Finally, it’s time to say ‘Goodbye’ to 2011, and stepping into a brand new year – 2012!  Happy New Year everyone!

2011 has been a really important year for me, as there were a lot of life-changing events come and go; Thanks god they are mostly in the good side!

As starter,  I am glad that it has been a great year for my career as a wedding cinematographer at Motion In Style,  it was also my first trip travelling to Perth, Australia to cover a wedding.  It was a totally difference experience shooting there and it certainly has taught me something new throughout the assignment.

As part of the work requirements,  I also acquired a new unit of Nikon D7000, a fantastic camera that are now one of my main choice of camera!  I love this camera’s exposure accuracy, color and sharpness!  Along with this camera, I also purchased a new carbon fiber tripod and a new tracking system for dolly scenes.

At the same time this year, I was also engaged as a state liaison by Nikon Club Malaysia, in the club, I hope to learn new skills,  meet new friends and to share my passion of photography!

btw, I am ‘married‘ finally,  in front of relatives and friends actually.  Me and Angelina actually got engaged last year on Nov 2010.  I hope to stay healthy so I can take care of my lovely wife and our future kids.

and btw… stepping into 2012 also mark the end of my 20s, and I am now 30 and I should be ‘wiser’ now and makes better decision, I hope.

and finally, my long list of resolutions & wish-list for 2012 begins with…

• Stay healthy by living a healthier lifestyle… pretty difficult for me without all the tasty food, midnight food-crave and etc
• Go honey-moon with my wife, some-where nice and cozy.
• Get myself a HD projector for those HD movie-lah…  size really does matters to me.
• Fewer works, more profit.
• Try for baby…  *wink* at my wife.

This is a true event between an ordinary Penang-girl with an extra ordinary cross cultural love story!  Guat Har, the BFF of my wife,  came from Penang island, who has been running her business in Indonesia for many years.  Has met his true love, a local boy Rachmad. Since then they fell in love and had now officially wedded!

Earlier this year,  we were invited to the engagement ceremony – ‘Akad Nikah’ session earlier this year in Penang.  As an invited guest and unofficial photographer with limited footage & photos, I’ve made a fusion short film for them.

Today, the story continued, ‘Ah An & Ah Har’,  the nick names of the couple, has chosen Corner Club at Gurney Drive, Penang to celebrate their wedding with relatives and friends from Penang & Indonesia.  Once again, we are there as a guests but this round, with a little helps from JM Sim, a cinematographer of Motion In Style crew, we present to you the fusion highlight for the dinner reception.

We hope you enjoy the film we made, and feel free to comment and share.

As part of the on going after sales support from Nikon Malaysia, I am proud to share with all of you that I am now one of the appointed Penang state liaisons for the official Nikon Club Malaysia.  Nikon Club Malaysia, or NCM will be introducing a series of workshops & activities exclusively for all Nikon users every month!

It is our great pleasure to invite all of you who love photography,  come and join us today!  Registration is very simple, what you’ll need is any serial number from a legitimate Nikon Malaysia’s product, it can be a coolpix, a DSLR or even a speedlight.

To jump start the club activities,  we had planned a series of workshops, get-together and walk-about activities for many states in the coming months.  Do check them out and feel free to join us!

If you need further help in this,  please feel free to drop me an email, or ask me in facebook.

& btw, check out the video promo shot and edited by Motion In Style crew on one of my previous workshop for Nikon D7000 & D90 held on June 2011.

& & btw, I will be sharing in a seminar in UTAR Setapak on 20th Aug 2011,  if you are interested to participate,  please check out the details here.

Dusk is one of the most amazing moment for photography and to get a good picture at this moment is pretty easy if you know your basic.  First you’ll need a steady tripod, then make sure you are familiar with your camera &  system, the more you know the better your chance at getting beautiful photos as dawn fade away very fast, especially the best duration of ‘golden hour‘ is only about 10minutes at most;  You really do not want to be wasting your time finding a feature or setting of our camera.  So,  study your manual and understand your camera before you go out and shoot!

Generally, your will be shooting with a relatively long shutter speed to get the nice colors from the horizon.  In order to get the longer shutter speed we preferred,  we will be using low ISO together with a small aperture.  In this series of photos,  I used mainly Nikon 24-120VR, Nikon 18-35 and Nikon 50 f/1.4 on a Nikon D700.  Generally I used aperture smaller than f/5.6 to f/22 on some cases.   I’ve adjusted the ISO from 100 – 1600 depend on my subjects and the motion blur effects I wanted to archive.

Attached here with some of the photos I shot from a local theme park at Queensbay, Penang, there are edited with Adobe Lightroom 3.  Please feel free to comment or share them to your friends.

&. btw,  I am planning for an intensive class of Adobe Lightroom 3 for intermediate users,  do send me an email if you are interested.

&.&. btw,  if you are looking to turn your hobby into profession, please check this out.

Thanks to TY for inviting me to film this interesting short story.  A short film about a boy day dreaming in office, about winning a contest to visit Queensland.

The purpose of the short film was to join this contest and it was all planned, shot and edited in a single day with only me and TY.

Finally I am able to take a break from the busy month of March; And before I move to a new blogs site, let me share this wedding video taken entirely on Nikon D7000 by me under Motion In Style.

This is my first visit to Lone Pine Hotel after the renovation,  the new looks is very nice with the newly added building and facility!  I really enjoyed shooting there with the ambient.

I came to know Jimmy & Yin Ming thru a wedding planner, Antz few weeks before the wedding.  Unlike my regular work flow,  I did not have the chance to personally meet the couple and have no clue on anything about the wedding plans until the the actual day!  To be honest, me and CS Low quite nervous as we do not know what will happens next.

The whole ceremony was held in the hotel, from the morning gate crashing session follow by a garden wedding and then finally with a buffet reception.

We also met and had plenty of laughter together with official photographer, Alex Tan; in which also happen to be shot ‘accidentally’ inside the footage a numbers of time.

In this filming process, beside 2 units of Nikon  D7000, we used a numbers of lenses including 50/1.4, 70-200/2.8 and some ultra wide as well.  We bring along our custom made slider, a Fly-cam 5000, a few Z96 video lights and the portable Zoom H1 mic.

As part of my new project in collaborating with CS Low for Motion In Style Cinematography.  I present to you, our 1st wedding coverage shot entirely on 2 unit of Nikon D7000!

Paired with various lenses like 50mm f/1.4, 35mm f/1.8, 70mm-200mm f/2.8, 10mm-24mm f/3.5-f/4.5 and many more.
Other gears includes the wonderful Z96 LED Light, affordable Zoom H1 Mic, custom-made dolly track & the Fly-cam 5000 system.

For better viewing experience, try download the full video before start viewing by pressing pause immediately after clicked the ‘Play’ option.

And finally, comments are welcomed and if you are interested with our wedding cinematic coverage services, feel free to talk to us at info@motioninstyle.com!

Finally I got my hand on a unit of Nikon latest DSLR, the Nikon D7000.  Basically the camera is so hot that it was sold out the moment it arrived in the local store;  I am not going to write a technical review of this camera as you can easily get a very comprehensive review from the internet such as this and this.

My 1st impression with the camera was very positive.  At a low investment like this, you get a very solid camera, with lots of features and fantastic image quality!
In this round, I was invited by G3k Photography to a shooting assignment on 2nd of Jan, 2011 in a Ballet Graduation Concert held in Dewan Sri Pinang, Penang.

Paired with a single 70-200 f/2.8 tele-lense, I set up myself on the platform with about 100m away from the main stage.  I had a hard time getting a pin-on exposure as the stage lighting was arranged in a not-photographically friendly way.  The spot-lights was badly distributed across the stage sections with a lot of colors.

I’ve have no complain on focusing with the d7000’s new module as the contrast of the subject was reasonably good there, I only used AF-S (single shot) here and no continuous-shoot.  The WB was set to Auto in this case as the lighting and color themes changed too fast for me to coup up with.  As it is really dimmed in the stage main-lighting, I had to crank up the ISO to 1600 – 2500 ranges to obtain a shutter speed of 1/160s – 1/250s at aperture of f/2.8 – f/4.

I’ve shot in full resolution jpeg in camera, and had selectively cropped to a better composition.  Minimum color treatment was done, most of the photos from this series, was basically similar to the out-of-the-camera photos.  I also noticed the default Picture Control gave a slightly more saturated colors compare to Nikon D700. So I’ve tuned down a bit in the saturation from the ‘SD’ picture control, and crank up a bit on sharpness as usual.

The performances went on for about 2 hours,  I’ve captured about 400 over shots from the series, and have selected some of my favorite to share with you in the following flash album,

>> Click here to view them now <<

As usual, comments are welcomed and please do share with your friends who might be interested to my photographs.  The photo below is a closing shot I captured using Nikon D700 & 50mm.  As from you can see, the stage was flooded with a warm yellow lights with nothing else,  I am really having a hard time shooting the performances.

Months after the short d90 video I do for fun, here I am with a brand new short video, shot entirely with a Nikon D3100 at 1080p24.  Geared with lenses like 18-55DX VR, 50mm F1.4D, 70-200 F2.8 and a 24-120VR.  Here I present to you, ‘Static . Motion’.  Have a look and feel free to comment!

Here’s a small reviews from me after using Nikon D3100 for a short while, the 2nd generation D-movie from D3100 (and D7000 also) is ways better than the old version. The rolling shutter problem is almost non-visible now.

The new expeed engine and sensor also provide a much better low light performances; the most obvious improvement I noticed is got to be the very sharp video so long that you got the right focus compare to the soft, and low detailed video from D90, D5000 and D300s.

Last but not least, I will be having a small talk on ‘video filming using SLR’ at Freezed.asia on 3rd Dec 2010 and if you are interested on the topic, feel free to join and kindly share this page to anyone who might be interested.

Thanks to Freezed.asia, I had a chance to share on Time Lapse photography with the members on 19th Nov 2010.
It was a short sharing session, and I managed to pull it through with some slides and time-lapse videos I liked.

Many thanks to all that come and support and I hope you learn something from the session.

Please check this one of the best Time Lapse video I found and shared during the sharing session,

Want to do your own time lapse but have no idea where to start?
Download my PDF guide of Time lapse photography and have a read and feel free to comment.

The club members will also be having an outing on 30th Nov 2010 for a time-lapse try out at Fly ver bridge near Komtar Penang.  For now, enjoy and stay tuned!

Updates:
The outing with the club members is a big success! I can see many videos floating in from the participants already in facebook.