of his own.

When my sister came back, and after I was surprised by how stressed she was, was the precise moment I realized why I liked Pete, and why I would always like Pete.

He came to the rescue. He told her he had recorded all her favorite T.V. shows, and brought some movies if she wanted to watch that, and kept asking her if she'd like to take a nice shower and then come back and watch some T.V. with him on the couch. He kept gently encouraging her to relax and to come hang out with him. She refused for a long time.

I think I must have stared blankly in silence at my computer for about 2 hours, but by the time I realized what I had been doing (which was nothing) for that time, I heard my sister laugh. I looked over at the couch, and there she was, smiling and laughing with Pete. Sharing her day with him. Pete never ceased to smile at her, to listen to her, and to help her through the stress. His patience, respect, and love for her became crystal clear to me. At that moment, I knew that my sister had finally found the one who could give her the one piece of her life that makes her completely beautiful: happiness.

Last weekend at my Sister's wedding, I saw her happiness, and she was beautiful.

You should check out more photos I took from the wedding here

Nic and Christy's Wedding

I absolutely love weddings! Everyone is always happy, excited, and there's love everywhere you go.  Nic and Christy's wedding was all that and more.  These two are always smiling, laughing, and having a great time.  The friends and family of Nic and Christy's I met were awesome people.  I had a blast, and was honored to be a guest at this celebration.

As usual, I brought my camera with me!  Between chatting and sips from the wine glass and mojitos, I was able to grab a few snapshots.  Below are a few teasers, all photos that I took from the wedding can be found here: http://flickr.com/gp/kinetic/2fiRy8

Check out Nic's face on the left:

Here are all the friends, family, and other outtakes from the day:

Brinkley's First Snow

I'm totally infatuated with snow now!  I've been to Tahoe three times this season now, and I just can't seem to get enough of it (for now, hence the infatuation).  Last weekend I went up with my family to sort of hang with family as well as celebrate my sister's birthday.  We found a cabin that allowed dogs, so we brought Brinkley.  She's a small labrador / poodle mix.  The fancy shmancy name is Labradoodle.

I'm more used to pure labs or other kind of lab mixes, but dang, the poodle inside of her makes her incredibly clever and moody =)  I'm used to dogs that are so dumb they are just happy all the time and sit out of the blue even in mid trot when they hear someone shout "SIT."  Brinks is clever, knows how to get her way, and has ridiculously cute ears ;)  Here she is in her first snow!

Food Photography

My very first food photography! Other than a few small snapshots here and there, I finally had a photo gig for food. Of course I never charge for any of my photos, so this was mainly for me to learn and have fun! I got incredibly hungry during the shoot, and the owner, Chef Andrew Johnstone, was very generous and gave me lunch and a gift card!

I was a little worried about taking good photos of food, so I sort of just looked at some photos online of food photography and thought I could do it myself.

I brought along a huge gold/silver reflector with stand, and used natural lighting. I bounced the natural lighting from the front of the restaurant so I wouldn't create any crazy shadows on the opposite side. Worked out really nicely! The gold brought out all the warm colors.

I shot with a 105mm f/2.8 macro first, but then decided to go with a sharper 85mm f/1.4D at varying apertures. I wanted shallow depth of field, but just enough to show all the details of the contents of the plates, and blurring everything else. A nice PC-E lens might have worked out better. So I ended up using the 85 for most of the shots while on a tripod. I found the sweet spot at the distance I worked at (4 feet away or so) to yield good results around f/2.5 or so, giving enough detail in the plate without getting an annoying background.

I angled it slightly to give you a better sense of the food rather than top down. I had to make sure I didn't get the blue walls into the shot, so the close 85mm crop worked wonderfully.

Towards the end I decided to get a group shot of all the plates, which is when I realized how much more interesting the shots were with a wide angle!!!! Argh, I spent so much time with the 85 only to realize I should've played a lot more with my 20mm f/2.8!!!

I ended up getting some super exaggerated areas of the food, and also captured a lot of the "ambiance" of the restaurant as well with the wider lens. The f/2.8 was great for creating a shallow DOF in these shots as well.So I was able to get a closeup of the food, while showing it staged in the restaurant. AWESOME! Not the greatest for a menu, but for promotion and website use, it would be perfect. I would highly recommend everyone try using wide angles wide open for food photography! I loved it.

The 85mm yielded generic shots of the food with plenty of detail, great for showing off on a menu. The 20mm resulted in fun shots worth posting on Flickr and as promotion for a website.

Food photography is fun, makes you really hungry, but not sure if it's THAT interesting to me. I'm much more about taking photos of the preparation of the food, the people behind the scenes, and the cool details of a restaurant. But alas, here it is! Enjoy this series.

Lake Tahoe is more than Snow

I wish I had more time to go explore Lake Tahoe, it's scenically beautiful and it's history is all in the nature.  It's a great place to spend time with awesome friends for the long weekend.  I wish we were still there!

I'm getting a tad better at snowboarding.  I can carve pretty well without falling on the blues unless I'm about to run into someone else, which happens often.  My goal is to really get confident so I can bring my camera along with me up the slopes.

Below are a few more pictures I took, some of the lake, some of my friends just hanging out.  See more here.

Dogpatch Labs and Facebook Connect

It's a rainy day at Dogpatch Labs today, but the Facebook Connect meetup preparations is going at full force!  I'll post more pictures tonight after the event.

Get more details about Dogpatch Labs here, and follow them on Twitter here.

Did I mention it's raining pretty hard?  It's getting in!

Mike Hirshland of Polaris Ventures

More pictures to come!  Watch my photostream: http://twitter.com/kineticac

Update:

Amazingly enough, PG&E fails at the worst possible time, a few minutes before the event was to start!  PG&E had some kind of major equipment damage and there was no ETA for the lights to come back on.  We were all huddled around candlelight:

But of course, Dogpatch Labs SF is run by the awesome Ryan Spoon and Polaris Ventures, who pulled through big time and got us over to the Four Season's Hotel.  With us came the mountains of pizza and drinks.  Disaster averted!  On with the show.

Huge props to the presenters, Ryan Spoon, Mike Hirshland, all the Polaris guys, etc. for making this event awesome.  Definitely an enjoyable session and also great to see the Facebook Connect group come out to hear how the companies are using their product.  I'll now complain a bit less about the Facebook API Wiki now that I've met the Facebook crew.  ;)

Trip to Guerneville, CA

Last week it was all about dusty, dirty, broken down buildings.  Sometimes admiring the old and decay of the world is a good experience, but getting out to the beauty of nature and enjoying the fresh air is probably on the healthier side.  I drove north to Guerneville, CA with my sister, future brother-in-law (Pete), Issa, and my friend Tim, to take photos and check out the location of my sister's wedding this coming May.

The venue is absolutely gorgeous, and the surrounding is just as nice.  I took a few photos around the "downtown" which is two city blocks long.

Then ventured to the Armstrong Redwoods State Natural Reserve with Tim while the others did tastings at the wedding place.  It was pouring rain.

My camera and I were completely drenched, but the weather sealing did a great job of keeping out the water out of the camera.  Then we ventured out with the group to Jenner where the Russian River meets the ocean.  It was really storming and super cold!  Here's the proof:

Tim braving the storm:

Issa getting totally drenched!  Cute!