Christmas Decorations, Mandarin Gallery

The red lanterns are the Christmas decorations. They are LED lights that change color. I waited for the colors to cycle through one complete sequence, and decided that red was the best. I also took a few "safety" shots of the other colors just in case.

This side of Orchard Road (Ngee Ann City, etc.) is more fun to walk along (and take photos) because the pedestrian walkway is wider, compared to the other (Lucky Plaza, etc.) side. 

• Nikon D7000, 18-105mm f3.5-5.6
• At 18mm, f4, ISO 400, 1/60 seconds
• Manual exposure, center-weighted metering, sunlight (neutral) white balance
• Picasa: Auto contrast, fill light, straighten, crop

The critical element in the photo is the red lanterns. So I exposed the photo for them, made them glow but not so much that the color was washed out.

This made the floor unattractively dark, so I increased the fill light later with Picasa on my PC. Fill light works great most of the time because it adjusts the mid brightness areas, but doesn't affect the very dark or very bright areas much; unlike the brightness or contrast adjustment in simpler photo editors.

Tangs Christmas Decoration

The sign is about 10 to 20 feet high and is on the front of the Tangs building.

It's good to see a bible quote used as a Christmas decoration. I'm not religious but I'm all for not losing sight of where Christmas comes from (yes I know, Christmas is not really from the bible, but still). 

The businessman who started Tangs was a staunch Christian. Tangs was well known for being one of the few shopping centres that did not open on Sunday. The policy was changed after his children took over the running of the business. 

• Nikon D7000, 18-105mm f3.5-5.6
• At 38mm, f5.6, ISO 100, 1/4 seconds
• Manual exposure, center-weighted metering, incandescent white balance
• Picasa: Straighten, crop, warmify

Photo was taken with the camera on a tripod. With so much light, I could have boosted the ISO to 400, shutter speed to 1/15 seconds, and taken the photo handheld.

I set the color balance to incandescent because without it, the photo came out a stange-looking dark orange. But that corrected the color too much, made it colorless, so I used Picasa's warmify function to add back in some yellow.

Orchard Road Christmas Light-up 2011

The spiral decorations remind me of Tim Burton's movie, The Nightmare before Christmas.

I haven't bothered with photographing the Orchard Road light-up for years. Seemed too touristy and tacky. But I happened to be at Central and their Christmas display was pretty cool (see previous photo), so I thought I'd give the whole thing another go.

I think Singaporeans have gotten tired of images of Santa and reindeer too. Decorations are more abstract this year, which seems less tacky to me. 

The 2012 Light Up is at
http://sgsnaps.blogspot.sg/2012/12/orchard-road-christmas-light-up-2012.html

• Nikon D7000, 18-105mm f3.5-5.6
• At 105mm, f5.6, ISO 800, 1/60 seconds
• Manual exposure, center-weighted metering, sunny (neutral) white balance
• Picasa: Straighten

For most night scenes, setting incandescent (tungsten) white balance works best. It's like putting a blue filter over the lens, to counteract the too-yellow light in most night scenes.

The lights here are blue and are bright enough to neutralize a lot of the yellow light (from the sodium streetlights). I tried setting incandescent white balance and the photo looked artificially blue.

For this kind of photo, you want to collapse the overhead lights together to get a solid mass of them. This means zooming in with a telephoto focal length. Natural reaction is to place the cars in the center of the photo. You need to force yourself to tilt the camera up, so that you don't get a lot of boring empty road in the foreground of the photo.

Didn't need 1/60 seconds. Could have gone down to 1/30 seconds and ISO 400 (maybe blurred the cars a bit, but less ISO noise), but this is fine anyway.

Exposure is done by checking the LCD playback. You want to have some light from the cars and road, but without over-exposing the lights until they lose their color. In the old film days I would have metered off the road.

Christmas Display, Central (Clarke Quay)

No Santa or tree. One of the classier Christmas decorations in town. Central is the name of a shopping center at the start of Clarke Quay. 

• Nikon D7000, 18-105mm f3.5-5.6
• At 18mm, f8, ISO 100, 1/45 seconds
• Aperture priority, center-weighted metering
• Picasa: Auto contrast

Technically simple shot. Even at ISO 100 there was enough light to stop down to f8 for depth of field and image quality (many lenses are sharpest at around f5.6 to f8).

Toa Payoh Aerial View, Night

View from one of the new 40-storey HDB apartment blocks.

The tall building on the left looks like a private apartment block (the white rectangular strip near the bottom is a swimming pool). The rest of the buildings are mainly HDB government housing. 

• Nikon D7000, 18-105mm f3.5-5.6 
• At 18mm, f5.6, ISO 100, 8 seconds
• Manual exposure, center-weighted metering, incandescent white balance
• Picasa: Crop, auto contrast.

Photo taken with a tripod.

I was with a few other photographers and one of them saw my photo on the camera's LCD display. He was surprised because it looked like HDR (high dynamic range - combining a few photos, taken at different exposures, together on the PC to get a wider exposure range). It's due to Nikon's Active D Lighting setting. I set it on High all the time. Makes a big difference for photos like this. Without it, the walls of most of the buildings would be almost black, the sky too.  

Pasir Panjang Container Port Terminal

The port is run by PSA (Port of Singapore Authority). The port is huge, stretching for a lot further than what you can see here. It is near Sentosa and Vivocity. This view is from Haw Par Villa.

Photos of scenery are usually not technically demanding. You have time to take the shot and there are no fast-moving objects or fleeting expressions to capture. Though sometimes you have problems with high contrast. 

Getting good scenery photos is mainly being in the right place, and being able to recognize a good shot when you see one, even if it is just a small spot in the distance. This is why a telephoto lens is, surprisingly, useful for landscape photography. You can zoom in to interesting scenes in the distance. 

• Nikon D7000, 55-300mm f4.5-5.6 
• At 240mm, f8.6, ISO 800, 1/4000 seconds
• Program exposure, center-weighted metering, auto white balance
• Picasa: Auto contrast.

Shutter speed is too high. I was chatting with a friend at the time, wasn't paying attention to the settings. Should have used lower ISO and stepped down the aperture a bit. Photo turned out okay anyway.

Official Graffiti, 222 Queen Street

Along the side alley. This one is new, wasn't there a few months ago. I'm seeing more and more official graffiti around town, which is fun. Cars are usually a pain, spoiling the view, but this car and motorcycle add interest to the photo. 

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

Bright outdoor photo, lots of night. Flat subject, no need to worry about depth of field. Medium toned (not too white, not too black), no need to worry about exposure compensation. Technically simple shot, set everything on auto.