By steering your camera’s white balance carefully, you can enhance the moody lighting of a temple. Smoke, fire, silhouttes and a cool bluish tint are the ingredients. Photographed at a temple in KL Chinatown with the Olympus E-PL2.
Petaling Street in Chinatown Kuala Lumpur may be a visual treat but the traders can be a little aggressive. They do not like a camera in their face. Which is quite reasonable, considering almost every product sold there is a counterfeit. And don’t forget that nervous worker is probably a foreigner with a counterfeit work permit.
So when the Nepalese guy stuck his pinkie into his nose, I breathe a sigh of relief. It was their secret code of approval for the diminutive Olympus E-P3 camera. The illegal network of walkie-talkies crackled through the labyrinth of tarps but no one pulled out a machete. Phew! Of course, little did they know that the tiny, harmless, touristy-looking camera can produce a video with quality better than any of the fake Blue-ray discs sold there 🙂
I set out during twilight and it soon became night. The myriad range of lighting conditions gave the E-P3’s auto white balance and exposure metering a good workout. I chose to arm myself with only one lens. The new Olympus m4/3 12mm f2.0 street videographer’s lens. The low light capability of this combo is quite amazing, as you will see.
The new Olympus Pen E-P3 & M.ZD 12mm f2.0 lens. Backpacker-friendly too
Those unfamiliar with this KL landmark, may find the following trivia interesting:
The messy peanut pancake (kuih apam balik) hawker is sort of an icon there. He is quite friendly to photographers who shoot and don’t buy.
The corner winter-melon-dried-longan drink remains the most popular stall there. See that woman with two cups.
I wanted to capture the sounds of the Chinese conversations between traders. With so many tourists from Middle East countries there, I ended up with a fascinating ambient sound track full of Arabic chatter instead 🙂
If you have a media player and a big screen HD TV, you can also download this Full HD clip from vimeo.com/tvsmith and watch it large and loud.
All pictures & videos photographed with the Olympus Pen E-P3 by & © TV Smith
The first day of Chinese New Year presented an excellent opportunity to perform some real world tests of the new Olympus E-PL2. I left all other lenses at home and took just the E-PL2 and the 17 mm kit lens for a spin at the Kwan Ti Temple.
For street photography, the combo is a good choice as it is lightweight and unobtrusive. Since I dial into different modes all the time and do exposure compensation on the fly, the menu system and control wheel of the camera coped quite well…
Olympus E-PL2, ISO 200, f16, 1/160 sec -2 EV
Fire & Smoke. By reducing the exposure two stops, I was able to preserve the ambience of the flames, smoke and the silhouette effect. I also manually adjusted the camera’s white balance preset to make it ‘colder’. A small aperture was also chosen for greater depth-of-field. For a compact body, every control was still easily accessible.
Olympus E-PL2, ISO 200, f13, 1/160 sec
Young Supermodels. These two girls struck up a series of wonderful poses when they saw my camera :). One thing I found out was that the LCD appeared brighter than it actually was. So I tend to underexpose in the beginning without checking the histogram display (which I usually don’t).
Olympus E-PL2, ISO 200, f2.8, 1/180 sec with flash
Deities. One of the things I like about the E-PL2 is the easy flash compensation adjustment. Here, I dialed down the on-board flash by two stop since the camera was very close. I can also fire an external flash remotely via the wireless RC feature. This frees up the hot-shoe for the optional electronic viewfinder.
See also:
Dong Zen CNY Lantern & Flora Fest with E-PL2 | The Art Of Art Filters
The Bird Park with E-PL2 & The M.Zuiko 75-300mm Lens
Getting there: Mycen Map of Chinatown KL
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