CNY 2021 ON KODAK EKTAR

The Buddhist lodge on Kim Yam Road

So when I brought my last roll of Portra to the lab the uncle coaxed me into buying some Ektar 100, not wanting to look mean I bought not a roll but a box of 5 rolls. I must say this is a decent deal as it comes with five coupons of one dollar to be rebated of their processing. If I remember correctly this is 52 dollars for the 5 rolls and they do processing + super decent scanning at 11 dollars (Singapore Dollars).

Monkey God Temple in Tiong Bahru

I shot Ektar before, but mostly in 35mm, I must say it pays credit to the claim that it is the finest grain film. So I loaded the good old Hassie 500 CM with my first roll and hit the road to give it a try.

Chinese Lantern Tiong Bahru

12 shots on a 120 roll is not much, but walking through overshot areas on a Sunday afternoon, it can be quite a challenge to finish a full roll.

The ex-Majestic Hotel, now the Straight Clan asscoation

We walked from home to Tiong Bahru, then headed to Chinatown. The Straight Clan is where the Majestic hotel used to be. I spent 5 weeks in this hotel in 2006 and have some interesting shots from the construction site period, when it was converted. Maybe I’ll share this some time.

Buddha tooth relic temple

We moved to the Buddha tooth relic temple where I notice the Buddhist flags which where not there last week ( you can check the post) and I though it was a nice opportunity for color sampling and smooth grain demonstration.

A peanuts stand in Chintaown

In Chinatown every year temporary stands selling goods for the occasion the Chinese New Year appear and disappear in a mater of a few weeks. Generally they close late on the eve of the New Year day. This year everybody was masked, there were less stands as the people coming from other countries could not enter Singapore. If you want to ne picky, the focus is on the cage bars, not the seller.

Welcome to the year of the Ox

Exiting Chinatown, I took this shot of the Ox silk paper statue. This is not the best angle as it is quite busy with the traffic lights posts and cars. The best angle is diametrically opposite I think. But you can see here how nice and bright the colors are.

Substation on Armenian street

Nice mural on Substation, an art center on Armenian Street, close to the Peranakan museum. Substation used to host gigs and has a broad program, with what seems to be a focus on the street / youth culture.

Rendez-Vous Hotel

The last shot in order to finish the roll : a mundane view of the Rendez-Vous Hotel at the bottom of Orchard Road. Totally uninteresting but very nice blues.

I you missed the links in the text you can check the post CNY 2021 in Chinatown with the Hassie 500CM to compare similar shots with Portra 160.

All shots: Hasselblad 500 CM with standard 80mmF2.8
Kodak Ektar 100 shot at 100
Processing and Scanning : Whampoa Color

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Geylang Lorong 3 with the Hasselblad 500CM

Hello, here is the first post of the new year. So let me whish you a happy and prosperous new year, happy 2021 everybody, lets hope the situation will improve and I won’t spend the next 52 weeks shooting the same parts of Singapore again and again. And of course the same goes for everybody (Of course a lot more serious things need to be fixed first before our hobbies can be considered).

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So these are pictures from roll #51 of the year 2020, another trip with Geylang Lorong 3 with the Hasselblad 500CM loaded with a roll of slightly expired Portra 400. The Roll was shot at 320 ISO, processed and scanned at Whampoa color center and slightly adjusted in Lightroom.

The sky was cloudy that morning, but colors are quite vivid. I forgot to bring a light meter so I used the Keks EM01 light meter that was on the Leica M4 and changed the ISO when switching Camera. It looks that I managed not to f*ck up any shots.

The last shot has a defect as I think thing the back has an issue with the spacing of the frames, so part of this shot went over the end of the film.

The blog got 4000 views n 2020: 2.5 tomes more that last year : thanks to all the readers for stopping by. Also on days to come, I have a nice roll shot with he M4 on the same location, and of course as every year the summary of what I shoot with which camera and some other silly stats.

The Hakka Cemetery

I wanted to visit this place for a very long time : a cemetery enclosed in a housing block is the west of Singapore city center.

Hakka, are a Chinese population originating from the eastern part of Hunan, you can read more on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hakka_people. They form about 8% of the Chinese population of Singapore.

The cemetery is home to about 3000 graves, below which urns of ashes are buried. Unlucky for me the place was closed when I reached there after a 40 minutes bus ride. I could still make a few shots, but there seems to be some very interesting views to catch so I will try to go back at a better time.

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  Tiong Bahru Qi Tian Gong Temple

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  The old station

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  Hock Teck See Temple

The Ying Fo Fui Kun cemetery as it is known, is part of a heritage trail that looks promising, I will dig into that in the near future. You can find further reading here https://lionraw.com/2014/03/18/the-hakka-cemetery/

Today’s pictures where taken on Ilford Pan F 50ISO film with the Hasselblad 500cm and 80mm F2.8. They were processed soon after in Caffenol using the batch I prepared last week, then scanned with the Epson v800. I had 3 shots left when leaving the cemetery, so I head back in town. I made a first stop at Tiong Bahru at QiTian Gong temple. It s the 100’s birthday of the temple this year and it has been renovated, but due to the Covid there are no celebrations this year. You can find pictures of past ceremonies there :

https://waex99photo.wordpress.com/2016/09/17/tiong-bahru-qi-tian-gong-temple/

or

https://waex99photo.wordpress.com/2016/09/17/tiong-bahru-qi-tian-gong-temple/

After this I head to the old railway station which is under work (no idea what is suppose to happen to it in the future) and finally to the small Hock Teck See Temple, a small Taoist temple surrounded by construction sites.

I hope you enjoyed the reading …

Around Arab Street with the Hasselblad

… and some friends from the HUGS (Hasselblad User Group Singapore), just before we could not hug anymore. A very small mid week post, 10 shot of a Rollei Superpan 200.

Corona

Waiting

Friendship

Le marin de Gibraltar

Lets get a ride

% Arabica

Humps ahead

In my hands

Sultan Mosque

Shadows and light

This is taken with a Hasselblad 500 CM with the Planar 80mm F2.8 CF, processed at my usual lab and scanned at home with the Epson v800, and edited in Lightroom. I don’t particularly like the Superpan, but I must admit it was OK on this occasion.

Father’s Day Special

I read this brilliant idea last week, but I I cannot remember where nor who to credit, so my apologies to the original writer. So here it is, Sunday was father’s day and what nicer tribute to my dad that to shoot with his camera?

Mrs B and Mini-me

So I loaded his Agfa Isolette III with a roll of Bergger Panchro 400 and went for the usual family stroll in the city center.

The scene without the models

(You can read some story of this camera here: the Agfa Isolette III is back

A souvenir from India

A few days later The roll is back, as my last 3 or 4 Panchro rolls they did not turn out great. 11 unremarkable photos of my father’s day family walk.

 

#15 – my favorite shot

Note there are 11 shots because the marks on the Panchro are very faint and I over roll

Spottiswoode park back alley

One of the many mural celebrating “last time”

No comment

Taoist temple, Amoy street

Pho Saigon at the corner coffee shop

Anderson bridge and MBS

Happy father’s day dad.

 

Kebun Baru Birdsinging Club (The Hasselblad shots)

The Leica User Group Singapore (LUGS) organized an outing last week (7 April 2008) to the Kebun Baru Birdsinging Club.

 

The Hassie came to the party loaded with a roll of Cinestill 50D. Here is the result. The Kebun Baru Birdsinging Club is  place in Amg Mo Kio, central Singapore, where bird lovers have their pets compete. In both singing and look competition.

It is a beutiful places with both shadow areas with low hanging bird cages but also a wide open space with high poles were cages are hoisted by a pulley system.

(The above rectangular shot is due to an issue with the Hassie back frame spacing)

On competition days judges are walking between the birds and give notes.

Read more at https://kebunbarubirdsingingclub.weebly.com/about-us.html

Also a nice opportunity for people watching.

 

Singapore Photo Walk – March 2016 – Rochor Center

I joined Bernard Goh’s Singapore Photo Walk outing of March with my son.

Rochor Centre is group of buildings built by the Housing and Development Board of Singapore. It was built and completed in 1977 and consists of 4 blocks painted in vivid colors yellow, green, red and blue.

This is an iconic building in the east side on Singapore center that can be seen by tourists going to Arab Street or Little India.

The buildings comprise habitations, shops and hawkers ( food stalls). On the ground floor you still can find some religious artefacts.

The center has started closing as later this year it will be torn down to give way to a motorway joining the north to the south of the island. A lot of the shops have already relocated, but some are still open. The habitations seems to still be occupied if I can judge by the drying laundry.

The void desk is a classical feature of the HDB blocks, an open area for inhabitants to congregate and do activities.

Our friend Long Siew Leng aka Jumping girl.

Pictures 1 and 2 : Hasselblad 500cm+80mmF2.8, Rollei CR 200 slide film

Pictures 3,4,and 5 : Leica M6, summaron 28mm2.8, Kodak Portra 400

Pictures 6 : Hasselblad 500cm+80mmF2.8, Rollei RPX 100 film

 

Namo Buddha – Nepal

Namo Buddha - Offerings

Camera: NikonD700
Lens: Nikkor 50mm F1.4 AI
Processing:LR3+PS Elements 4.0

100.000 – One hundred thousand

Site under construction

My account reached one hundred thousand (100000) views on Flickr this week, probably nothing to be too proud about, surely a big part of it have not even been seen. But yet, some have, so thank you flickr.

“Site Under Construction”, at Marina Bay Financial Center (MBF) in Singapore.

On the way to my new office MBF Tower 2, the construction continues. Tower 3, maybe 4 ? I don’t know – don’t care really. But nice shot opportunities.

Camera:Nikon D700
Lens:Tamron 28mmf2.5 Adaptall 2 (aka the infamous)
Processing:LR3+PS Elements 4.0

Chinese New Year Bokeh

Here comes Chinese New Year, the town is decorated, Chinatown streets are buzzing.

A quick Friday evening stroll with the D700 and the old Tamron 28mm F2.5 manual focus lens. I could not resist to shoot the pink lights in the fake trees along south bridge road. Here comes my Chinese new year bokeh.

Incidentally I have upgraded to Lightroom 3.3 this week because it support more lenses for the correction option; I was looking for the Nikkor 24mm F2.8D.

Camera: Nikon D700
Lens: Tamron 28mm F2.5
Retouches: Lightroom 3