Go go go, guys, take your initiative to join the Eco film contest 2014

http://www.mykaffa.com/

97G, Jalan SS21/37 Damansara Utama, 47400 Petaling Jaya, SelangorTel: +6 03 - 7732 4502Email: hello@mykaffa.com

Many people seem to give Departure Lounge‘s (DL) breakfast a favourable review but again, I find myself on the opposite side of the fence. Coffee was the only reason why I wanted to try DL, and it should be yours too.
As for their breakfast, keep your expectations low because it was mediocre at best. In all fairness, maybe the food quality was better in their earlier days because a close friend of mine actually warned me (before I went) that their standard has dropped drastically.

Actually Departure Lounge came highly recommended to me not long ago by a coffee enthusiast who owns his own cafe in PJ. Besides, it is also worth mentioning that DL has trained many award winning local baristas and the list includes JH Yee who previously worked at espressoLAB and now helms the Top Brew Coffee Bar.

There is no doubt that the coffee here is fine. So DL makes a great cozy place to hang out over a cuppa with friends, or simply pick one of the many travel guidebooks and research on your next holiday destination.

DL’s ever popular Do-It-My-Way (DIMW) American breakfast is a customizable platter with your choice of 3, 5 or 7 items depending on how hungry you are. How the system works is that you pick up a card from the counter, state the the number of items and tick accordingly with an erasable marker pen. Fresh mushroom is considered an upgrade and cost extra $$. The idea is neat and all but they really need to consider replacing some of the cheap tasting stuff, especially the awful fish fingers.

Upper Deck @ RM12.90 – a very generic sandwich so I don’t get the big hoo-haa about it among some people. You can actually make this at home and it will probably taste better. Well, unless you are a completely incompetent cook.

Likes: Nice and affordable coffee, cozy ambiance, cafe concept, travel guidebooks
Dislikes: Pricey but cheap tasting food, staff hanging out at counter, lack of parking

Departure Lounge
10, Jalan Solaris 4,
Solaris Mont’ Kiara, Kuala Lumpur
Tel: 03-6203 0362
Business hours: Daily 8am-7pm

Last month's Your Best Shot finalist gallery set the bar high. We had a ton of entries in a short month, so I was surprised when this month's entries lived up to that level. There's the usual excellent mix of portraits, landscapes, black-and-white images with a few wild cards thrown in for good measure.

Check out the full gallery, then head over toour contests page and see all the chances you have to show off your great work and win great prizes. The overall winners will be featured in an upcoming issue of Popular Photography magazine

http://www.popphoto.com/gallery/your-best-shot-gallery-february-2014

when visit to Ipoh for dim sum, mostly will look for Fu Shan, but my friend recommended this 怡保明阁点心茶楼. which is more better and opposite to Fu shan.

the route my friend suggest:

點心（明閣）---->富山繞場一圈---》新源隆白咖啡---->尋找angry bird之旅---->Gunung Lang--->奇峰豆腐花--->極樂洞--->大樹腳料粉+紅豆冰---->灵仙岩，南天洞，三宝洞---》kellies castle----》芽菜雞——》水果冰～～

http://food.malaysiamostwanted.com/photos/81765/ming-court-hong-kong-dim-sum
http://food.malaysiamostwanted.com/venues/ming-court-hk-dim-sum-ipoh-jln-leong-sin-nam

最近和朋友喝茶。
朋友分享了一个蛮有特色的日本地方。
A world heritage village: Shirakawa
It's world to go in this life.
I feel that some movie is taken in this place.
damn nice.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shirakawa,_Gifu_(village)
http://lifetoreset.wordpress.com/2012/06/12/world-heritage-site-of-shirakawa-go/

KLCC景。

高空大楼。

浪漫的夜色。

尽在此，Heli Lounge Bar。

Heli Lounge Bar,

Menara KH, Jalan Sultan Ismail, Kuala Lumpur.

Tel: 03-2110-5034

Closed Sundays.

This is the economy hotel that suggested by my travel agent friend Jacky.
Hope it's nice to stay in.

这是一个很好的交流与创业平台。
曾经有个演员使用这平台成功的凑钱拍戏。
她给投资多过特定数目的投资者回报，送他们一些自己设计的礼品。
得到了大批的投资者的青睐。

‘Courage’ video contest 2014 – USD2600

http://www.aputure.com/blog/tag/aputure-video-contest-2014/

Without dreams, there can be no courage. And without courage, there can be no action.

Yes, we are stoked to announce our new video contest 2014. And the theme is…Courage. Create a 1 minutevideo with your interpretation of courage. This contest is open to worldwide and all ages. Be as creative as you like!

Videos must be uploaded to Youtube and tagged with 2014aputurevideo. Aputure professional team will select the top 10 finalists from all submissions. You would tell your friends to watch and vote for your video. We are going to be awarding top 5 winners and Aputure has rights to use the winners’ videos.

You will definitely want to get your hands on this prize! How can you say no to that?

Important Dates

• Monday, March 31st: Video Submission Opens
• Sunday, May 18th at 11:59 PM: Video Submission Ends
• Sunday, June 1st: Public Voting Opens
• Monday, June 30th at 11:59 PM EDT: Public Voting Ends
• Thursday, July 3rd: Announce Winners. Final winners determined by your last votes.

Finalist Prizes

The top 5 finalists will be named winners, awarded the following prize:

• 1 winner First Place – $1,000 prize purse consisting of Vivo Video Pack
• 2 winners Second Place – $600 (total $1200) prize purse consisting of Vivo Video Pack
• 2 winners Third Place – $200 (total $400) prize purse consisting of Vivo Video Pack

Your digital SLR (even if it’s a budget “entry-level” model) is a picture-making powerhouse. And sure, you know all about the still and video capture, burst shooting, tracking autofocus, and smart metering.

But your camera likely has additional capabilities you may not know about—features that can improve your photos and make for a more enjoyable shooting experience. You may be surprised at the clever elves lurking in your camera body.

Now for our standard weasel words: Not every camera will have all of these tricks onboard, and older models will have fewer of them than newer models. The best way to find out the deep capabilities of your camera is to read the instruction manual—backwards. Some of the most interesting stuff gets buried in appendixes or custom-function tables in the back of the book. Also read the manuals for any software included with your DSLR: Some features end up there instead of the camera manual. Happy hunting!

1. Keep the horizon horizontal with an in-camera leveling guide.

When a perfectly level horizon line is crucial to the success of your landscape, or you don't want to take your eye off the viewfinder, or you handhold your camera, a built-in electronic level rules. The leveling guide on the Nikon D3s, shown here, can be super-imposed in live view.

Even experienced landscape photographers occasionally find their horizons tilting in shots, especially when the actual horizon is uneven to begin with. Ditto for architectural shots. And while you can always straighten things out later in image editing, you will lose some of the frame edges when doing so. Enter the in-camera level, which has a great advantage over tripod and hot-shoe levels: You can see the indicator in the viewfinder, allowing you to compose and level simultaneously.

Some cameras also have a level for the pitch axis (up/down tilt). This proves useful for squaring the camera with buildings or other structures, thus avoid keystoning (also called toppling perspective).

Tip: We’ve found in-camera levels particularly useful for handheld shooting. Photographers take plenty of landscape and cityscape pictures without a tripod, after all, and these are the shots that most often end up tilted—particularly the verticals. The in-camera level lets you get it right with very little fuss.

2. Go from RAW to cooked with in-the-camera processing.
You don’t need image-editing programs to process RAW files if you have one of the many DSLRs that allow RAW-to-JPEG conversion, with image editing, right in the camera. (Most current Canon, Nikon, Olympus, and Pentax models have this ability.) Before your conversion, you can make many standard image edits, such as white balance, highlight and shadow adjustment, saturation, contrast, cropping, JPEG profile, and so on.

Cameras increasingly allow for more elaborate fixes and modifications, too, such the miniature effect or perspective correction in shots of buildings. The great part is that the processing leaves the RAW file untouched, so you can make multiple versions of the same image.

Tip: Want to travel light for a day or weekend trip? Leave the notebook computer at home and take some extra memory cards. Shoot in RAW, and convert your favorite shots during down time or while on the plane/train/bus.{C}{C}{C}{C}

3. View your pictures remotely with tethered shooting.

The tidy tethering setup above uses the TetherTools Tether Table Aero System (www.tethertools.com), which can be bundled with the shown Manfrotto 131DDB Accessory Arm and Manfrotto 496RC2 Compact Ball Head for mounting on a single tripod or other stand.

Tethered shooting isn’t limited to high-end DSLRs. You can use a computer (or TV) for playback with any DSLR that has a video-out terminal, which is virtually all of them. Playback on a big screen is a boon for studio portrait shooting or tabletop still-life work—any static situation where detail is critical.

Even better, many current DSLRs (most Canons and Nikons, and Sony Alpha 700, 850, and 900 models) allow true tethered shooting: You operate the camera using the computer, which displays a live view on the screen. (Software for this is bundled with Canons and Sonys; Nikon shooters need Nikon Camera Control Pro 2, $145, street. Or try Adobe Lightroom 3 or Apple Aperture 3; both have built-in tethering for Canon and Nikon.)

Tip: With a long cable, you can use a tethered camera for wildlife shooting in your backyard.

4. Zap dust with software using dust mapping.
Yes, your sensor shakes to remove dust, and you carefully use a blower to loosen dust from the glass plate in front of the sensor, but you may still get persistent dust spots in your photos. Many cameras allow you to map the dust spots and rid your images of them later in software.

The mapping entails photographing a blank white surface; the manufacturer’s image-editing file uses the data to fill in the dust spots by interpolation.

Tip: Continue to exercise due diligence against dirt. Change lenses carefully, and never leave a camera body or rear lens element uncapped. {C}{C}{C}{C}

5. Get steadier long exposures with combined mirror lockup and self-timer.

The Mirror Up mode, shown here on the Nikon D4, is perfect for cutting down on camera shake when shooting a long exposure on a tripod.

Even on a tripod, your DSLR can shake due to mirror slap—the vibration caused when the mirror flips up and down—so you should lock the mirror up for long exposures. It can also shake if you trip the shutter with your hand on the camera, so you should fire with a remote or the self-timer. But did you know you could stop both shakes with one control? Mirror lockup with a 2-second delayed release is found on most DSLRs in a self-timer menu or drive-mode selection.

Tip: You can use the lockup/delayed release without a tripod. Rest the camera on a steady surface, or prop your elbows on a steady surface with the camera held firmly against your face. Take a breath, trip the shutter, and hold still until the mirror drops back down.

6. Perfect your optics with lens correction.
Readers of our lens tests know that there is no such thing as a perfect lens. Even top-notch optics can produce distortion, light falloff, and soft images at some apertures. A growing number of DSLRs have built-in fixes to correct for distortion (barrel and pincushion) and corner vignetting. Some can even counteract chromatic aberration, which robs images of sharpness and causes color fringing; in some cameras, this function is part of the RAW conversion menu.

Watch out: In some cases, this function works only with the camera maker’s own lenses, not with independent optics. Tip: The lens correction option may be the default setting in some cameras. If so, you can turn it off in a setup menu. Why would you? The distortion correction can cut off some of the frame edge—or you may just want the distortion.{C}{C}{C}{C}

7. Take notes without a notebook, by using voice memos.

What is a microphone doing on the back of the Canon EOS-1Ds Mark III, below? It allows the the shooter to add an audio clip to be attached to an individual frame.

This feature allows you to record a voice clip and embed it in the image file. It eliminates the need for a notepad or handheld device for recording the stuff that doesn’t get into the EXIF data: Names of people and places, how you got to the location, hair-raising happenings, etc. (While this capability is now limited to mostly higher-end DSLRs, we suspect it will eventually migrate downwards, as most DSLRs now have built-in mics for video recording.)

Tip Use the voice clip to record info for future reference: “Come back when mist is predicted” or “Get here early for the eastern light on the mountain.

8. Take a time-lapse sequence using the interval timer.
Curiously, you used to see on-board interval timers more often in compact cameras than in DSLRs, which usually required a separate controller to make the camera shoot automatically at regular intervals. But times are changing, and more and more DSLRs include built-in intervalometers.

Creating time-lapse videos from still shots is popular these days, and some cameras will even bundle shots into a video clip for you—no video editing software needed.

Tip:Make sure your camera’s battery is fully charged before making a long sequence, or consider using an AC adaptor.{C}{C}{C}{C}

9. Go wild and crazy (or, better yet, subtle and sophisticated) with filter effects.

This image was shot on the Pentax K-01 using its in-camera HDR mode, which combines 3 exposures.

We all know these imaging effects are in there, and yes, we have called some of them cheesy and over-the-top (witness the Pentax K-5’s cross-processing effect). But you know what? They’re fun, and can be useful, too. Filters such as fisheye effect and miniature effect can add zing to city scenes when you don’t have the right lens to do it for you; soft focus can help challenged complexions; pastel or watercolor effects can tone down harsh midday light. And remember, if you shoot RAW + JPEG, you’re not stuck with the rendition—it’s applied only to the JPEG.

Tip: Preview what a monochrome rendition will look like by setting JPEG capture to b&w, then use filters such as red, green, or yellow to alter tonality.

10. Try another kind of flash memory: TTL flash-exposure lock.
Just as cameras have an exposure lock setting that lets you set exposure for one area of the scene and then recompose, many DSLRs have flash-exposure lock. You should use it similarly: When a person or other important subject will be positioned at the edge of the frame, use the lock to preset flash exposure for the subject (it uses a preflash), then recompose.

Tip Flash exposure lock works with accessory TTL flash units—on- or off-camera—as well as the built-in unit. {C}{C}{C}{C}

11. Customize images with JPEG profiles.
The Picture Style menu found on the Canon 5D Mark II allows users to customize the look of their JPG images in-camera.

Every camera maker has a different term for them, such as Picture Styles (Canon) or Picture Controls (Nikon), with setting names such as Neutral or Vivid. But we call them JPEG profiles: the specific settings (saturation, sharpness, contrast, etc.) that the camera applies to a JPEG. You can tweak each parameter individually and save them as custom profiles. A few cameras even let you save a profile to a memory card, then transfer it to another camera.

Tip: Shoot only in RAW? The manufacturer’s conversion software bundled with the camera will usually allow you to apply a profile during processing on the computer.

12. Dig out shadow detail with dynamic-range extenders.
Again, camera makers have different names for them (Nikon: D-Lighting; Sony: D-Range optimizer) but the idea is the same: gain up the shadows without boosting the highlights. (This is separate from the HDR function found on some cameras.) As with many other picture adjustments, these shadow-highlight optimizers can also be applied later with the manufacturer’s RAW software.

Tip: Don't overdo it. We’ve found that some dynamic-range boosters,if applied excessively, can also increase noise in the shadows.