Swordie Bloggie

Canon or Sony?… You must be thinking I’m having problem deciding what camera to choose right?… But NO, I’m not talking about camera… I’m comparing dlp projector for small conference room…. about 25′ x 30′.

The projector must be able to be mounted up-side-down from the ceiling… its going to be permanent on the ceiling so that there is no issue about borrowing and configuring it every time there is an event in the conference room. Anyways, I have not decided yet… 😛

Last Sunday, 13 February, four of us… Disney, Malcolm, Stevenson and Me went to Tuaran & Kota Belud. We have been planning for this trip since last month and we supposed to go on 6 February but unfortunately everyone has plan on that day. We also having difficulty choosing a suitable date for this trip coz of the wet season… we need to have clear sky to take the Mount Kinabalu photo… yea, that was our mission, to take the Mount Kinabalu photos.

The rainy season for almost 3 months already made it uncertain for us to go… unless we all have waterproof cameras then we don’t have to worry about the heavy rain… but still, the mountain will not be visible or clear when it rain and when clouds surround the mountain. But luck was with us on last Sunday… although it was raining the whole day on Saturday, I was surprised to see the sky so clear on Saturday night… I can see thousands of stars on the sky… no clouds… wow… 😀

I woke up around 4.15am and immediately went to prepare for breakfast… all I have to do was make a cup of tea and put the hams and sausages into to microwave oven… I have fried the hams and sausages the night before… I packed the rest of the sausages to bring along for the trip. Disney picked me up around 5.15am and met the rest at KK. We stopped at Mc Donald, Jalan Sulaman to pack breakfast coz the others have not take their heavy breakfast… I bought a cup of tea which I did not drink… but I drank it on our way home around 1.30pm.

The trip was wonderful… the sky was a bit cloudy but it was actually very hot and I received sunburned on my neck. And it was for me to test my new Canon 7D which I just received on Friday after waiting for it for almost a week 😀 That camera is damm good… my old Canon 400D and 40D looks like dinosaur… 😆 All together we stop like five times at five different places to capture the mountain… the sunrise and the clouds surrounding the mountain is very challenging.

Along the trip, we stop at one hanging bridge and saw a family bathing and washing their cloths at the river… we took the opportunity to capture their life. It was great… I feel like going back there next time and do different way to capture their life… Then we stop at Kota Belud Tamu… this is my first time here… and it also a wow… then we had our lunch at the Kota Belud Pasar Tani… the food is damm bloody tasty… and I even got a shocked when we paid for the food… for four of us, the food is just RM16… that RM4 each… In KK it will cost us more than RM25… :O

Then on the way back, we saw funny stuffs too… like excavator bathing itself… I was frozen when I saw it… can’t even lift the camera and snap the moment… then saw an almost accident… a Viva suddenly did an acrobatic in front of us by doing 90 degree and luckily manage to recover while overtaking on a bend… on a bridge… 😛 Then lastly we saw a lion dance show at Mengatal Town…

Last week I received two packages through POS Laju… one I received on Monday which I have to collect from the Post Office since I used my Postal Box as the shipping address and the second package was sent to my office since I used my office address for the shipping address.

Well, both packages are not personalized gift… it will be great if someone out there did send me these gifts… anyway, they are actually goods I bought online… well not exactly… one is purchased online and paid using PayPal and the second one is through IM and paid using Maybank2U.

The fist one is the BlackRapid’s RS-7 R-Strap camera strap bought from ShaShinKi which comes with ConnectR-2 and FastenR2. If you are not sure what are these, just Google BlackRapid. This strap helps handling the camera better.

OK, the second package was DYE’s i4 Clear Lens… this is not camera stuff but it do help in taking picture 😀 The lens is for my paintball goggle… the DYE i4. When I purchased it, it came with a Smoke Lens… tinted lens. Smoke Lens is good for playing paintball but not for taking paintball photos in the field. So, this clear lens will help me see better through the camera’s eyepiece when taking photos in the field.

Yesterday, Saturday… 3rd October 2009, I help my friend to take photos for their paint ball game at Karambunai Lagoon Park… the lagoon is part of the Karambunai Resort. The park has many extensive sport and recreational activities… kayaking, water skiing, mangrove cruise and many more… will talk about that next time 😀

This is my second time covering a paint ball game… the first one was in April for the same friend for their woodsball game at KKIP.

Last time it was held in an open space area… a site for constructing building. This time it is held in woods next to the sea… at the lagoon 😀

It is quite difficult to take photos in the woods… especially when the players are dashing behind the woods… my camera can’t lock its focus on the player…

I reach the park a couple of minutes before 10am as promised since I have to replace my 3 years old back tires before that…

The first game started before 10.30 am with a cloudy weather… but still I got a bad sunburn on my neck and both hands 😛

The second game started before 11.50 am with a bit of cloud…

And the third game started before 1.00 pm with rain… I did not enter the arena coz I don’t have rain protection for my camera.

And the third game ended in less than 20 minutes because the players’ goggles are forging… if you never wear a paint ball mask with goggles before, let me tell you how it feels… it is hard to breath underneath it… and with the cold rain, it make the goggle fogging badly inside…

And luckily I have a ponco… a thin plastic rain coat… it was given to me by Disney when we were covering the Borneo Downhill Challenge 2009 in May.

You can either swim in the lagoon or use the shower area to clean yourself… but the shower area was quite a distance from the arena… fresh water supply?… yes they do have… in fact they have many pipes without faucets around the park… it would be nice if they have it working so that guest can clean themselves without taking a long journey to the shower area.

Anyway here are some of the photos I took… will post the full album later… after I finish editing them… 😀

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I woke up this morning with flu… sneezing like mad cow. damm… I’ve finished my antibiotics and my flu is still here. This is the longest flu I had. I almost wanted to take leave coz I felt so weak… I just want to continue sleeping. But at the end, I went to work 😛

Anyway, yesterday we went to send over my friend’s faulty lens to Investline. The Canon EOS 400D body with the faulty 17-85mm IS USM lens will be send over to KL for warranty fix.

When I asked the tuakey-niong about the Canon EOS 40D package… she immediately said… oooo the Canon price dropped since yesterday… I ask how much dropped?… she said few hundreds… 😮 cool… So, I book for Canon EOS 40D with 18-55mm IS lens package… she said it will take two weeks to come… emm… now I have to hold my excitement for the next two weeks.

And at the same time, friend ordered the 55-250mm IS lens. If it comes together with my 40D, I will have a chance to play with it first 😆

Yesterday went to Gaya Street to pay my aunt’s credit card. Then had lunch at Wisma Merdeka. After that, me and friend want to send his faulty Canon EOS 400D to Investline Sdn. Bhd., but unfortunately it started raining heavily. Postpone sending it today.

We went there 2 days ago to check the camera and found out the lens, 17-85mm IS USM, is faulty. It can’t lock its AF, it takes forever to focus the AF. Even if it gets locked, the output is very bad… blur. We can’t give it that day since he did not bring the warranty card.

I did ask about the Canon EOS 40D… it going to cost about $5k++…

In my previous posting, I mentioned about the 5 MegaPixels Sony Ericsson K850i Cyber Shot Phone Camera. There is another one… it was launched a year already. This time it comes from NOKIA and it is a sliding type phone called Nokia N95… but I still don’t want this… I prefer PDA phone.

Camera:
– 5 MP
– 2592 x 1944 pixels
– Carl Zeiss optics
– autofocus
– video(VGA 30fps)
– flash
– secondary CIF videocall camera

Other:
– HSDPA / GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900
– 160 MB internal memory
– 3G HSDPA
– WLAN Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g, UPnP technology�