I was using the Canon EOS 500 to capture this picture. The grasshopper stayed still to let me take its pictures. It was easier than I expected. Due to I was using a film camera at that time, I did not take many photographs because of the limited budget.

I have attended a photography seminar, and I have asked a question, if the depth of field is too narrow especially when taking close-up photo, how should I focus on the subject. The answer I have got was - “Focus on the subject’s eyes“, let the other parts a bit blur is OK. This picture is not perfect actually because I focused on the grasshopper’s body instead of the eyes. In this case some camera can solve the focusing problem with inteligent faces/eyes detection otherwise you will have to use manual focus or base on the focus indicator.

This is the filter I have added onto the my 35-80mm lense. It’s 10x high power Macro Close Up Filter. It’s actually similar to magnifying glass, but with special coating on the lense surface.

Besides the Macro Close Up Filter, I also have a Polarizing (PL) Filter. It’s used for reducing reflexion on surface such as water. I also have a skylight filter, 0.7x teleconverter. All of them can be attached to the lense to produce different types of effects in photography. This is the advantages of using a SLR. It extremely flexible to take all kind of pictures.

But I have got another reason, why I will not get a D-SLR at this moment. It’s not convenient to bring all the devices and accesories everywhere, especially for the event photography, or travel photography. And unless the photo that I’m going to take allow me to take my time to change lense, install filters, swith to the appropriate mode and focus on the subject slowly, then I will consider to use D-SLR. At this moment, I will stick to high power Zoom Prosumer (Professional Consumer) digital camera.

10 years ago I have taken these pictures of grasshoppers; 10 years later Siew Peng also takes the picture of grasshoppers. Hey, if you have missed Luki The Locust and The Grasshopper before this, do give them a click and compare the photographs taken with those posted on the blog today.

This is a red spider on a lime leave.

You may noticed that the contrast of these photos here are not sharp, it’s because these are scanned photo, and the photo is 10 year old and a bit wrinkled. It cannot be placed smoothly and properly on the scanner. Although I cannot retain their quality, these photos will become something that will be kept as a memory, reminding me that I have taken something like this in 1996-2000.

Recently I noticed that the colours on my old photographs have faded. They were taken using my old Canon EOS 500 SLR film camera, and the colour of the film has changed as well. I am worried that I will loss these pictures sooner or later, so I have asked my brother to scan the photos for me using his newly bought all-in-one machine (Printer + Scanner + Fax).

The first scanned picture shown above was taken using a special technique. I zoomed the lense while the shutter was left opened. The exposure time was less than 10 seconds. I think I can only be able to produce this type of photo again with a DSLR instead of with my dream camera Canon PowerShot S6 IS. I don’t think a prosumer camera has the programable Power-Zoom feature to create this special effect.

Do you notice that the line zooming toward the center is actually shaking. It’s because I zoomed the lense by rotating the zoom-control on the lense, and even though the camera was stabilized on a tripod, I still couldn’t avoid it. I believe only a very high end professional camera has this feature that allows zooming automatically while the shutter is opened. The camera must be programmable such as after x seconds the shutter is opened, it should start changing its zoom from focal point y to another focal point z, and solving the focus problem by locking the focus in all different zoom power.

May be some camera allow you to zoom the lense while the shutter is opened, but you still have to touch the T/W button or rotate the control on the lense mechanically (usually clockwise or counter clockwise) to zoom, and the line won’t be perfect. It will still produce a shaky line.

So if you come across any camera with programmable-zoom feature, please let me know.

This is a typical long exposure photo taken from a car when the car is moving. It absorbed all the light on the street. It’s very easy to produre this type of photo. You just need to reduce the aperture size and increase the exposure time and hold your camera on a stable tripod.

You can read the following post for more night photos using my digital camera, they are different because they were taken using a digital camera.

Light in the Night 3
Light in the Night 2
Light in the Night 1

When I use digital camera to take long exposure photographs, and when the light is moving fast, I noticed that it’s actually become dots instead of lines. I hope someone can tell me the reason for the occurrance of this situation. May be different digital cameras have different “interval time” to let the light paint the photo.

Yes, this post is a bit too technical.

“Hydroponics is a method of growing plants using mineral nutrient solutions instead of soil.” - Quoted from Wikipedia.

These are crystal soil in purple colour.  Using the crystal soil is another good options for Hydroponics.  The watery crystal soil balls are in differents colour.  Here I only show you the purple colour crystal soil.  I believe it is made of special fiber material.  It can absorb water very well and retain water for weeks.  When it is dry, its size is extremely small.  It need to be soaked in water for 2 to 5 hours to allow it absorb water to its maximum size.  It is cute at its full size, it will bounce up if you throw it onto the floor.  I’m sure most of the kittens or cats like to play with it.

I have planted the Sansevieria Trifasciata in a very small transparents containers using the purple crystal soil.  This plants are specially made for this container, I use a special method to create a mini version of this Snake Plants, or also know as (Tiger Tail Plants in Chinese).

I call these plants the Zebra Grass because its leaves look like zebra cross and I do not know its name.  They are also in the purple crystal soil.

Since these plants are small mini therefore they look nice when they are in group of 3 to 6 pots.

However if you have limited space, a single bigger pots of mini plants on table is also not bad. 

They grow very well beside the windows, if you don’t have the space somewhere near the windows, you can get 2 plants, put one of them indoor (on your table, top of a short cabinet, or anywhere you like), and the other one outside (but not under direct sunlight).  Then you can swap them every 2 weeks or one month depend on the type of plants.

I am going to prepare different type of plants in different colours of crystal soil, and different containers as well.  Hope you enjoy.