Bugging around my place...

Well, I had some time today, so out came my D300, AFD105mm, SB-800, Manfrotto tripod, 454 focusing stage, DG-2 eyepiece magnifier, DR-3 right angle finder and a third party 10-pin shutter release. 5 minutes later, across the road at Choa Chu Kang Way I was bugging away.

This is a short record of some of the bugs I saw over a period of just under 1 hour.

It was a spider day.


St Andrew's Cross Spider Argiope versicolor.


Golden Orb Web Spider Nephila maculata.


Red Silver Spider Argyrodes flavescens.

References:
1. Guide to Common Singapore Spiders by Joseph K H Koh
2. Frank's Photo Essay by C. Frank Starmer.

Photography - DX lens used as FX

Background

There has been raging debates if DX lenses are doomed, some postulating that some years down the road all DSLR would be FX and purchasing DX lenses are bad decision. I do not think so, as there are definite advantages DX have over FX, mostly in the size, cost and performance departments (DX taking only the central part of the FX frame and thus uses the sweet spots of most lenses, even film lenses).

Along the way there has been many photographers who had tried and see if DX lenses could actually provide FX coverage. The answer to this question is maybe, some lenses would cover the FX frame at certain focal lengths, others won't.

Over Christmas I had a brief opportunity to play with a D3 that belongs to my brother-in-law and took the opportunity to test this out on my Tokina ATX DX AF 10-17mm f/3.5-4.5 fisheye zoom lens. And for the heck of it, I also tested the Nikkor AFS DX 35mm f/1.8G. Do they work on FX? See the pictures for answers.

All photographs: Nikon D3, NEF file processed using default setting on Adobe Photoshop Elements 6.0. Can't remember if I did any sharpening, probably did on "process multiple file" with "sharpen" selected. Exif data should be intact.

Click on photos to view full size image.

Tokina 10-17mm

10mm - extreme vignette

13mm - serious vignette

14mm - vignette still visible

15mm - FX coverage

16mm - FX coverage.

Nikon AFS DX 35mm f/1.8G

Close focus - no apparent vignette

Normal focus distance - vignette is apparent.

Conclusions

The Tokina ATX DX AF 10-17mm f/3.5-4.5 fisheye zoom will cover FX from 15mm onwards. Whether the performance is up to par is different question. My current position without doing pixel peeping is to keep the lens for FX use and decide later if it is good enough, when I get my FX camera anyway.

The Nikkor AFS 35mm f/1.8G is a curious case - it just about covers FX for normal use. In fact I think there will be those who will use this on FX as a matter of fact, like those who would introduce vignette intentionally in their photos. My guess is that Nikon could have made a FX lens out of this DX design without incurring much cost, I would say 10-20% increase in cost would have made this an FX lens. Again its FX performance might be suspect - can cover FX doesn't mean it is good for FX. This I will need to test another day - when I have access to another FX body.

Diving Pulau Weh, Aceh, Indonesia, January 2010

Background

I first learned about Pulau Weh from a good friend and published diving photographer David Lim a few years ago. Having seen many good photographs of the underwater environment at P Weh, I was attracted but somehow dissuaded by the lack of easy access then. In November 2009, I started thinking about the next dive trip with my daughter Ruth, and found out that we could get there through Air Asia via Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. So P Weh became a very real option, and when both Eric and Song suggested independently that I should go to P Weh, it became a reality.

Reactions

When I told my friends we were going to Aceh for diving, the reactions were typically “You’re not afraid of the earth quakes, tsunamis?”, “Safe or not?”.

While at Banda Aceh Vincent Chong (of Pulau Weh Dive Resort) brought us around to visit two remnants of the December 2004 Tsunami – a big generator ship that had landed about 4 km in land, and a boat on top of a house, also about that distance from the sea. Other than that, there were no sign of the tsunami anywhere else, rebuilding seems fairly complete. Life appeared to be bustling.

Getting There

We flew Air Asia Singapore-Kuala Lumpur-Banda Aceh. Just note that Air Asia is a point-to-point budget airline, so leave plenty of time to go through immigration, collect your bags and check-in again. Also note that Air Asia is known to be very fond of changing its schedule, we got our Banda Aceh in-bound flight delayed by an hour, and out-bound brought forward by 2. We ended up with long airport lay overs. It could have easily been the other way around, so it is advisable to allow 3 hours for transit time.

Pre-booking for luggage is necessary, and the 15-kg per bag is enforced strictly. They were, however, less stringent on hand carries, so I took out my twin strobes in shoe bags (so they thought were shoes) and we made the weight limit.

There is a little-known fact that there is a clause on sports equipment max 15 kg for something like RM40, way cheaper than RM15 per kg excess charges (S$9/kg). Check that out if you're over the weight limits.

Accommodation and transfer
PWDR is as at January 2010 building its resort at a beach a short boat ride away from the current dive centre. For this trip, we put up at Nagoya Inn at Sabang, the "Kota" (city) of Pulau Weh. Said to be the best accommodation available at Sabang, Nagoya Inn is by Singapore standards basic, but clean and comfortable. Wifi broadband, a neccessity for many, is available at Nagoya Inn.

Each morning we would transfer to PWDR via a short car ride, then a 10-15min speed boat ride. We would spend the whole day based at the dive centre, making short speed boat rides to the dive sites, usually between 15 and 25mins away by speed boat. The whole day depends on whether we would be doing night dive, in which case we would arrive at Nagoya Inn passed 9pm.

Diving

Diving around P Weh is relatively easy, although there are a few sports with pretty strong currents (Arus Balee or "bastard's current" is one of them). Much of the dive sites are unspoilt, I did not see evidence of dynamic fishing, although at Pulau Rubiah there were some signs of tsunami damage.

Several prominent features come to mind for diving at Pulau Weh:

• there were millions of colourful anthias swimming all round.
• the seafans were large and the seafan gardens big.
• there was an abundance of moray eels, many of them very large.
• large fishes were seen in abundance, we swam regularly with big trevally, jacks, coral groupa, etc
• at many spots there were large schools of colourful powder blue surgeon fish, collared butterfly fish.
• the wrecks at Sabang Jetty were surprisingly rich in marine life.
  

It was said that given the right season you could dive with manta ray, mola mola, and a number of exotics. I guess we were here "out-of-season". Nevertheless, the large number of colourful fishes during all dives (except the muck dives at Hot Spring and Sabang Jetty) was a refreshing change from many other places that I have visited in the past few years.

Oh did I mention the food at PWDR was very good!

Pulau Weh is definitely worth a visit for diehard divers!

The 3 Stooges: 3 moray eels sharing a crevice

All photographs on this page: Fujifilm S2Pro, Tokina ATX 10-17mm f/3.5-4.5 FE, Ikelite Housing, Ikelite DS-160, DS-125 strobes.

Dive Operator

Pulau Weh Dive Resort

KL office :32-1, Jalan Putra Indah 9/1D, Putra Heights, Subang Jaya Selangor, Malaysia

Indonesia Office : Lot 108, Pantai Iboih, Pulau Weh, Provinsi Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam,Sumatra Indonesia.

Tel / Fax: +603-5636 1176

H/P: +6016-330 3383, +6019-664 3318,

+6016-210 2267, +62819 3233 2328

Website

Others mentioned

Eric of Ocean2U helped arranged the diving trip.

Song of Oceanic Focus where I get most of my underwater photographic supplies.

Other dive operators

There are a number of other dive operators on Pulau Weh, with whom I have no experience so I would not comment.