The biggest appeal of diving to me is the calmness I get when underwater, listening to nothing but the breath that I take and the bubbles flowing out from the regulator, the sense of weightlessness and the ability to move about without restriction in 3 dimension. It is a form of freedom you never get on land.
The magnificent seascape and underwater creatures, well, they are just a huge bonus. While no picture can convey that sense of liberty, here are some underwater pictures I took from various dive sites at Similan Islands.
My gears were Olympus E-PL3 with the underwater housing coupled, Inon UWL 100 & Dome port, and a single Sea & Sea YS-01 external flash.
swim through, Deep Six
I logged 14 dives over 4 days of diving living aboard M/V Vilai Samut operated by Liquid Adventure. (previous year experience here). The boat departs from Khao Lak at night, so night one started before day one. The sites we went to were:
Day 1:
tiny black reef fish atop table coral at West of Eden
We were lucky to have excellent visibility of at least 30-40 meters in more than 70% of the dives, and had at least 20 meters in the rest of the dives too. Comparing with Pulau Sembilan/Lumut’s 5-10 m visibility…
Anyway, I hope you enjoy the pics, and say no to shark’s fins!
giant spiny lobster, night dive at West of Eden
sea snake, Koh Bon
the reef at Koh Bon
clown fish in anemone, night dive at Elephant Rock
an unnerving cuttle fish, night dive at Elephant Rock
lion fish, night dive at Elephant Rock
Dave convincing a lion fish to pose, Richelieu Rock
cleaner shrimps, Richelieu Rock
chevron barracudas, Richelieu Rock
star fish on coral, night dive at Koh Bon
boxer shrimp, night dive at Koh Bon
porcupine fish, Bon Soon wreck
Bon Soon wreck
ghost pipe fish, Bon Soon wreck
After a day spent at Kuta beach, we moved to quieter part of Bali at Sanur.
Sanur is some 15-20 km North East of Kuta, in anywhere else that would be a pretty short distance, but at Bali it means a good 30-45 minutes on a taxi, the traffic was that bad.
you must get pass the cow before you get to Tropical Bali hotel
There were 2 reasons we moved to Sanur.First, the dive center for the dive trip is located at Sanur (tho they will pick you up from Kuta too), and secondly, it is a quieter part of Bali. While Kuta is a very vibrant tourist laden area, Sanur is a lot more laid back and mainly occupied by locals.
the beautiful little pool at Tropical Bali hotel
We spent two nights at Tropical Bali hotel at Sanur, a very small home stay style hotel that is run by a French couple who were used to be in the restaurant business. The hotel had only 10 rooms, two blocks of four rooms arranged in an L shape facing the pool, and another two in the same block as the reception area where the couple lives.
The hotel is located some 100 meters or so off Jalan Padang Galak via a dirt road that is next to a corn farm complete with cows and chicken. These are the real farmers and not those make-pretend type that is there to beautify a resort.
our very tastefully done hotel room
The room was tastefully done, with high ceiling, air conditioning, hot shower, and everything was almost brand new too.
Every room also has a balcony to itself where breakfast is served every morning. You get a choice of local breakfast, English breakfast, or international breakfast. The photo below is our English breakfast on the day just before we went off to Nusa Penida. The operator was kind enough to make breakfast for us by 6:30 am knowing that our pick up was at 7 am.
hotel breakfast, served individually
For other meals, the hotel provide delivery service (complete with the menu) and only charge another 10% on top of the bill. We ordered take out for dinner once and they served it with hotel’s plates & cutleries on the same table at the balcony, it didn’t feel like take-out at all. A very nice touch.
Other than the remote location (which is actually a plus point if you like to just chill & zen) and slowish WIFI, I can’t say enough good things about Tropical Bali Hotel. If I go to Bali again, I’d like to stay there again for sure.
We found Tropical Bali via Agoda and paid $52.47 per night, a steal for this kinda service and quality.
ikan bakar pencar at Jalan Padang Galak
On the first night at Sanur, we walked some 15 minutes on Jalan Padang Galak to have dinner at Ikan Bakar Warong Pencar. The journey itself was quite scary, the street was mostly unlit and all you can see is the occasional motorcycle headlights as they come close and swung by.
We would have been totally chilled with that if not for the incident where we got mugged just over a year ago. In retrospect, it might have been a better idea to call a cab instead.
smashed eggplant, prawn skewer, bbq clams
At Warong Pencar we had half a duck (ducks in Bali is always very small), smashed eggplant, prawn skewer, and bbq clams.
The duck was a flavorful but a tad chewy, eggplant came with the standard “ayam penyet” sauce which I love, and prawn was quite delightful too. The clams though, came with some sort of soya sauce which kinda made it taste a bit too fishy for our liking.
Overall it was still a decent meal and cost us only some 100,000 IDR. There’s even a facebook page for Warong Pencar!
Pulau Lang Tengah is an island sandwiched between the more popular Redang and Perhentian islands, approximately 20+ km from Merang Jetty, which itself is roughly half an hour’s drive from Kuala Terengganu.
Our trip was organized and led by DM/Instructor/UW Photographer extraordinaire Edvin Eng, who was also the first DM Terence and I dived with back in 2004, a whopping 7 years ago.
and Derek is now a certified diver, by Edvin the man
Edvin is always one of my favorite dive leaders, the dude is a joker on ground, but serious and attentive underwater. He also has an eye in spotting weird and wonderful creatures underwater, which is good. However, the very same guy also always poison us in underwater photography equipments, which might or might not be a good thing.
the resort at Lang Tengah, with Derek and Terence camwhoring
The main purpose of the trip was actually to get Derek certified as a PADI Open Water diver, for those of you who are interested to get into this hobby, Edvin is as good as any instructor you can get, you can find him at oceanxplorer.com.my
disco colored anemone, true story
We left at around 1 am from KL on Thursday night and arrived at Kuala Terengganu in the morning just in time for a breakfast of roast duck noodle before hopping on the transfer boat at Merang jetty.
We did a shore dive right after lunch, at the same time Derek was getting his exams. The shore dive at Lang Tengah wasn’t anything to shout about, visibility was close to 10 meter, there were corals, giant clams, and the various fishes, including clown fish, of course.
some sort of anemone?
giant clam, good for 100 plates of char kueh teow
We went on a boat dive after tea time, and there were much more to see here. Plenty of coral banded shrimps, red shrimps, moray eel, scorpion fish, and more.
banded coral shrimp
red shrimp among the corals
a pretty small and shy moral eel hiding in its hole
can you spot the fish?
We were dead tired from previous night’s driving and the 2 dives, and everyone headed to bed and pretty much passed out before 10 pm.
For the last three dives on second day, I had the luxury of using the combination of INON UWL 100 and the DOME unit with my S90 (in Ikelite housing and lit by Sea & Sea YS-01).
Since there are already quite a few photos in this post, I’ll delay the second batch on the next post. By the way, Selamat Hari Raya to all my Muslim friends, and to everyone else, Happy Merdeka!
I’m a pretty enthusiastic photography hobbyist, and a little bit in videography too.
I’m one of the earliest adopters in digital photography, with my very first digital camera a 3.2 megapixel Kodak model that runs on 4 AA battery with 32mb internal memory, then a Canon Powershot G3, Canon 400D DLSR, Canon S90 compact camera, and the Olympus E-PL1. Haze and I also have a couple GoPro HERO HD super compact camcorders.
The last toy I have to play with (at least for a couple weeks anyway) is the new Sony SLT-A33L A-mount camera. A 14.2 Megapixel SLR system that with 18-55 kit lens.
Calling this camera SLR might be slightly misleading though, for it is has a pretty nifty trick tucked in its sleeves - the SLT, or Single Lens Translucent mirror Technology.
Traditional SLR usually comes with a prism and has a mirror that needs to be flipped up whenever a picture is to be taken, while some 4/3 systems such as the E-PL1 do away with the mirror and hardware autofocus to have a reduce the size of the camera (while also using a smaller sensor).
In the latest SLT lineup from Sony, a translucent mirror is placed just before the sensor, reflecting 30% light to the hardware autofocus system and 70% to the sensor. This achieve several things:
The camera feels solid and well constructed, I particularly like the flip down (and turn-around) 3″ LCD screen, it’s crystal clear with 921.6k pixel resolution and makes it not only easy for some of you to camwhore, but very handy when it comes to taking photos or videos in crowded area or when you want to get that macro shot close to ground level.
Anyway, here’s the brief spec (full specs here)
That’s some serious specs for something with a suggested retail price of RM 2,399 including a kit lens.
Here’re some shots:
I set the camera to P mode, disabled flash, and with Auto-ISO, snap, and got the above picture. The Sony Steady Shot came into play and is really a bless, I could have never taken a photo at 1/15s shutter speed so effortlessly.
With the full suite of SLR capabilities including aperture priority, shutter speed priority, and full manual mode, you can do quite a lot with this camera. The above picture is taken at 1/15s with aperture priority at ISO1600.
This picture of Cendawan the Bengal cat is shot at 1/100s in ISO 3200, I set the camera to full auto mode. A slow camera can only take blur pictures of an awake cat, or sharp pictures of sleeping cat.
A video to amuse you, Cendawan the Bengal cat playing fetch, shot in Full HD
I also took the STL-A33 along to Hong Kong (more posts on that soon), this photo is taken we had dinner at a road side “tai pai tong”. Shot at ISO 3200, f/5.6, 1/320s. The food was very good by the way!
Fireworks aren’t the easiest scene to capture, but this camera does a very good job by just setting to Auto with no flash.
Finally, a shot taken at the busiest spot in Hong Kong – Mongkok. Notice the poster of SLT-A55 and SLT-A33 on display?
note: all photos shown above are straight out of the camera, resized, with no additional edits.
One very nifty feature of Olympus PEN E-PL1 that I reviewed just a while back is this ART filter function. Basically with this function, you completely remove the need for Photoshop at least 95% of the time. All the sample photos shown are straight out of the camera without any post processing. Efficiency!
the art filter function on Olympus PEN E-PL1
Let me explain!
Switch the dial to ART mode on the camera, and immediately you are presented with the screen that looks like the above. Using the up/down button, choose the desire ART filter, click OK, and start shooting like normal. The photos will turn out dramatically different from the usual way.
100% Arabica – sepia filter
There are six different art filters to choose from. The above was shot using the Sepia filter to give it a bit of a rustic look.
making a living – pin hole filter
One of my favorites would be the pin hole filter. Some might view the on-purpose vignetting a cheap way to make photos looking artistic. To me, if it looks good, why not? I love it.
Pulau Tenggol, 2010
Here’s another pin hole effect, on the left is without filter, and on the right you can clearly see the dramatic effect.
The plus point is that you can set the camera to record both original jpeg as well as jpeg with art filter at the same time. Of course, there’s always the RAW + jpeg format too if you want to retain even greater control.
toy city – diorama filter
The diorama filter effect is kinda cute, taking from an elevated vantage point, you can make the scenery looking as if it’s a scaled model, very cool.
daily commute – grainy film
I kinda like the grainy film filter too. I tend to shoot quite a lot of street photos (when I’m not shooting food, that is), and the B&W shots it generates works pretty well. Very usable.
after dive relaxation at Tenggol
The smaller size is a huge advantage when doing street photography, unlike a huge SLR, this isn’t as imposing and people tend to not notice it as much. Not to mention the lighter camera won’t strain your arms nearly as much.
jaclyn - soft focus
I have a feeling that the soft focus filter will be girls’ best friend. Not that Jaclyn isn’t a hot chick, but the filter just make post processing completely irrelevant in this case. Nice kan? 
There’s also the pop art filter that makes colors really stand out, think balloon party.
pop art filter with lord of the rings!
Lacking a chance to attend any party lately, here’s a demonstration of the pop art filter effects with Lord of the Rings midget figures. You can see the amplified color saturation in this filter to make bright colors stand out more.
Here’s four different types of art filter and their amazing effects in a nice little collage to sum it up! Pretty cool isn’t it?
Oh! and these function works on VIDEO mode too! Check out this little video demo that I made while at Tenggol island.
There’s a slow motion effect with PIN hole, and a fast forward effect on Diorama filter when you apply them on video mode. The others will be running at normal speed, makes for pretty cool video, no?
I absolutely love this function, put post processing to bare minimum, saves time, and be artistic!
If you’re thinking of getting this baby, do also check out the Evolve contest for a chance to win an Olympus PEN E-PL1! The contest runs until end of April, 2010. Check out evolvewitholympus.com.my for more!
this post is brought to you by the awesomesauce Olympus Pen E-PL1
