Mandarin Gallery, Orchard Road

High-end shopping centre. Opposite The Heeren, near Cineleisure. There's no big entrance in the front, no fast food restaurants. Think that all malls are the same, with the same chain stores? Take a look inside. You'll find a lot of specialty shops that you've never seen before. 

I find it easiest to get in through the escalator in the front, and get out the same way. I've tried getting out through the ground floor and have gotten lost. 

• D7000, 18-105mm f3.5-5.6
• At 18mm, f4, ISO 800, 1/15 seconds
• Manual exposure, center-weighted metering, auto white balance
• Picasa: Crop, fill light.

At 18mm, the image stabilization of the kit lens allows you to handhold at 1/15 seconds, probably down to 1/8 too. But it doesn't help with movement in the scene. You can see that the pedestrians are a bit blurred out.

There are very bright and very dark areas in the photo. Difficult for the camera to know what to expose for. This is why manual exposure is best for night shots. Set manual exposure, maximum aperture, slowest shutter speed you can handhold safely, then increase ISO until the photo in the LCD playback looks okay. As a starting point for the exposure, meter off the floor. 

I would have preferred to shift the photo more to the left to get more of the trees into the photo, but there's a lot of clutter on the ground that would have been distracting.

Guide to Nikon 18mm Kit and Other Standard Zoom Lenses

If you're starting out in photography, you're likely to buy an entry-level DSLR bundled with a "kit" zoom lens. After using the kit lens for a while, you might be tempted to upgrade to another zoom lens. The questions are: should you, and which lens?

We'll look at the main Nikon "standard" zoom lenses (not super telephoto, not ultra-wide), lenses with focal lengths starting from around 18mm. These are general-purpose lenses, good for many types of photography.

House of Tan Yeok Nee

Old mansion (1882) in the heart of the city: Clemenceau Avenue and Penang Road, near Orchard Road and the Dhoby Ghaut MRT station. Many people will remember it as the Salvation Army's headquarters. It now houses the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business ( http://www.chicagobooth.edu/visit/singapore/index.aspx ).

The Preservation of Monuments Board has details ( http://www.pmb.sg/?page_id=182 ). The building in the background is the Visioncrest Residence, a private condominium.

• D7000, 18-105mm f3.5-5.6
• At 50mm, f5.6, ISO 400, 1/125 seconds
• Program exposure, center-weighted metering, auto white balance
• Picasa: Crop, auto contrast, shadows (photo was over-exposed, not sure why, scene isn't high contrast)

Had to crop tightly to cut out a lot of distracting junk: traffic light, lamp post, pedestrians. Standard urban problems. Cropping photos is an important part of editing. Lots of photos that I see on Facebook, would be greatly improved by some simple cropping.

When you're taking a photo, you don't want to zoom all the way in, even if you have a zoom lens. Best to leave some margin around the edges. This gives you flexibility to decide the final crop later, when you have time to slowly think about it. With today's DSLR's going above 12 megapixels, you've got megapixels to burn. A standard PC monitor is only about one megapixel, HDTV is two megapixels, digital cinema is two to nine megapixels ( http://cinema.emilanderic.com/digitalprojection.aspx?id=7&mname=Digital%20Projection ).

Amphitheatre, Dhoby Ghaut Green

Located behind the Dhoby Ghaut MRT station (Park Mall side), this partly-sunken aluminum structure is easy to miss unless you walk behind the MRT station. It's designed around overlapping curves. There's a stage and seats and everything, available for rent from National Parks, for outdoor performances and private functions.

Developed by the URA (Urban Redevelopment Authority), it was designed by Mr Chan Soo Khian of SCDA Architects Pte Ltd ( http://www.mnd.gov.sg/mndlink/2010/2010_Jan/URA_article.htm ).

You can see the School of the Arts (SOTA) in the left background, and the Rendezvous Hotel in the middle background. 

• D7000, 18-105mm f3.5-5.6
• At 30mm, f5.6, ISO 400, 1/125 seconds
• Program exposure, center-weighted metering, auto white balance
• Picasa: Crop, auto contrast

Not much color in the photo. I'd normally wait for a blue sky or evening lights, but I think that the curved structure is interesting enough to stand on its own, without needing color to make it interesting.
 
I've started to use the kit zoom lens as my main lens. With the superb high-ISO performance of today's DSLRs, and the optical quality of consumer zooms, you rarely need a large-aperture prime lens, let alone an f2.8 "professional" zoom. And the Nikon 17-55mm f2.8 isn't stabilized (Canon's is).

You need a prime lens more at the telephoto end, so put a 50mm f1.4 or 85mm f1.4 on a second body, and you're set for most indoor situations, with 4x the light sensitivity of a f2.8 zoom.

Muzium Cafe, Bali Lane

The cafe is located in a row of old shophouses in the Kampong Glam area, near the famous Sultan mosque. This is a view of an alley next to the cafe, which is used as an alfresco dining area by the cafe. "Muzium" means "museum" in Malay. Malaysia's National Museum in Kuala Lumpur, is called Muzium Negara.

I'm just a sucker for bright colors. Haven't tried the food here, but there are blogs with reviews ( http://orionstar.wordpress.com/2010/12/05/saturday-evening-at-the-muzium-cafe/ ).

• D7000, 12-24mm f4
• At 12mm, f4.8, ISO 400, 1/350 seconds
• Program exposure, center-weighted metering, auto white balance
• Picasa: Crop, auto contrast, fill light, graduated tint fake blue sky

I don't use the wide angle zoom much, but I knew that the buildings here were quite crowded together, so I brought it along. The 35mm lens wouldn't have been able to do justice to the building.

Steeple of Cathedral of The Good Shepherd

The Cathedral of the Good Shephered ( http://www.veritas.org.sg/parish_detail.php?OrganisationID=1 ) is near City Hall MRT. It's over 150 years old. This isn't the biggest church in Singapore, but a Catholic told me that a cathedral isn't necessarily a big church. It's where the Bishop's (or Archbishop's) residence is ( http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01691a.htm ).

• D7000, 35mm f1.8
• At 35mm, f2, ISO 1600, 1/60 seconds
• Aperture priority exposure, center-weighted metering, auto white balance
• Picasa: Straighten, auto contrast

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.