DJMad's World G800 review

The photograph was taken with the G800 in sunlight so bright I could barely see the image on the screen.  All I have done is take it off the phone and reduce it to 40% of its original size.

Harsh critique, eh?

(Photographed with the Samsung G800, with the contrast turned up a bit with PhotoImpact).

I don't know why I found it so satisfying when the young man put his newly polished shoes on the windowsill in front of the orchids.  I watched him clean them with spit and with polish.  A fascinating process, and you can just see how shiny it got them.  It photographed ok-ish.   The camera is more sensitive to light and dark than the human eye, so the curtains were much lighter and brighter than they show in the photograph.

The other day I took a trip from Settle to Carlisle, and when we got there, we found what I can only describe as a flash municipal park.

The plants were orderly and very very plentiful and

so healthy and cheap that the one I was with had to remind me just how difficult it would be to wrestle them on and off the train.  Otherwise I'd have flashed my cash and bought half the pavement.

Okies, the camera phone first. It's always a darling to talk about, at least for these few days. I feel that I am finally cresting the tidal wave of consumer technology. It definitely empowering to hold a device in your hands that could capture the beautiful moments of lives ( and even some random artsy snaps), and be connected to your network of friends at the same time. It's titan gray finishes are slick and its slides open and close with smooth yet satisfying elastic "pop". Needless to say, I fell in love. Here are some shots that I have taken with this sweet little toy. Amateurish, but look at the resolution and quality.

Tim Sum for dinner

The nightly reflection ( blah. An easy title)

Lethargically, I would have to add that 2 photos will have to do for now. I will figure out another way to add.

Shin Leong and Civil Society

Interestingly, I did not know what to expect when I first asked Aaron to show me the worker's party. Were they people in all ties and suit? No. Were there a crowd? Well, by my definitions, no. I was ushered into a quiet, scarcely decorated room with a guy sitting alone at the end of a meeting table, put together by 6 separate tables. The initial impression was definitely a MISS, because the worker's party HQ is located in a small unit of shophouse (heritage wise, its an early version of Singapore's down, a fusion of houses upstairs and commerce below. Yet, its an earlier building, meaning that, in the every re-improving and upgrading Singapore cityscape, this is, undeniable - old.) with a small gathering of office workers. Politics, or rather grassroot participation over here, feels like an after office hour gathering. "Of course, of course, remarked Shin Leong, that in Singapore, everyone needs to have a livelihood, because a burning passion, or activism cannot sustain itself." My words. Granted.

Fortunately, the night turned out to be a lucky stroll in me. Talking with Shin Leong, fueled by his occassional wittiness and insights, made be see Civil Society in a more Singaporean and pragmatically contrived context. He also gave me some leads for read-ups. And even more on his spirited activism. Good stuff, if I dont want to sound silly in USP application essay. I should be chiding myself over here. Why oh, why, I have to pick such a challenging topic that has left me wondering and perplexed for days.

What really amazed me, was the "hypothetical" political chit-chat that came up, during the coffee talks. Yes, what better, that to sip economically viable caffeine doused drinks, late in the night, at a relatively quiet coffee shop. Very interesting, albeit tasteless - truly though starbucks is probably extravagant, hence unsustainable . Astonishingly, this period produced the most interesting of talks. They let me understand little more about SDP's Swee soon juan (probably got his name wrong) - his political connection and persona and more, and how malaysian's recent election was a lesson to the political players. Amazing. I was totally absorbed into the parry of ideas, and the theater of guesses staged out "what ifs" and "could it be". Suffice to say, it rendered me more perspectives and sparked off more thinking. And laughs. =D

Please do not be offended by my casual criticism or remarks. There are mere offhands thoughts, reflecting more of my brand of Lifestyle and sophistication rather that the culture of my subjects. As it is, I rather the realistic view, than the idealistic brainfood galore (where only IQ counts) or the cynical view that well, Life's just suck. I make a judgment, and from that I know my taste. Aha.

I've mentioned already that I work near an art gallery. I noticed a piece of opportunistic recycling as I walked into town today.

Apparently the artist

"creates new relationships, experimenting with unexpected combinations of materials creating objects and environments, which encourage us to see the everyday world with fresh eyes"

and she

"fashions monumental objects from scrapyard materials and throws them away after use"

Though I do wonder if a graffitied garage door is quite what she intended. It pleased me though.

Here's today's photograph, reduced to 25% of it's original size:

And here is the mid-section of the photograph at full resolution, but cropped.

Since this is a record of what I see each day as much as it's anything, I put it up here as today's offering.

It's not inherently interesting, but in the context of this blog I take comfort that so much early cuneiform is the deadly dull record-keeping of Assyrian and Babylonian civil servants.

Incidentally, the optical zoom on the G800 was useful for this because it allowed me to stand at the other end of the table and photograph the board straight on and still get the image to fill the frame.

It's not particularly bright in here (it's my kitchen, it's 7.00pm, it's February) but both phones did pretty well.

Interestingly, the Sony Ericsson (below) is closer to what I see, but the Samsung (above) is the more pleasing image.

Talking of not very bright - why did I commit to a photo every day for four weeks when it's still dark in the evenings? Oh well.

The image below was taken with the Sony Ericsson, and I've reduced it to 20% of it's original size. It seems rather hazy, though in fairness the lens needed cleaning.

The image below is the same shot with the Samsung. I'd run out of memory on the phone and the original was half the maximum size the camera will handle. It's been reduced to about 60% of its original size to match the other image.

Despite that, it does rather make the point though. I'll do some more of these with clean lenses.

I'm usually very careful not to photograph other people's children, but I could not resist this one which is 25% of the size of the original:

Back to the ferry: I thought the Sony Ericsson was giving me brighter colours at the time, but now I wonder if LCD screen on the Ericsson makes the colours appear brighter. I can adjust both LCD screens on both phones, so it's pretty irrelevant really.

Once again, the Sony Ericsson appears hazy in comparison with the Samsung. Both images are reduced to 20% of the size of the original. The Sony Ericsson first:

And now the Samsung - I was wingeing yesterday that every single thing is in focus in Samsung-land but - hey - it can look really good like that:

The Samsung places brackets around the central section of the image when you look through the view finder which is distracting, and this is one of the few images I took this morning which doesn't have the subject plonked in the middle of the picture.

I messed around with the zoom feature a bit as well today, but there are only so many photographs of the ferry that you or I can look at, gentle viewer, without our exasperation showing, so I'll put up photos which demonstrate that feature another day.

We were going to Cleveleys for another reason entirely, and drove past the grounded ferry. For some reason a fire engine decided to drive along the promenade just as we arrived:

The ferry was the perfect opportunity to try out the optical and digital zoom on the camera:

The photo above is "au naturel" and the photo below has the 3x optical zoom:

This is the first time I've had a camera with a zoom lens, and I rather like it.  There's also a digital zoom which I'll play with another day.

There were buses and vans there too, for some reason to do with tram repairs:

Unfortunately I couldn't get the true ladybird shot, of the ferry, the fire engine, the bus, the van, a tram, a car and a plane.

There was one image which pleased me as an image rather than a camera test:

As before, these are as they came off the camera, but reduced to 20% of their original size.

In the meantime here's today's picture (grabbed in haste on my way home this evening) of a 1960s tower block bracketed by some refurbished mill buildings. There's a whole recursive spiral of irony in here if you feel that way inclined, but that's not what this blog is about and I think it's rather a dull picture.

The good news is the phone coped with the approaching twilight, the bad news the phone failed to capture what luminosity there was, it's washed out some of the contrast and some of the quality of the light. It's not a photograph I'd normally post here. I feel it's a competently composed image let down by being taken on the hoof, a point confirmed by the fact that I'm rather taken with the version below where it masquerades as etching, which is something I achieved accidentally while trying it out as a black and white image in PhotoImpact to see if it worked better like that.

Here's the first one, reduced to 20% of it's original size and rotated anti-clockwise by 1 degree.

This was a matter of point and shoot, though you can see that I had the flash as well as the natural light. On the camera, the photograph looks rather dull, but it works on the screen. I doubt it's as pleasing when printed though.

Gift ko sa kanya eh samsung na E840. pinagpilian namin U600 at heto ngang E840.. sa looks, pareho silang elegante pero mas girly ang E840. Medyo mahirap i-slide yung U600, madulas yung keypad.. Yung salesman dun sa Globotel sa Market!Market!(pinagbilhan namin) eh sinabing yung E840 eh parang combination ng U600 at G800 kung features ang paguusapan.. Pero ang pinakanagustuhan ni misis eh yung TOUCHSCREEN feature. hehe.. kahit nga ako na-amaze din eh.. ganda. Mommy sana nagustuhan mo gift ko.. i love you..