Archifest Pavilion 2013, Dhoby Ghaut Green

Archifest is an annual architectural festival. The pavilion is the centerpiece of the festival and plays host to a variety of activities. This year the temporary pavilion is at Dhoby Ghaut Green, next to the MRT station. It is constructed out of what looks like building scaffolding and colored cloth.

The building in the background is the Park Mall. The MRT station and Plaza Singapura are on the right, out of the frame.

As you would expect in Singapore, the pavilion design is chosen through an open tender call.

http://archifest.sg/2013/

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

Standard setting for night building shots is f2, ISO 1600, 1/30 seconds. But the pavilion is brighter than most buildings so I decreased the exposure one stop after reviewing the first image on the camera's LCD screen.

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. 

Choa Chu Kang Chingay Celebration

Chingay celebration at Choa Chu Kang, during the end of Chinese New Year. Held at an open field near Lot One shopping centre and the Choa Chu Kang MRT station.

There are some floats parked next to the field but the celebration is mainly about the stage show. It was more a concert than a parade. The field was packed full of people. You can security personnel at the bottom left, with red shirts and green reflective stripes, keeping the crowd from spilling onto the road.

• Nikon V1, 10-30mm f3.5-5.6
• At 15mm, f4.2, ISO 1800, 1/30 seconds
• Auto-everything
• Picasa: Crop, fill light

The camera's auto exposure handled the lighting well. I later boosted the fill light one stop when editing the photo, but it isn't strictly necessary. 

Lion Dance Troupe, Packing Up

I stumbled across this lion dance troupe near Pickering Street (financial district). They performed in front of a shophouse but I found this scene of them packing up to leave, more interesting. 

You can see them hauling their huge drum up into the truck. The lion is already in the truck, rear right. Love the old-style wooden beams on the truck. Guy in red on the far left is the God of Wealth, the guy next to him is holding his head.

• Nikon V1, 10-30mm f3.5-5.6
• At 30mm, f5.6 ISO 400, 1/60 seconds
• Auto-everything
• Picasa: Straighten, crop, auto contrast, fill light

Lion Dance at The Cathay

After Chinese New Year, Lion Dance troupes perform all over Singapore, usually at commercial outlets. I think individual shop owners pay them to come. They seem to do it for themselves, for luck, not to draw customers because the performances are often during business hours on weekdays. 

I accidentally walked in on this one when on my way to watch a movie. The whole performance took about 15 minutes. I missed the first few minutes of the movie, but it was worth it.

Nikon V1, 10-30mm f3.5-5.6
At 20mm, f4.8, ISO 1600, 1/400 seconds
Auto-everything except ISO manually set to 1600
Picasa: Crop, straighten, auto contrast, fill light

Marina Bay Sands, Lunar New Year 2013

Chinese New Year decorations at Marina Bay Sands. The red thing on the left looks like the bottom-half of a Chinese lantern. It's made out of large cloth banners and is at least 10 meters across.

Rainy day on a Sunday afternoon, so the sky isn't too bright. I had some fun walking around to get different angles on the decorations. The lighted ball on the right helps to balance out the photo. If it were just the red lantern, the photo would be boring.

• Nikon V1, 10-30mm f3.5-5.6
• At 21mm, f5, ISO 1100, 1/30 seconds
• Auto-everything
• Picasa: Crop

I bought the Nikon V1 after its price was heavily discounted in December 2012. I wanted an every-day-carry (EDC) camera that was lighter than a DSLR, didn't look as intimidating (didn't scare people or security guards), but with decent image quality.

The V1 is Nikon's part of Nikon's new "mirroless" Nikon 1 system which has a 2.7x focal length crop. It's Nikon's answer to the Micro Four-thirds cameras from Olympus and Panasonic. I chose the V1 because it:

• Uses the same battery as my D7000 and D600
• Has the FT1 lens adapter that allows it to use Nikon F-mount lenses. My 55-300mm DX zoom becomes a 810mm f5.6!
• Is an underdog. When people first heard about its small sensor, most dismissed it as having poor image quality. But the high-ISO sample images on the websites looked good.

I'm happy with the V1. Turned out as I expected. High-ISO performance is better than the D80's, Nikon's top consumer 1.5x crop DSLR from not that many years ago.

Deepavali Light Up, Serangoon Road, Little India

Photo was taken on the night before Deepavali. Note the huge crowd crossing the road.  

A lot of people are now calling the celebration Diwali instead of Deepavali. I don't know why.

• Nikon D600, 28-300mm f3.5-5.6
• At 135mm, f11, ISO 6400, 1/30 seconds
• Manual exposure, center-weighted metering, auto white balance
• Picasa: Crop, straighten

For a shot like this, you want to zoom in so that the lights are compressed together due to telephoto perspective. The problem with that is that you get shallow depth of field at the telephoto end, so you need to stop down the aperture. The problem with that is that it is night, so you don't have much light.

Luckily, today's high-ISO DSLRs come to the rescue! Push to ISO 6400. No problem. Either that or use a tripod.

For uneven lighting like this, manual exposure is best. Check the exposure by playing back the image on the camera's LCD screen.

Chinatown Mid-autumn Festival Lantern Light-up

Lantern wall at Pagoda Street entrance to Chinatown MRT train station.

I spent the evening, walking around Chinatown, taking photos of the lanterns strung across the roads. My favorite photo turned out to be this one, taken as I was going home. 

• Nikon D7000, 18-105mm f3.5-5.6
• At 18mm, f5.6, ISO 6400, 1/350 seconds
• Program mode, center-weighted metering, auto white balance
• Picasa: Straighten, crop, auto contrast

ISO 6400 wasn't necessary, could have done fine with ISO 1600. I was using ISO 6400 to test how it looked. Have been using ISO 1600 for a while, am confident that the image quality is good enough. Now trying to build up some experience with ISO 6400 under different situations.

I was on manual exposure most of the time but I switched to auto because

• These lanterns were brighter than the rest of the area.
• With so many lanterns, exposure was even across the scene.
• People were walking to the escalator and I didn't want to stop and block them.

Mid-autumn Festival, Lantern Light-up, Clarke Quay, Singapore River

Celebrating the mid-autumn festival. When we were kids, we called it the mooncake festival or the lantern festival.
 
This is one of twelve 2-meter high electric lanterns, depicting the twelve animals in the Chinese zodiac. Looks like a horse. The fabric-over-wire construction is similar to the construction used in toy lanterns carried by kids during the festival. 

Outside the Central, Clarke Quay. Didn't know the light-up was so elaborate. Was there for something else, brought the lightweight 35mm f1.8 just in case I saw anything. Wasn't expecting this or I would have brought another lens.

Vacation photo trick - adjust your position so that the sign showing the name of the place, is in the background.

• Nikon D7000, 35mm f1.8
• At 35mm, f2.8, ISO 800, 1/250 seconds
• Aperture priority, center-weighted metering, auto white balance
• Picasa: Straighten, crop

Exposure was surprisingly simple. As long as you fill half or more of the viewfinder with the lights, the automatic exposure should be accurate. Should work with phone cameras too. Lots of light, so the shutter speed will be high and you won't get blurred photos. Lots of light means easy work for the autofocus too.

Qu Yuan Statue, Rice Dumpling Festival

Qu Yuan is an ancient Chinese hero, linked to the Rice Dumpling Festival. Long story ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duanwu_Festival ).

This is a temporary statue, only set up for the duration of the festival, for tourists. It's near the Albert Complex and Fu Lu Shou Complex. That's a HDB (government public housing) apartment block in the background. They're everywhere.  

• D7000, 35mm f1.8
• At 35mm, f4.8, ISO 400, 1/90 seconds
• Aperture priority exposure, center-weighted metering, auto white balance
• Picasa: Crop, auto contrast

It might have been better to open up the aperture and blur out the background.