Singapore Cricket Club, International Rugby 7s

You don't see much rugby in Singapore, which is a pity. It certainly has more action than soccer. It's like a combination of soccer and wrestling.

The event was held at the historic Padang ("field") in the center of town.
 

• Nikon D7000, 55-300mm f4.5-5.6
• At 280mm, f5.6, ISO 220, 1/1000 seconds
• Manual exposure with auto ISO, center-weighted metering, auto white balance
• Picasa: Crop

This is one of the few times when I used auto ISO. Most of the time I'm shooting indoors or outdoors at night, where it's more convenient to go to full manual (including manual ISO) because of the tricky lighting.

I set the exposure to manual because I knew what shutter speed and aperture I wanted (1/1000 seconds to freeze the action - you rarely need a higher speed, f5.6 as a good compromise aperture for getting enough in focus while still blurring out the background - which is why I left the heavy 70-200mm f2.8 at home) and let the camera adjust the ISO automatically.

This way, you get to use low ISO when the sun is out (for less electronic noise in the image), higher ISO only when the clouds come out (and they did). 

Singapore Karting Championships 2012

Photo was taken during the afternoon practice session. The actual race is at night. It's held at the Formula One pit-stop building next to the Singapore Flyer, but the track is a lot smaller than the F1 street track. 

http://www.skc.sg/

• Nikon D7000, 55-300mm f4.5-5.6
• At 300mm, f11, ISO 800, 1/2000 seconds
• Aperture priority, center-weighted metering, auto white balance
• Picasa: Crop, straighten, auto contrast

There's a lot of distracting clutter on the race track. You want to isolate the drivers by zooming in and cutting out the background. It's a bonus if you can add some interesting geometric patterns as well.

Stopped down lens aperture to get more depth of field, a common problem when using telephoto lenses. Telephoto perspective compressed the apparent distance so it looks like he his tightly squeezed in between the plastic barriers. 

With the 1.5x crop of the D7000, effective focal length of the 300mm lens is 450mm. And that still wasn't enough for me to "zoom in" as much as I wanted. Cropping the photo on the PC, pushes the effective focal length to about 1000mm, leaving only a quarter of the megapixels in the image. It's times like this that you really make use of the megapixels in today's cameras. 

First Red Bull Flugtag 2012 Singapore

This is the first Red Bull Flugtag ("flying day") in Singapore. Participants make crazy contraptions and attempt to glide them off a ramp into the sea.

This entry is from Singapore Polytechnic. Wings look weak to me. If you've seen video footage of the flights, you'll notice that most of the time the wings break off in flight. 

The glider is being pushed up the ramp to the launch point. Somehow, the scene reminds me of the Pacific Island Cargo Cults after World War II. 

This is right at the end of Siloso Beach, near the Rasa Sentosa hotel.

• Nikon D7000, 55-300mm f4.5-5.6
• At 116mm, f11, ISO 100, 1/1000 seconds
• Aperture priority, center-weighted metering, auto white balance
• Picasa: Crop, auto contrast, fill light

With a telephoto lens, default aperture is f8 or f11 for usable depth of field. Which means that you don't need a big, heavy and expensive f2.8 telephoto lens for outdoor use (that's an indoor lens). Today's "consumer" lenses are excellent performers, giving you quality optics at a low price. Don't you just love capitalism?

Telephoto applications is one area where the cropped sensor DSLRs have an advantage. On the D7000, a 300mm lens is equivalent to 450mm on a full frame camera.
 
Access is everything in photography. Without an access pass, I wandered around outside the barricaded security area and managed to find this unblocked view of the ramp. Couldn't get a good view of the launch point to photograph the actual flight. Much of the crowd was watching on large video screens instead. 

Lion Dance

Sar Kong Mun San Fook Tuck Chee lion dance troupe.
http://www.sarkong.org/

Lots of lion dance troupes in Singapore. You see them performing at shops and riding around in trucks with colorful banners, especially during Chinese New Year. Head towards the sound of drums, that's the best way to find them.

• Nikon D7000, 85mm f1.4
• At 85mm, f1.4, ISO 100, 1/1000 seconds
• Aperture priority, center-weighted metering, sunlight white balance
• Picasa: Auto contrast, fill light.

Set maximum aperture to blur out the spectators in the background.

The orange uniforms are fluorescent in real life. Couldn't capture that properly with the digital camera.

NTUC Income Kite Festival

I don't know why NTUC Income, an insurance company, organizes a kite festival; but I couldn't resist the chance of taking photos of colorful kites in front of the iconic Marina Bay Sands.

The festival itself is on the Marina Promenade, which is across the bay, a few hundred meters from the Marina Bay Sands. The main area shown here is for the general public. Another area is for invited, professional, kite flyers. 

I was interviewed by a local journalist, who was going around asking people why they were there. I told her that I just came to take photos. 

• Nikon D7000, 18-105mm f4-5.6 
• At 30mm, f16, ISO 400, 1/250 seconds
• Manual exposure, center-weighted metering, auto white balance
• Picasa: No editing 

Manual exposure because the sky was back-lit by the sky, f16 for depth of field, ISO 400 to allow f16 and is pretty much my default ISO for outdoor daylight.

It's difficult to get a nice mass of kites in a photo. They just have to fly up a bit and they are too small to be interesting. You also can't get too many kites in one place because the lines will get tangled up.

Night Festival

Organized by the National Museum with some involvement from SMU (Singapore Management University) and SOTA (School of the Arts). This is the crowd watching the live concert on the SMU campus. Green pattern on the floor is from a projector. 

• Nikon D7000, 18-105mm f4-5.6 
• At 18mm, f3.5, ISO 6400, 1/45 seconds
• Program exposure, center-weighted metering, auto white balance
• Picasa: No editing 

Could have gone down to ISO 1600 or 3200 but I wanted to test the ISO 6400. I usually use manual exposure for night shots due to the uneven lighting, but this scene was relatively evenly lit and I was confident that auto would work.

Istana Grounds

The Istana ("palace" in Malay) is the official residence of the President of Singapore. It is located at the end of Orchard Road, near Dhoby Ghaut MRT station. The grounds and part of the main building are open to the public on most public holidays. 

This is the view looking back towards the main gate, and Dhoby Ghaut MRT station. Plaza Singapura is out of sight, hidden behind the trees on the left. The grounds are huge, this is less than half of it. Note the blue shade at the bottom left. That's for the policeman standing guard.

Photo was taken during the recent Hari Raya public holiday.  This is at about 10am. There were a lot more people later.

• Nikon D7000, 18-105mm f3.5-5.6
• At 105mm, f5.6, ISO 100, 1/350 seconds
• Program exposure, center-weighted metering, -1 exposure compensation, auto white balance
• Picasa: Auto contrast

I don't usually use exposure compensation, but the camera consistently over-exposes when metering grass or trees. 

The couple on the right is important for adding balance and interest to the photo. The rest of the people are too small to be interesting.

Concert at Fort Canning Green

Government-sponsored rock concert, Orange Ribbon Campaign (for racial harmony), featuring various local acts.

It's the colored tents at the back that make the photo work. The tents were snack food stalls. I was only there for a few minutes. The lady was singing a slow version of Billy Jean. You can just make her out on the stage with her guitar.   

Fort Canning Green is right behind the National Museum. It is administered by National Parks ( http://www.nparks.gov.sg/cms/index.php?option=com_visitorsguide&task=parks&id=16&Itemid=73 ).

• Nikon D7000, 18-105mm f3.5-5.6
• At 18mm, f3.5, ISO 3200, 1/15 seconds
• Manual exposure, center-weighted metering, incandescent white balance
• Picasa: Crop

For dark scenes like this, set to wide-angle to reduce apparent camera-shake and to get maximum aperture from the lens. Shutter speed was set to 1/15 seconds as this is about slowest I can hand-hold safely (1/8 seconds sometimes works but less reliably). Increased ISO until exposure was correct, checking against the playback on the LCD screen.  

School Band at One Fullerton

Not sure which school these kids are from. There were maybe five to ten different school bands on this Saturday afternoon. At least two played Smoke on the Water. 

This is only a few meters from the Merlion. Marina Bay Sands is in the background. Most of the bay is blocked by the Singapore River Cruise booth.

• Nikon D7000, 18-105mm f3.5-5.6
• At 25mm, f5.6, ISO 400, 1/1500 seconds
• Aperture priority, center-weighted metering, auto white balance
• Picasa: Straighten, crop, fill light, auto contrast, color temperature. 

Should have stopped down the aperture a bit for more depth of field, but there's still lots of depth of field at f5.6 at 25mm. Adjusted color temperature to make the yellow sunset (5:45pm) reflecting off the hotel windows, more noticeable.

Urban Sketchers, Tiong Bahru

Urban Sketchers ( http://www.urbansketchers.org/ ) is an international non-profit organization, "dedicated to raising the artistic, storytelling and educational value of location drawing, promoting its practice and connecting people around the world who draw on location where they live and travel."

There are urban sketchers in London, Barcelona, New York, San Francisco, Lisbon, Singapore and Seoul. This photo is of a free expedition, open to the general public, at Tiong Bahru. It's a back alley, amongst low-rise residences built by the old Singapore Improvement Trust (SIT, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singapore_Improvement_Trust ).

• Nikon D7000, 18-105mm f3.5-5.6
• At 105mm, f5.6, ISO 100, 1/125 seconds
• Program exposure, center-weighted meter, auto white balance
• Picasa: Straighten, auto contrast

Telephoto perspective was used to compress the spread-out group of people, allowing more people to be captured, without making individuals too small to be interesting. The photo covers about 20 to 30 feet from left to right, you can see the backdoors of 4 residences in the wall. 

SDP (Social Democratic Party) Election Rally, Jelapang

Taken from the public corridor of the top (17th) storey of a nearby HDB flat. I was prepared to go down a floor if any of the residents there objected. Instead, one lady saw me through her gate (she left the main door open) and asked me if I wanted a stool. Surprisingly, I was the only one at the top. I was expecting a crowd. 

Stage is the red rectangle on the left. Blue blob at the top is the media platform with a bunch of cameras. Diagonal line at the bottom is the LRT track. You can see a portable toilet next to the pillar at the bottom. Guys in fluorescent green are policemen in raincoats. Light rain, so everyone was under an umbrella or using the LRT track as shelter.  

• Nikon D7000, 35mm f1.8
• At f2.8, ISO 800, 1/30 seconds
• Manual exposure, center-weighted metering, auto white balance
• Picasa: Crop, auto contrast

PAP Election Rally at Choa Chu Kang Stadium

I'm estimating 5,000 people, less than half a football field. People brought their kids, took photos of them, like it was a family outing. I think many were just curious. Supposed to start at 7pm but most people came later. Actually started at 7:45 and lasted for two hours. Maybe 1/4 of the people left before 9pm.

I asked a policeman there if I could take photos. He said yes, "for personal use." So I asked if it was okay to post the photos on the Internet. He smiled and said that he had no authority to say, and walked away.

You can just make out parts of the PAP's (People's Action Party) logo on the flags, in case you were thinking that this was a crowd from another event and that I was making the whole story up.

• D7000, 35mm f1.8
• At f4, ISO 800, 1/125 seconds
• Manual exposure, center-weighted metering, auto white balance
• Picasa: Crop, auto contrast

Had to hold the camera above my head to get a good overview shot. Found out that it is harder to hold the camera steady this way. Normally 1/60 seconds is good enough but I had to go to 1/125. Stopped down to F4 for increased depth of field. Luckily it was bright, so I only had to go to ISO 800.

Posters for General Elections

This is outside the LRT station. Only saw about 10 posters and banners total, along a 600 meter stretch of road. A lot fewer than Malaysia.

PAP (ruling party, Lee Kuan Yew's party) didn't even put their name on the poster. Everyone knows their logo (same colors as Malaysia's DAP's "rocket", similar shape too). SDP (Social Democratic Party) was careful to spell out their name in three languages (Chinese, Malay, and Tamil but not English), plus give their URL. 

• D7000, 35mm f1.8
• At f2.4, ISO 100, 1/60 seconds
• Program exposure, center-weighted metering, auto white balance
• Picasa: Crop, auto contrast

Humanism Talk at HackerSpace Singapore

Talk given by a member of the Humanist Society Singapore
(http://www.humanist.org.sg/) at HackerSpaceSG (http://hackerspace.sg/).

The Humanist Society is sort of an atheist group (though they might disagree with this characterization). This was a talk about death, given by a Medical student. 

HackerSpace is a loosely affiliated international group of hangouts for geeks (they might also disagree with this characterization). It's set up in the top floor of an old double-storey shophouse, along Bussorah Street, near Arab Street. The staircase is behind the white waist-high partition behind the speaker.  

• Nikon D80, Sigma 20mm f1.8.
• At 20mm, f5.6, 1/15 seconds, ISO 1600.
• Manual exposure, center weighted metering, incandescent white balance.
• Picasa: Neutral color picker, auto contrast.

Singapore Film Society Screening, China Square Central

• Nikon D80, Sigma 20mm f1.8.
• At 20mm, f2, 1/15 seconds, ISO 1600. 
• Manual exposure, center weighted metering.
• Picasa: Increased fill light one stop.

This is from 2010. The Singapore Film Society used to screen outdoor movies every month, free. This year, they've moved indoors, to the Library at Esplanade. They screen local Singaporean and Asian movies, and often have the director or actors for a Q&A after the movie. 

Movie hasn't started yet, in case you're wondering why the screen is blank. Movie is Muallaf (The Convert), directed by the late Yasmin Ahmad. Lead actress Sharifah Amani came from Malaysia, for the Q&A. Thoughtful, atmospheric movie, lots of dialog (a bit like Before Sunrise in that way, though it's a different kind of movie), not preachy (a lot of local movies are). Definitely a cut above the average.

It's 7:35 pm, bright enough for some color in the sky. Blue ring in the middle is a fountain, I think. China Square Central is a group of retail buildings in the middle of Chinatown, built around the open space that you see in the photo. Lots of restaurants. Building immediately behind is South Bridge Court. Buildings behind that are HDB public housing, yes they're everywhere.