Mobile phone macro shots (with macro lens attachment)

Believe it or not, the orchid (Trichoglottis sp.) photo above was shot by a friend using his Iphone4 and a cheap SGD10 macro lens attachment he got from Ebay. But before you rush out and get one for your IP4, know that you’ll have more misses than hits just because it’s difficult to hold the phone steady for macro shots (applies to other small compatible phones as well). In good light however, the combo is capable of producing some decent macro shots you’d never expect from a mobile phone!

And this close up shot of a Rhinocerous beetle was taken with the same lens attachment on my Sony X10 Mini Pro.

The macro lens attaches by way of a strong magnet so it’s compatible with only a handful of phones. It can also be used with the original Samsung Galaxy Tab tablet.

Considering its very low price, wouldn’t hurt to have one in your pocket if you have a compatible phone!

Wordless Wednesday #9

Christmas chicken

Not turkey cause we no like turkey! Stuffed with mashed potato + spices. :-)

Chung Tze Seafood, Kuching

Located near RH Plaza (behind Siang Siang Cafe), BDC, this is one of our favourite chu-chau when eating out in Kuching. Food is delicious and prices are very reasonable. Lots of people during the weekends and public holidays so come early or there won’t be any empty tables left!

We often eat here and last night we had salted egg crab, lean pork with salted fish, belacan midin, Vietnam style prawns, haisiam teng and fresh coconuts.

Salted egg crab, simply crabtastic!

Vietnam style prawns (mildly spicy). This was very nice, sweet-sour, spicy, a bit like tom yam to me.

The ever-popular belacan midin, a type of jungle fern popular in Sarawak (considered one of our signature dishes along with kolo mee, Sarawak laksa, umai, terubok etc.).

The only disappointment… haisiam teng (sea cucumber soup). Bland and watery.

Yummy-licious lean pork with salted fish, we never miss ordering this when we eat here.

Almost every table was full, the outdoor tables were empty cause there was a light drizzle.

Total bill for 3 persons, RM90 on the dot. RM44 for the two crabs. Three fresh coconuts paid for separately, RM3 each.

Very satisfying dinner. :)

Night visitor (Rhinoceros beetle)

Look who what showed up on our doorstep! When I got back from dinner tonight, found this little rhinoceros beetle lying on the porch on the pet hair covered foot mat!

As a defence mechanism, the beetle gives off a hissing noise (sounds like air being let out of its abdomen) to scare off predators when disturbed, it also raises itself up on its legs to appear more menacing. My cat gave it a sniff then jumped away when the beetle hissed! Poor cat was terrified of it!

By the way, the photo above is a close crop of the upper “horn”. Took the photo with a tiny macro lens attachment (for camera phones) on my Sony X10 Mini Pro. Not bad for a cheap “toy”, ya?

Dinner at a vegetarian restaurant

A friend treated us to a vegetarian dinner at a Chinese vegetarian restaurant not too long ago. I’d never eaten in one before and I think for many in the group that night (only one true vegetarian was in the group), it was a first too. We didn’t know the names of the dishes served, neither did our host as he said the names (in Chinese) were rather elaborate and he had no idea what they meant haha :)

Yummy: this variety platter arrived in a small wooden boat. The tasty morsels disappeared pretty quickly!

However, because many of the dishes were served much like in a non-vegetarian Chinese restaurant, it wasn’t too hard to guess what they were supposed to be. Mock meats and vegetable dishes were served one after another and were really quite tasty, much to delight of all present. Was quite funny when everyone tried to guess what had just arrived on the table. If I’m not mistaken, the name of the restaurant’s Popular Vegetarian (Kuching).

This we guessed to be mock-pork served like a stew but it was steamed wrapped in plastic and foil. Some really tasty dried mushrooms in it.

Soups (either clear or starchy) are essential to any complete Chinese dinner. This one is a starchy soup resembling hai-siam (sea cucumber) soup.

This was a tricky one. But I think we eventually settled on “mock-fish”

Fried mushrooms (nice!) and a mock meat dish which we guessed to be mock-ham.

Cabbage rolls: whole cabbage leaves rolled up and stuffed with a mixture of corn, peas, mushroom etc.

Mixed vegetables
 
A tasty and “crunchy” slice of lotus fruit/seed pod sits among the other veges on the mixed-vegetable platter.


That’s one big slice of cake! - Also celebrated another friend’s birthday that evening and “forced” him to finish this big slice of cake. :)

Like in many Chinese dinners, the feast ended with the arrival of the tong-sui as dessert (we were served longans and some other fruit in syrup but it was too sweet for me).

Actually, come to think of it, the end of a feast in many Chinese restaurants is usually marked with the arrival of the scented moist paper napkins! :)) But it doesn’t mean everyone will get up and say their goodbyes, no, the evening’s only over when the bill’s paid and everyone’s done burping haha. :P

Photos were all taken with a Sony-Ericsson X10 Mini Pro.

SE Xperia X10 Mini Pro – camera and sample photos

Part 4 – Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 Mini Pro - camera



I’ve been using the mini pro all day again, only turned on my laptop to complete this entry and include the sample pictures shot with the unit’s camera. Bear in mind this is not a Sony CyberShot series phone and one shouldn’t expect the same level of image quality produced by SE phones like the C901 or C905.

The mini pro sports a fixed focal length, auto focus, 5 megapixel camera with LED flash. It is activated by pressing the camera shutter button on the right side of the unit or by pressing the camera app on the touch screen. Its closest focusing distance is about 5cm from the subject.



Controls are very limited. There is no option to set white balance, everything is automatic. There is also no way to select image size and every shot is taken at the full 5 megapixel resolution. File sizes range from 500-900kb each.

Once the camera is started, the four corners are taken up virtual buttons for flash (auto or off only, no fill flash option), video/still mode, camera mode (auto, macro, sports or twilight only) and album viewer. Once a still photo has been taken, the image is previewed on the screen. Touch the screen and a zoom bar appears, slide your finger to zoom in and out. Keep in mind the camera does not function if no micro SD card is installed (a 2GB card is included in the retail package).

In bright conditions, the camera performs well. However, it struggles to focus in poor light. The LED lamp is automatically turned on to aid focus when lighting isn’t ideal but even then, it was more misses than hits. See samples in the gallery below.

Photos can be sent from the album via email, mms, facebook or picasa. If you have a blog app like blogger-droid installed, it will also show up as one of the options in the “send photo” menu. Because the phone uses Android 1.6, bluetooth file sharing is not available. This should change when Sony releases Android 2.1 for download soon.

I found the camera’s auto white balance rather inconsistent but it’s to be expected I guess. Some shots were highly saturated whole others turned out plain flat. Overall, the camera performed as I expected and I don’t really have any complaints given what it is. It should produce more than adequate photos when I need to take quick snaps of food, sceneries or macro shots on the go.

In video mode, one can take VGA movies (640x480) recorded in MP4 format at 30 frames per second. Nothing special, but definitely nothing to complain about either from a camera phone this small. I’m not going to bother including a sample as the large file will take forever to upload on my snail-band. You can find lots of review sites that include video samples taken with the mini pro.

In the gallery below, are some sample still shots. It was slightly overcast when I shot them and most of them were taken using the macro mode. Click on each image to viewer larger size (all have been resized to 800x600).

Samples taken in good light (slightly overcast day but bright enough for camera to focus):

   

       


Samples taken in poor lighting conditions:



More sample photos (sceneries) can be seen in part one, click on the “Sony Ericsson Xperia Mini Pro” tag at the top of this post.