I have been printing name cards locally that I may examine the quality of the paper and printings. Lately (but that I mean second half of last year…) I have heard a lot of good things about this MOO company and decide to give it a go. The product turns out to be amazing and I want to share this experience with you guys.

This packing been sitting cold in Post office waiting for its rightful owner to unbox it

I've ordered a box of 100 MiniCards, a card holder and a sample pack that contains examples of all print products. It's postcard is photo paper quality and is something I may order next.

Comes which a really nice looking box that you actually want to keep! The cards sits nicely, there are also separators for you to utilise this box for other people's MiniCards!

100 cards, 10 different designs... some how I think the cards is going to run out faster than I think.

I've seen videos of people doing this and that's the first thing I do with my card: bending test. I'm happy with its bend'iness.

White MiniCard holder with sexy gloss finish. It can be attached to your key chain which will eventually be scratched and add some manliness to it.

Everything was about US$38 in total include postage, which is very affordable especially you get to have so many designs of your name card in 1 box.

Referral

If you have this “I want it too!” in your mind, feel free to use my referral link so I may be future discounts!

http://www.moo.com/share/ww9zzt

I also have few 15% discount code that comes with the purchase, give me a quick message if you would like to have 1.

In case you do not know what Black Card Photography is, Hanjie’s blog has an 2 excellent blog posts explaining this technique. In short, black card usage often consider as a cheap solution to Graduated ND filters. However, when shooting fireworks I consider this as the only solution to eliminate burst of light (causing over exposure) and to reduce smoke in the image.

Around 10pm new years eve, first thing I did was finalised my framing, double check my tripod position and decide a manual setting: 24mm focus almost to infinity, f8 ISO400 and expose for 3 seconds. Without the fireworks, the image turns out a stop too dark for my liking. However I know when the fireworks starts, the lighting condition will be completely different and you will feel like a fool trying to adjust your setting then.

I have also began to practise my black card swinging where I will block the top two third for 2 seconds and expose the third second of exposure. Because I am shooting RAW, I know there’s room to touch up in post processing.

Note: photos in this documentary are straight resized from JPEG unedited.

Finalised framing and use black card to eliminate light pollution in the sky.

Count down began, that’s when I have my remote in left hand and black card in my right. As planned, I cover over the fireworks for 2 seconds (counting 2 mississippi) and expose the third second till the shutter close. Not knowing it on the spot, but the first shot was actually 1 of the best card swing attempt in the entire night.

First time lucky. Fireworks are perfectly bloomed and exposed.

During the event, I began to realise flaws in my plan: 1 second on the fireworks can still be too long of an exposure, so I start to micro-adjust the amount of time I expose the fireworks. Another flaw was I have difficulty predicting when is the best time press the shutter as I need to foresee the best fireworks scene 2 seconds before it actually happens. So I began swap my timing to “roughly 1 seconds of exposure, then 2 seconds cover up”. I keep switching back and forth as I was already confused and amused by the spectacular fireworks display. due to I expose the same scene at 2 different timing in side photograph.

Bad timing as this photograph was exposed to nothing but blinding light.

Swapping between 2 different exposure timings started to twitch my brain a little and causing another side effects: Something I exposure the fireworks for some milliseconds soon realise it’s a premature scene and quickly decided to cover up the fireworks till roughly 2 seconds later where a bloom appears. I now have fireworks photos that are double exposed

Top line of fireworks seems 'motion blurred' while bottom line was disconnected.

Example of brain twitching where double expose the fireworks at the very beginning and the very end.

Occasionally, by that I mean 30% of my shots were semi polluted with pure black as I have failed to complete remove the black card from the lens’ angle of view. Again, this is something I won’t see in my tiny LCD screen and will only realised (and in regards) during post processing. On the plus side, these photos can still be useful as I can fill smoke into the blank, or extract the fireworks for photo stacking.

Many photos you can see obvious black card appearance.

As we reached to the end of the celebration, there were fireworks everywhere and stacking on top of each other. Exposures are now so bright, you cannot even recognise the harbour bridge no more, and let’s how we end the 2012 New Years Eve Sydney style.

Nothing can save you from the blinding light.

In conclusion, this was an awesome experience for me despite the 18 hours waiting period, inconsiderate photographer with tripod raised higher than you need (where rest mutually agreed to kept around 1 metre tall). Photographs Sydney fireworks is going to rejuvenate my lack of interest in new year celebration and I will be looking forward to this.

Happy new year and best wishes to all for the exciting year to come!

Initial tone map give me nothing useful to work with except a mess of purple-ish-blue in the background. I end up blend some of those into ev+2 to provide a much industrial look in the background, it also helps enhance contrast of micro details of the warehouse.

This is “Home” by Kid Zoom, an Australian Born, New York based artist. Having this structure assembled elsewhere you will experience an entire different flavour, that’s why I enjoyed this project so much that I willing to setup my tripod and wait till the crowd are out of sight meanwhile be awesomised by it.

Even at high shutter speed I was unable to take steady shot, and to make it worse I was shooting towards direct sunlight exaggerated colour fringing at all corners. The plus side was I manage to capture the detail textures of cycler’s cloth and his wrinkly skin, and that’s was my emphasis at.

Some cycler may also act as travel guide to help out your journey (in return, compensation paid in RMB. Just to keep that in mind). In this case, our rickshaw cycler are kindly enough to give us a quick run down of ZhouZhuang where we spent half day here before reaching to next destination. He settled a package with us for 200 RMB that he will accompany as till evening providing tour talk, transport to any point in city and waits for us while we do the tourist thing (in 1 occasion, he even walk and provide complete tour talk for us). 200 RMB (~AU$30 at the time) may seems a lot in China, but for the sake of convenience within limited amount of time the last thing you want to do is muddle around in a strange land.

As part of kit lens, you are most likely to get to play around with 1 of 3 telephoto zoom kit lens (that been 55-200mm no-VR, 55-300mm VR and this). Before you look into high end telephoto zoom lens like 70-200mm variant, you should really go in depth on finding the full potential of this lens.

Lens Overview

• Name: AF-S DX VR Zoom-Nikkor 55-200mm f/4-5.6G IF-ED
• Type: High-Power Zoom
• Format: For Cropped (DX) Sensor, or FX in DX mode
• Announced: 2007
• ESP: US$249.95

• Focal Length: 55-200mm
• Focal Length (35mm equivalent): 83-300mm
• Maximum Picture Angle: 28°50′
• Maximum Aperture: f4.5
• Minimum Aperture: f22
• Minimum Focus Distance: 1.1m
• Maximum Reproduction Ratio: 1:3.45

Physical Specification

• Focus: Ultrasonic-type (SWM), internal focusing
• Zoom: Rotary, extends when zooming
• Aperture Blade: 7 rounded blades
• Dimension: 73.6 x 99.5mm
• Weight: 335g
• Material: Plastic barrel, metal mount
• Filter Size: 52mm

Overall, the lens may feel a bit plastic-ey as you’ll mostly see plastics and kind of light consider its physical dimension. Do avoid dropping this lens as it is a modern lens that is build to reduce weight and cost, durability got reduced also along the way.

This is Shanghai Grand Gateway Plaza (港汇广场), one of the main shopping distination in Shanghai metropolitan. These bracket of photos were all taken hand held and the end result was surprisingly pleasing to me.