Wishing my Chinese readers a very Happy Chinese New Year and Gong Xi Fa Cai!
I expected January to pass quickly due to Chinese New Year being at the end of the moment and pass quickly it did! However I did manage to do three (3) Chinese New Year menu reviews at some of the top five (5) star hotels in the country as well as some four (4) Valentine’s Day reviews including one really really premium dinner at BABE – Japas Fun Dining in Damansara Heights.
For the third year running I’ve also compiled a list of Valentine’s Day restaurant dinner sets/ promos for restaurants in the Klang Valley, Penang and beyond. To those of you who celebrate Chinese New Year, here’s wishing you Gong Xi Fa Cai!
If you’ve been following my exploits over the past year, you’d probably know that I attend Glenlivet Guardians events on a regular basis. The final one for 2016 was titled “Toast & Smoke” and was held at Hacha Mecha at TREC Kuala Lumpur on 29 December 2016.
With my partner in crime – the sweet (looking) ElaineFor this tasting, The Glenlivet expressions were paired with cigars!
Can’t wait to see what The Glenlivet has in store in 2017!
Photo credits: Glenlivet Malaysia and author’s own
Panasonic Lumix G85K
In December, the guys from Panasonic Malaysia passed me their latest Lumix G Camera DMC-G85K to play with. The G85K is designed for outdoor shooting in mind, with a weather-sealed splash/dustproof compact body and kit lens as well as Dual Image Stabiliser for crisper, clearer images in difficult or fast-moving environments. The 5-Axis Dual I.S.2 (Image Stabiliser) combines body and lens stabilisation to gain more powerful handshake correction and compensates shots up to 5 F-Stops. The 5-axis stabilisation works in both wide and telephoto photography and motion picture recording including 4K Video.
With the AV and DI world moving towards 4K content, it’s no surprise that the Lumix G85K is equipped with a 4K PHOTO feature that allows users to capture the perfect moment by selecting a frame from a video sequence (shot at 30fps) in camera, and saving it as an individual high-res image. For still photography, the G85’s 16-megapixel Digital Live MOS sensor with no low pass filter helps users capture sharper images with more detail as you can see from my photos below.
In good lighting, the level of detail is absolutely stunning! Mind you that I only shoot at Medium size JPEG and I’ve already resized and compressed this photo to save space.The touch to focus/ capture on the live view LCD screen is another very useful feature especially when I was shooting macro picsReally loved using the camera for food photography even though I was only using the kit lens which has a maximum aperture of F3.5
In good lighting, this camera is simply brilliant. But the true test is in poor lighting conditions. How would the G85K perform?
Not bad for a kit lens with a max aperture of F3.5Depth of field using a F3.5 aperture lens? Yes not too bad although of course it can’t match the larger aperture lens.
OK enough photos of food! Here’s a photo of the Chinese New Year decorations at Pavilion Kuala Lumpur when I was there for Carlsberg’s CNY launch recently.An interior shot of Celestial Court Chinese Restaurant in Sheration Imperial KLMe with Evonne at the entrance of Celestial CourtIt must say that it metered pretty well even in uneven lighting conditions such as this pic which was shot at Ruyi & Lyn in Bangsar Shopping Centre.Joyce with the yee sang during the CNY review at Dynasty Chinese Restaurant at Renaissance Kuala Lumpur HotelCandy with Chloe at Pearl’s weddingGirls just love the smooth skin portrait modeA shot with lots of backlight
I normally shoot on fine medium sized JPEG setting to save space however for Louise and Kevin’s wedding I knew I’d have to shoot from afar so I set to large size JPEG instead and snapped this shot at maximum zoom from about 25′ away then cropped it. Not the best shot as Kevin’s face was blocked but I wanted to show how clear the photos can be even from a distance.The vari-angle live view LCD came in very handy for this shot as I didn’t have to bend down to snap it.
And finally, a handheld night landscape shot from the balcony of BABE in Damansara Heights. It was actually much darker in reality than it looks in the photo (I didn’t increase the brightness in post-editing). Would probably have been much better if I had a tripod or some sort of stand but unfortunately I just didn’t have one there with me.
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