As 2009 will come to an end in less than 20mins, I would like to wish all of you a Happy New Year and a great start in year 2010.

I started this blog in April 2009 and it has been a great 8 months. Thanks for visiting and supporting this site.

HAPPY NEW YEAR! And may you and your loved ones be blessed with happiness and good health!

Always,
Edmund JP

I was making a backup on the photos in my HDD and found this old photo which was taken in 2007.

This is Christabel, a.k.a. Mrs Pang, a.k.a. Edmund JP’s wife and a.k.a. my wife.

She disliked this photo and said that she looked too wild. Of coz, I disagreed with her opinion as I think otherwise.

Today, she is the proud mother of our son, Jadon.

I was at my parents’ place when I took this photo.

My son, Zhen Xuen (Jadon), just woke up in my parent’s’ bed and I was playing with him. As usual, he gave me all sorts of expressions when he played.

The light was diffused through the window on his right. I told myself “This is an opportunity that I should not be missing!”

I went to my car and grabbed my camera bag which had a Fujifilm Finepix S5 Pro and 2 lenses. I mounted the 50mm f/1.8 on it and before I closed the car trunk, I took out the reflector.

I went back to the my parents’ room, stood on their precious bed (which later was scolded by mom. Yeah, I still get nagged and scolded occasionally every now and then). My left hand was holding the reflector to bounce some light onto ZX’s face, while my right hand was holding my Fujifilm, dialling in the correct aperture and shutter speed with one hand. Yeah, you can imagine the situation, both my hands were criss-crossing and it was messy…

Since I have the Nikon SU-800 Wireless Speedlight Commander, I had been thinking if I should get the Nikon R1 Wireless Close-Up Speedlight System for close up and portrait photography.

The Nikon R1 comes supplied with two Nikon SB-R200 Speedlights, as illustrated in the photo above.

The Nikon R1 is very cool as you can add more SB-R200 speedlights around the ring and make it a complete “Ring Flash”.

For Macro, two SB-R200 maybe good enough, but for portrait, you need to have at least eight SB-R200 to make it a “complete” ring so that you can create a little “ring shaped catch light” in your subject’s eyes.

Here comes the challenge, i am on VERY limited budget. Let’s do some simple math to have a complete “ring shaped” (Since I have the SU-800 commander, I will exclude that in the calculation):

RM6,330!!! THAT’S DARN EXPENSIVE FOR AN ITEM THAT I DON’T USE OFTEN!!!!

So I started to search for alternatives, including some third party ring flash. Found some, but I still don’t quite see the value in them.

Then I remember about a year ago, I was introduced to this thing called “Ring Flash Adapter”.

Basically the concept is VERY simple. The adapter is a reflective tube and you mount it to your external flash. “Ray Flash” is one of the popular ring flash adapter in the market. You can visit its website to get an idea how it works. It is selling at Amazon.com at USD200 (approx. RM720) per piece.

But I couldn’t find Ray Flash in this country. I found something similar… and it is made in China at RM200.

Since I cannot afford a RM6,330 ring flash from Nikon, I got nothing to lose but to try the RM200 “ring flash” from China.

I got mine at 11:30am and was testing it the entire afternoon. Initially I wasn’t very used to it as the ring kind of “blocking” my grip to my Nikkor 50mm f/1.8 lens. But after few minutes, it wasn’t too difficult to get used to it.

Am sure the RM200 adapter couldn’t outperform the RM6,330 Nikon R1, but it does give me surprise result… well, at least, for a RM200 piece of plastic, I will not complain bout its result.

Now, you must be asking: LESS TALK! SHOW ME THE RESULT! Here you go. I took this less than 48hrs ago:

These are few photos I took of my nephew, niece and my son, Jadon, using the adapter with the Nikkor 50mm f/1.8 lens.

Introducing my son, Jadon.

We took this photo in the evening and wanted it to be his “5th Month Old Photo”.

Shooting children and babies is always not my favourite subject as they are unpredictable. Working with children means I have short window of opportunity and need to work fast to attract their attention. Hence I truly respect those photographers who specialise in children portraiture.

The setup was in our house. I put up a 10×12ft white backdrop in the living room. In order to protect my son’s eyes from the flashes, I took only one shot with this setup.

I used the Nikkor AF 105mm f/2D DC lens on a Nikon body with 5 units Nikon SB Speedlights. I grouped these beautiful speedlights into 3 groups using Nikon CLS:

• Group A: TTL 0.0EV
• Group B: TTL –0.3EV
• Group C: TTL +3.0EV

They were triggered by a Nikon SU800 commander mounted on the Nikon camera body.

Ok, I normally do not blog about thing which is NOT photography related, but I just find this darn funny. Hence I am sharing this with you.

I was on IM with Shaz and she asked me the following question.

[Conversation begins]

Shaz: Edmund, what is Transformers’ parents called?

Ed: Huh?!! You mean the characters in the movie? Mr & Mrs Witwicky?!!

Shaz: No, Transformers’ parents!!! What do you call them?

Ed: …errr….. The AllSpark Cube?!!

Shaz: No!! Edmund NO! THINK!!! THINK!!!

Ed: I DON’T KNOW SHAZ!!! Just gimme the answer!

Shaz: Transformers’ parents is called “TRANSPARENT”

Ed: ………… (silent and speechless)………..

Shaz: and if they are confused, they are called “TRANSGENDER”!

Ed: ………… (silent and speechless)………..

[End of conversation]

Anyway, maybe some of you find it lame… Alright, to make it up to you (esp the guys), I will share with you a Megan Fox wallpaper which I downloaded from the official site. “THE” scene when she first appeared in the movie…..