River Cruise Boat, Singapore River

Electric river cruise boat. Singaporeans call these bum boats. The original bum boats used to come this very section of the river and unload cargo from ships moored out at sea. Not so long ago, up till at least the 1970s. 

Boat Quay (now mainly restaurants in the old riverside shophouses, with the skyscrapers of the financial district in the background) to the front and on the right, new Parliament House on the left. Quite a commonly photographed scene but I think not with a boat so clearly in the foreground.

• Nikon D600, 35mm f1.8
• At 35mm, f2 ISO 3200, 1/30 seconds
• Manual exposure, center-weighted metering, auto White Balance
• Picasa: Crop, auto contrast

This is what you can do with today's equipment. You can take photos in almost darkness (the boat was in deep shadow, is over-exposed in the photo by about 2 stops - 4 times) without blurring out moving objects. Very happy with the 35mm f1.8 on the D600 - light, good low light performance, covers my most widely used angle. Not as useful on the D7000 with the 1.5x focal length crop, making it a 50mm equivalent. 

Mid-Autumn / Mooncake / Lantern Festival, Bukit Panjang

Mid-autumn celebration (known to children as the mooncake or lantern festival) organized by the People's Association, at Bukit Panjang, next to the Pending LRT station. This is right smack in the middle of a government HDB housing estate. 

It's mainly a variety musical show on the stage inside the tent, but there are kids playing with lanterns outside. Most lanterns are now battery-powered for safety, instead of candles.

• Nikon D600, 35mm f1.8
• At 35mm, f2 ISO 1600, 1/30 seconds
• Manual exposure, center-weighted metering, auto White Balance
• Picasa: Crop, auto contrast, auto color, fill light

I'm now trying out the DX (cropped sensor) 35mm f1.8 lens on my D600 (FX full frame DSLR) as an FX lens. One website tested the 35mm f1.8 DX against the old 35mm f2 AF-D FX lens and found the DX lens sharper even at the corners. Theoretically, the DX lens shouldn't be able to cover the entire FX image sensor area, but it does. Vignetting (dark corners) is minimal, often not noticeably. You can crop out the dark corners with a photo editor and lose less than 5 percent of the photo width.