Handcarry Only

thoughts

Showing 6 posts tagged thoughts

Ode to a bad dinner on the road

guy having bad dinner

There are few things more annoying to me whilst on the road than a bad dinner, especially one where you feel you’ve overpaid for. It always seems like a good idea at the time, trundling along the cold street, with the evening wind picking up, churning up dust and debris from the ground and whipping it past your face. Pulling your jacket higher, in a vain attempt to keep out the cold, you see it.

Just round the corner, with an audible buzzing of the neon sign, like a miniature hive of bees.

A warm orange glow emanating from within, a promise of warmth and sustenance.

The clues were there from the beginning, the many empty tables and the bored looking waiters, the menu board outside, proclaiming the offerings in a multitude of languages, surely a tempting sight for many a gringo.

But the warmth! Oh! The warmth!

Like the proverbial moth to a flame, we drifted nearer, taking a peek inside. A voice sounds out from the side, we had not even noticed him, with an alpaca poncho, he was standing on the street, hustling for customers.

“Trout! Straight from the lake to your plate!”, he offered, in Spanish.

“Come in!”

The wind picked up just that bit more, an icy whip lashing at us.

He opened the door a little, and a brief cloud of warmth drifted out.

We took another look down the street, the glow of a few other restaurants further down the street looked ever further away, with a sea of black and cold separating us, we turned to him, and nodded.

And that was pretty much it.

I left my job as an advertising Creative Director in August 2012 to travel Africa and South America for a year with my wife, documenting these beautiful places with my Fuji X-Pro1. View the rest of my RTW adventures on Handcarry Only and follow me on my journey by subscribing/following/bookmarking.

Part 1 | National heroes, heavenly hosts and hot sleepy afternoons - scenes from a city of contrasts, Buenos Aires

a pit stop for the morning dog walkers, buenos aires, argentina

A pit stop for the morning dog walkers

A lone cat wanders the narrow lanes of Recoleta Cemetary

“Faded elegance” is one of the adjectives I’ve heard being used to describe Buenos Aires and it could not be more apt. Majestic and opulent, but also delapidated and somewhat run down, she presents itself as a city of contrasts. Perhaps, the everlasting symbol of Buenos Aires, Evita herself presents such a conundrum, equally loved and reviled by her own people, she offers an insight into the psyche of the people of the city. From the people who assembled in the millions to hear her speak, and the countless numbers who lined her funeral procession, wracked in genuine sorrow, to the same ones amongst that number who found so much hatred for her as to defile her body after death, she is at once a unifying and divisive force. Likewise, Buenos Aires, a city of grand avenues and splendidly ornate buildings, but also of tin shacks and cracked pavements, of museums filled with renaissance grand masters and streets covered with graffiti. Buenos Aires is a complex lady, to see just one aspect of her is to miss the story. Perhaps the ones that truly love her have the most critical things to say about her, and the ones that unambiguously declare their love for her, maybe never really knew her at all.

Mafalda, a 60's symbol of political and social commentary, remains popular to this day, buenos aires, argentina

Mafalda, a 60’s symbol of political and social commentary, remains popular to this day

National hero and Argentine liberator, General José de San Martin rests in the mausoleum in the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Cathedral, buenos aires, argentina

National hero and Argentine liberator, General José de San Martin rests in the mausoleum in the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Cathedral

The lulling effect of the late afternoon sun claims yet another victim

Public busses in Buenos Aires, Colectivos, are a cheap and efficient way to navigate the vast city

I got thinking one afternoon, hanging on a greasy pole in a colectivo hurtling from stop to stop barely 2 blocks apart, the late afternoon sun sending everyone, or those with the luxury of a seat anyway, nodding away in motion induced slumber, how nice it would be to have peanut butter for breakfast. Not the boring smooth creamy kind mind you, but the ‘Extra Crocante’ variety. Peanut butter, or Crema de Maní, is a rare beast in Buenos Aires, finding a jar is not unlike finding an Argentinian who likes his steak medium rare, or ‘jugoso’, which is to say, whilst not impossible, certainly very uncommon indeed. Which leads me to another thought … on why a nation of people who pride themselves on having the best beef in the world then insist on cooking the life out of it, we had on various occasions ordered our beef in the local parilla to be ‘jugoso’ or juicy, and it had turned out in various levels of doneness, mostly ranging from medium well to completely well done … but I digress, today, peanut butter occupies my mind. We had a reported sighting at Barrio Chino by someone at our Spanish school in Palermo. I made a mental note of trying to hunt it down the next day… speaking of Barrio Chino, it might be worth trying to get hold of some char siew as well, I wondered how char siew would go down with Argentinians, they certainly weren’t opposed to barbequed meat, so I figured Cantonese barbequed pork could actually have a chance of existing in Buenos Aires, even if no Porteños bought it, there was still a sizeable Chinese population that could possibly justify its sale …

I’m afraid that no thoughts more weighty or substantial found their way around my head that particular afternoon, filled only with frothy musings and fluffy reverie … which kind of leads me to wonder why I haven’t really seen any marshmallows on sale at the supermercado either …

I left my job as an advertising Creative Director in August 2012 to travel Africa and South America for a year with my wife, documenting these beautiful places with my Fuji X-Pro1. View the rest of my RTW adventures on Handcarry Only and follow me on my journey by subscribing/following/bookmarking.

High-res

Thoughts on my last day of work before heading off into the great RTW unknown

One one hand, it seems like any other Friday, whose arrival brings with it a certain amount of relief, a knowledge that the solace of the weekend is just a few more ticks of the clock away.

But this Friday is different from the Friday before it, and will certainly be different from the next Friday coming up. Today is my last day at work. There’s a certain bittersweetness to it, I had grown much personally and professionally on the job, spanning 2 continents and multiple timezones. Walking away from a place where you have spent a good chuck of your waking hours at for the past 7 years is an unsurprisingly multifaceted emotional thing. I am sad to be leaving colleagues that have become fast friends, the camaraderie of the team, the department that I have built up, even the comfort of knowing the paycheck is in the post each month.

On the other hand, new adventures await, memories waiting to be formed, friends to be made and preconceptions debunked, Life awaits!

Change is necessary for growth, and I have been cruising for a little longer than I would have liked now. Change beckons.

Tomorrow, we say goodbye to all things familiar and head out into the unknown.

Follow me on my Round The World adventure on Handcarry Only by subscribing/following/bookmarking.

High-res

X-Pro1 Diaries: Just Before Dinnertime

View the rest of my ongoing X-Pro1 experiences and photos or the rest of the photos on Handcarry Only

The hour before dinner time is a curious occasion. The working masses are spontaneously poured out onto the streets, evident in their eyes, relief that the workday is finally over. The fading light in the sky heightening the growling in their collective stomachs as they go in search of sustenance, mostly in groups, laughing and gesturing, occasionally alone, with the dim light of their mobile phones upon their faces.

The restaurants and street hawkers are in a frenzy of activity, preparing for what typically is their busiest time of day. Amidst the smoke and smells, the harsh fluorescent light and garish neon, a city is winding down.

Beers are poured, cigarettes lit, tales exchanged.

Its dinnertime.

queen street

girl having dinner alone reflection

happy chicken rice lady

diners in an alley

man expounding theories

man with cap at table

boy alone at table

I will be posting my ongoing photos and thoughts on the Fuji X-Pro1, please bookmark or subscribe to Handcarry Only to join me on my journey.

Click here to view my other posts on the Fuji X-Pro1 and see more photos

$Old ‘Walk Up’ Apartments in Tiong Bahru Fuji X-Pro 1, Thoughts and Impressions 3 Days Later View the rest of my ongoing X-Pro1 experiences and photos or the rest of the photos on Handcarry Only I had the chance to wander around the increasingly gentrified and trendy district of Tiong Bahru in Singapore today before dinner. Amidst the yuppie cafes and quirky designer stores sprouting up in the area, remain generations-old ‘mom and pop’ businesses that have been there forever, some probably from when the estate was initially set up by the British colonial authority in the 1930’s as a means to provide mass public housing for Singaporeans. These old school businesses are an increasingly rare commodity in Singapore, where the ‘new’ is usually favoured over the ‘old’, and the ‘old’ is something seen as awaiting replacement by the ‘new’. I had my 3 day old Fuji X-Pro1 with me, along with the XF 18mm and XF 35mm lenses. 7 PM The sun had already set but it was still relatively bright, a nice diffused evening light basking the estate. Armed with my X-Pro1, I walked around checking out the shops in the area and spoke with some of the owners. The X-Pro1 proved a relatively stealthy camera for such a task, I received no glares from people as I was taking photographs, probably due to the unintimidating retro styling of the camera and the extremely silent shutter (the first thing I did upon getting the camera was to turn on ‘stealth’ mode, shutting off the focus assist light and the fake shutter sound). The focal plane shutter was going ‘snick, snick, snick’ and I doubt anyone more than a few feet away outdoors was able to hear it. Main door of one of the ‘walk up’ apartments Tiong Bahru also has a number of ‘walk up’ apartments, so named because the low rise residential flats are without lifts. These old flats are often quite charming and a lot larger than the newer residential offerings in Singapore, owing to the relatively plentiful space when they were first built. The light was still decent so the AF worked relatively quickly, although I noticed a tendency for the camera to choose pretty low shutter speeds, in an attempt to keep the ISO (set to auto) low. With such phenomenal high ISO abilities, I think Fuji might have been a tad too conservative with suppressing shutter speeds in favour of ISO, and I found a few of my shots with a bit of camera shake as a result. A bit of background I come from a SLR/DSLR background, from the Canon 50E (my first serious camera), to the 10D, 5D and 5D mark II, along the way, I’ve also acquired a Ricoh GR1V, Canon G1 (yes! the original!), Panasonic Lumix LX3 (hate the colours from that camera), Leica M7 and Sony NEX 5N. But most of my ‘serious’ work is done with the DSLRs. So that is the reference point from which I comment on my Fuji X-Pro1 experiences. If you hail from a film rangefinder background, you might find some of my comments ‘wimpy’, I fully admit to being someone spoilt by the indulgences of autofocus. The biggest advantage of the Fuji X-Pro1 over a DSLR, and also the main reason why I bought it, is that it weights a fraction of what a similarly lensed DSLR would weigh. There’s a school of thought that one has to ‘suffer for his/her art’ (by the act of lugging the huge lump of magnesium alloy, glass and plastic around) but the X-Pro1 offers a possibility of having your cake and eating it. The camera and 2 lenses probably weigh less than a single Canon EF 24-70 f2.8L lens (feels that way, I haven’t empirically weighed it) The Camera The quality of the output is very very impressive, it definitely punches above its weight (no pun intended). I haven’t bothered shooting in RAW yet as Aperture does not yet support RAW files from the X-Pro1. Jpegs coming out of the camera are clean, sharp and easy to work with. I was shooting exclusively in AF. I briefly tried MF but found it pretty unusable, it was dreadfully slow and quite impossible to figure out what you have really focussed on, zooming in (via the control dial at the back) helps but by the time you have done this, the subject would have moved and the moment, long past, leaving you twiddling with the camera pointed at nothing in particular. So AF is the way forward for the Fuji lenses, the upcoming M-mount might bring different results with a proper mechanically geared legacy lens. Fruit stall We bought kilogram of mangosteens and a few peaches from a stall by the junction and chatted briefly to the owner. There were a couple of apparent regulars hanging around the stall, trading local gossip with him. I was shooting perhaps 50% of the time using the EVF and 50% using the LCD screen. The LCD screen is helpful when you are trying to be discrete, since you can shoot from the hip. I do wish that the LCD screen could tilt like my NEX 5N though, it would have made it a lot easier. Being a control freak with my framing (and from a SLR background), I did not bother with the OVF and its ‘guesstimated’ frame lines. Hanging from a butcher stall 7.30PM The sky was now a deep blue, most of the street lights had already been turned on. Despite it being rush hour everywhere else in the city, Tiong Bahru at dusk still retained a slightly sleepy atmosphere. Diners were strolling along, considering various dining options on offer, and some businesses were packing up and winding down for the day. I saw this man just as he was shutting his electrical goods shop and took a photo of him through the metal grilles. The AF still worked quite decently, although I have to add, not quite near the performance of my 5DmarkII (which is not known to have a very sophisticated AF system). The Fuji X-Pro1 required me to slow down a bit in my shooting. I was used to just seeing the shot, lifting up the camera and expecting it to focus immediately and firing the shutter. The X-Pro1’s AF hunts a bit in low light and its something to get used to. It forces you to anticipate the shot before you actually take the picture, rather than just purely reacting to the environment. Aquarium owner, surrounded by all manner of exotic tropical fish Beef noodle stall owner 8PM With the sky now completely dark, I packed away my X-Pro1 and heeded the call of my growling stomach to the delightful smells wafting about from the many stalls at Tiong Bahru Market. ‘X’ Marks The Spot It would seem blasphemous to say such a thing only probably a year before, but I believe there are a number of people who are looking at the Fuji X-Pro1 with the view to replace their DSLR kit. This is especially true of advanced amateurs, who do not make their living from shooting photographs and had simply bought into DSLR systems as a means to obtain the best image quality possible. Depending on your style of shooting, the X-Pro1 might offer you such a possiblity. If you routinely shoot fast action, and even ‘not so fast’ action like kids running around, the X-Pro1 might not be the best tool for the job. I wish they had implemented an AF system as advanced as in the Sony NEX 5N/7 but sadly, it is not quite there. When the AF does latch on however, it is pretty precise. If you intend for the X-Pro1 to be a street and travel camera, that’s where it truly shines, providing outstanding quality in a relatively compact and light package and the Fuji lenses are wonderful - lightweight, renders beautifully, wide apertured and quite affordable. The camera is also a joy to use, I hated the convoluted menu system in my NEX 5N and in that regard, the X-Pro1 trumps even the NEX 7 in my opinion. Everything is pretty intuitive and buttons are where they should be. It feels wonderful in the hand and is a camera that will motivate you to go out and shoot. I can’t quite explain it, it is sort of like an iPhone in that regard, where iPhone owners will just constantly fiddle with their phones even if they don’t have any reason to do so. Any camera that inspires you to go out shooting more is a good camera in my books. The stunning image quality of the files produced by the X-Pro1 has been discussed all over the internet and is probably the most important achievement by Fuji. If you have a moment to capture (provided it does not involve anything moving too quickly!), you can be sure the X-Pro1 will render it in the best possible way, in a package that is easy to carry and fun to shoot with. I look forward to taking the X-Pro1 on travels and to try on my m-mount Leica and Zeiss lenses on it once the Fuji m adaptor is released. For me, the X-Pro1 is the camera I’ve been waiting for for a long time, since the Sigma DP1 was first announced, packing a large sensor in a small body (flawed as it was). The Fuji delivers on that concept beautifully, removing many of the drawbacks of such a system and most importantly, not compromising on image quality. I will be posting more thoughts and photos from the X-Pro1 in the weeks ahead, subscribe to Handcarry Only to stay tuned! View the rest of my ongoing X-Pro1 experiences and photos or the rest of the photos on Handcarry Only$ High-res

Old ‘Walk Up’ Apartments in Tiong Bahru

Fuji X-Pro 1, Thoughts and Impressions 3 Days Later

View the rest of my ongoing X-Pro1 experiences and photos or the rest of the photos on Handcarry Only

I had the chance to wander around the increasingly gentrified and trendy district of Tiong Bahru in Singapore today before dinner. Amidst the yuppie cafes and quirky designer stores sprouting up in the area, remain generations-old ‘mom and pop’ businesses that have been there forever, some probably from when the estate was initially set up by the British colonial authority in the 1930’s as a means to provide mass public housing for Singaporeans. These old school businesses are an increasingly rare commodity in Singapore, where the ‘new’ is usually favoured over the ‘old’, and the ‘old’ is something seen as awaiting replacement by the ‘new’.

I had my 3 day old Fuji X-Pro1 with me, along with the XF 18mm and XF 35mm lenses.

7 PM

The sun had already set but it was still relatively bright, a nice diffused evening light basking the estate. Armed with my X-Pro1, I walked around checking out the shops in the area and spoke with some of the owners. The X-Pro1 proved a relatively stealthy camera for such a task, I received no glares from people as I was taking photographs, probably due to the unintimidating retro styling of the camera and the extremely silent shutter (the first thing I did upon getting the camera was to turn on ‘stealth’ mode, shutting off the focus assist light and the fake shutter sound). The focal plane shutter was going ‘snick, snick, snick’ and I doubt anyone more than a few feet away outdoors was able to hear it.

Tiong Bahru apartment door

Main door of one of the ‘walk up’ apartments

Tiong Bahru also has a number of ‘walk up’ apartments, so named because the low rise residential flats are without lifts. These old flats are often quite charming and a lot larger than the newer residential offerings in Singapore, owing to the relatively plentiful space when they were first built.

The light was still decent so the AF worked relatively quickly, although I noticed a tendency for the camera to choose pretty low shutter speeds, in an attempt to keep the ISO (set to auto) low. With such phenomenal high ISO abilities, I think Fuji might have been a tad too conservative with suppressing shutter speeds in favour of ISO, and I found a few of my shots with a bit of camera shake as a result.

A bit of background

I come from a SLR/DSLR background, from the Canon 50E (my first serious camera), to the 10D, 5D and 5D mark II, along the way, I’ve also acquired a Ricoh GR1V, Canon G1 (yes! the original!), Panasonic Lumix LX3 (hate the colours from that camera), Leica M7 and Sony NEX 5N. But most of my ‘serious’ work is done with the DSLRs. So that is the reference point from which I comment on my Fuji X-Pro1 experiences. If you hail from a film rangefinder background, you might find some of my comments ‘wimpy’, I fully admit to being someone spoilt by the indulgences of autofocus.

The biggest advantage of the Fuji X-Pro1 over a DSLR, and also the main reason why I bought it, is that it weights a fraction of what a similarly lensed DSLR would weigh. There’s a school of thought that one has to ‘suffer for his/her art’ (by the act of lugging the huge lump of magnesium alloy, glass and plastic around) but the X-Pro1 offers a possibility of having your cake and eating it. The camera and 2 lenses probably weigh less than a single Canon EF 24-70 f2.8L lens (feels that way, I haven’t empirically weighed it)

The Camera

The quality of the output is very very impressive, it definitely punches above its weight (no pun intended). I haven’t bothered shooting in RAW yet as Aperture does not yet support RAW files from the X-Pro1. Jpegs coming out of the camera are clean, sharp and easy to work with.

I was shooting exclusively in AF. I briefly tried MF but found it pretty unusable, it was dreadfully slow and quite impossible to figure out what you have really focussed on, zooming in (via the control dial at the back) helps but by the time you have done this, the subject would have moved and the moment, long past, leaving you twiddling with the camera pointed at nothing in particular. So AF is the way forward for the Fuji lenses, the upcoming M-mount might bring different results with a proper mechanically geared legacy lens.

tiong bahru fruit stall owner

Fruit stall

We bought kilogram of mangosteens and a few peaches from a stall by the junction and chatted briefly to the owner. There were a couple of apparent regulars hanging around the stall, trading local gossip with him.

I was shooting perhaps 50% of the time using the EVF and 50% using the LCD screen. The LCD screen is helpful when you are trying to be discrete, since you can shoot from the hip. I do wish that the LCD screen could tilt like my NEX 5N though, it would have made it a lot easier. Being a control freak with my framing (and from a SLR background), I did not bother with the OVF and its ‘guesstimated’ frame lines.

found hanging

Hanging from a butcher stall

7.30PM

The sky was now a deep blue, most of the street lights had already been turned on. Despite it being rush hour everywhere else in the city, Tiong Bahru at dusk still retained a slightly sleepy atmosphere. Diners were strolling along, considering various dining options on offer, and some businesses were packing up and winding down for the day. I saw this man just as he was shutting his electrical goods shop and took a photo of him through the metal grilles.

electrical shop owner metal grille tiong bahru

The AF still worked quite decently, although I have to add, not quite near the performance of my 5DmarkII (which is not known to have a very sophisticated AF system). The Fuji X-Pro1 required me to slow down a bit in my shooting. I was used to just seeing the shot, lifting up the camera and expecting it to focus immediately and firing the shutter. The X-Pro1’s AF hunts a bit in low light and its something to get used to. It forces you to anticipate the shot before you actually take the picture, rather than just purely reacting to the environment.

aquarium owner

Aquarium owner, surrounded by all manner of exotic tropical fish

beef noodle stall owner

Beef noodle stall owner

8PM

With the sky now completely dark, I packed away my X-Pro1 and heeded the call of my growling stomach to the delightful smells wafting about from the many stalls at Tiong Bahru Market.

‘X’ Marks The Spot

It would seem blasphemous to say such a thing only probably a year before, but I believe there are a number of people who are looking at the Fuji X-Pro1 with the view to replace their DSLR kit. This is especially true of advanced amateurs, who do not make their living from shooting photographs and had simply bought into DSLR systems as a means to obtain the best image quality possible. Depending on your style of shooting, the X-Pro1 might offer you such a possiblity.

If you routinely shoot fast action, and even ‘not so fast’ action like kids running around, the X-Pro1 might not be the best tool for the job. I wish they had implemented an AF system as advanced as in the Sony NEX 5N/7 but sadly, it is not quite there. When the AF does latch on however, it is pretty precise.

If you intend for the X-Pro1 to be a street and travel camera, that’s where it truly shines, providing outstanding quality in a relatively compact and light package and the Fuji lenses are wonderful - lightweight, renders beautifully, wide apertured and quite affordable.

The camera is also a joy to use, I hated the convoluted menu system in my NEX 5N and in that regard, the X-Pro1 trumps even the NEX 7 in my opinion. Everything is pretty intuitive and buttons are where they should be. It feels wonderful in the hand and is a camera that will motivate you to go out and shoot. I can’t quite explain it, it is sort of like an iPhone in that regard, where iPhone owners will just constantly fiddle with their phones even if they don’t have any reason to do so. Any camera that inspires you to go out shooting more is a good camera in my books.

The stunning image quality of the files produced by the X-Pro1 has been discussed all over the internet and is probably the most important achievement by Fuji. If you have a moment to capture (provided it does not involve anything moving too quickly!), you can be sure the X-Pro1 will render it in the best possible way, in a package that is easy to carry and fun to shoot with.

I look forward to taking the X-Pro1 on travels and to try on my m-mount Leica and Zeiss lenses on it once the Fuji m adaptor is released.

For me, the X-Pro1 is the camera I’ve been waiting for for a long time, since the Sigma DP1 was first announced, packing a large sensor in a small body (flawed as it was). The Fuji delivers on that concept beautifully, removing many of the drawbacks of such a system and most importantly, not compromising on image quality.

I will be posting more thoughts and photos from the X-Pro1 in the weeks ahead, subscribe to Handcarry Only to stay tuned!

View the rest of my ongoing X-Pro1 experiences and photos or the rest of the photos on Handcarry Only