**EDIT - Exactly one month before 17th May 2013, James was diagnosed with liver cancer. He put up a good fight but unfortunately the cancer cells won the fight. He has since left this world on 17th May 2013. May he rest in peace and God bless his soul.
Rest In Peace CPF member tankahn**
The thread in this link is dedicated to James
Hi fellow CPFers,
During the last few months I had spent some time gathering photos from my HDS clickies on a few of my weekend stay on an island just northeast of mainland Singapore, and I thought that maybe it is time I share some of the photos with all of you here in CPF. Below are just some quick notes before I begin.
In view of the fact that I must travel light, I could not pack along my tripod and extensive camera equipments for these trips. Photos are all done on a Nikon D3s with ISO ranging from 6400 to 12800 so you may notice some noise (graininess) in the photographs. The primary lens I had mounted on my camera is a manual focus Nikkor AI 35mm f/1.4 and occasionally I would swap it over to the Nikkor AF-D 50mm f/1.4, AF-D 60mm f/2.8 micro, or AF-S 105mm f/2.8 micro.
Unlike our eyes which is able to see a huge dynamic range from the darkest shadows to the brightest highlights, digital camera still has it's limitation in capturing the full dynamic range compared to what we could see. That explains why we often see beam shots with nicely exposed side spill and grossly overexposed hot spot, or we would see a nicely exposed hot spot with impossibly dark, or non-existent side spill, thus giving us the impression that there isn't any side spill at all. With that said, trying to capture these beam shots proves to be a real challenge. Many times I had to rely on Surefire's F04 diffuser to smooth out the beam profile so that my camera could achieve the feel and look resembling what my eyes see.
If you look at the photos, you would have noticed that most of the photos are lit using the HDS 100 lumen high CRI clicky with a few comparisons to the 140 lumens guaranteed tint and 170 lumens tactical. My objective is not to portray the beam profiles of the individual lights but rather to capture the colors presented by the LEDs so that all those who are keen in purchasing the high CRI HDS clicky would understand what makes it so good for use in nature especially. I apologize that there would be no white wall beam shot photos here.
With me on the trip are my good friends James, also a CPF member, and Alan. Both James and Alan are kind enough to grant me the privilege of sharing their faces within some of the photos here. They have also been of great help in helping me hold the lights while I am shooting. This allows me to position the light source exactly where I had wanted. Without them these photos would not have happened.
I am not a botanist nor am I a naturalist so I wasn't able to accurately identify what are some of the plants, insects, or animals taken here and I seek your understanding in regards to this. If some of you could identify what you see, you may notify me and I would put it down.
So, without further ado, let me just go on with the sharing.
For most of you here, I believe you may not have seen or tasted this tropical fruit. It is known as Durian, aka King of Fruits. It has a pungent smell but tastes wonderful. Durian is a fruit well revered in all of tropical South-East Asia, but due to it's rather pungent smell one either loves it or hates it.
HDS High CRI clicky
During the durian season we would move around the island looking for potentially good trees and then await patiently for the fruit to drop from it's branches. In this photo you see Alan in dark blue with a 120 lumen Surefire E2DL, and James in yellow, with a HDS high CRI clicky.
Both of them lit up with my HDS high CRI clicky and a tight crop to show James holding a HDS clicky
Durians grow along the branches of the tree. This particular tree is quite tall so I had to light it up using James' warm white Quark 123^2 turbo and Alan's SF E2DL.
Quark warm white Turbo & Surefire E2DL
As I was saying, we waited below for the durian to drop before picking them up. James almost got hit on his head when a durian fell and "exploded" just inches from him, and we joked about him having these durian "cum shots" all over his feet.
High CRI clicky
We have Alan here opening the durian for us.
High CRI clicky
And a side by side comparison of a durian lit up with a HDS high CRI and a Zebralight H60w neutral white.
Left, HDS high CRI, and right, Zebralight H60w neutral white
Don't want to bore all of you with my durian photos. There are some nocturnal creatures there. Owls, civet cat, snakes, mouse deers, and so on but they seem rather elusive. We managed to spot a juvenile Spotted Wood Owl. Here are two shots showing you the comparison in colors between the Surefire LX2 and the HDS high CRI clicky. I am not able to get any shots of the owl's frontal profile whenever the LX2 was used. The owl seem to turn it's head away whenever I had the LX2 on him.
Left, Surefire LX2, and right, HDS high CRI clicky
Some bugs, a Hammerhead Worm of Bipalium genus (thanks to Don, edc3 for pointing it out), a slug, and a scorpion which I have no idea what their names are.
All HDS high CRI clicky
Further down the trek we came across some coconut trees about 30 meters out which I thought would make good targets for showing all of you the difference in color rendition from all the HDS clickies.
Left, high CRI; right, 140 GT; bottom, 170 tactical
I saw how nice the moon seem to compliment this coconut tree and I asked James and Alan to help me light up the entire tree with our HDS high CRI clickies which they happily obliged.
2X HDS high CRI clicky
An almost withered tree lit up with two HDS high CRI clickies. Alan lit up the front with my high CRI clicky using a Surefire F04 diffuser and James helped light up the tree from the side with his high CRI clicky but without any diffuser.
2X HDS high CRI clicky
Here are some more comparison between the 100 lumen HDS high CRI clicky against the 140 lumen HDS guaranteed tint clicky
Left, high CRI clicky; right, 140 GT clicky
See how the high CRI brought out the colors between the greens and the browns?
All HDS high CRI clicky
And also how some of the colors on this house appear with the high CRI clicky?
HDS high CRI clicky
Saw some guys fishing near the jetty and they caught a snapper. Couldn't resist taking a shot.
The cool light is from their friend's headlamp and Alan (in photo on right) just lit them up with his Quark MiNi 123 warm white.
Here is James with his Zebralight H60w neutral white and a HDS high CRI clicky in his hand walking back to our campsite. The smoke you see was from the mosquito repelling coil that he carries in a canister. Alan helped me light James up with my high CRI clicky for the shot.
HDS high CRI clicky
So, after all the walking we would head back to our campsite. James would be in-charged of lighting up some mosquito repelling coils and Alan would do us the honor of cooking a simple but yet delicious meal before we go catch our shut-eye.
All HDS high CRI clicky
Well, that's it. I hope you all enjoy viewing this as much as I enjoy writing them.
Rest In Peace CPF member tankahn**
The thread in this link is dedicated to James
Hi fellow CPFers,
During the last few months I had spent some time gathering photos from my HDS clickies on a few of my weekend stay on an island just northeast of mainland Singapore, and I thought that maybe it is time I share some of the photos with all of you here in CPF. Below are just some quick notes before I begin.
In view of the fact that I must travel light, I could not pack along my tripod and extensive camera equipments for these trips. Photos are all done on a Nikon D3s with ISO ranging from 6400 to 12800 so you may notice some noise (graininess) in the photographs. The primary lens I had mounted on my camera is a manual focus Nikkor AI 35mm f/1.4 and occasionally I would swap it over to the Nikkor AF-D 50mm f/1.4, AF-D 60mm f/2.8 micro, or AF-S 105mm f/2.8 micro.
Unlike our eyes which is able to see a huge dynamic range from the darkest shadows to the brightest highlights, digital camera still has it's limitation in capturing the full dynamic range compared to what we could see. That explains why we often see beam shots with nicely exposed side spill and grossly overexposed hot spot, or we would see a nicely exposed hot spot with impossibly dark, or non-existent side spill, thus giving us the impression that there isn't any side spill at all. With that said, trying to capture these beam shots proves to be a real challenge. Many times I had to rely on Surefire's F04 diffuser to smooth out the beam profile so that my camera could achieve the feel and look resembling what my eyes see.
If you look at the photos, you would have noticed that most of the photos are lit using the HDS 100 lumen high CRI clicky with a few comparisons to the 140 lumens guaranteed tint and 170 lumens tactical. My objective is not to portray the beam profiles of the individual lights but rather to capture the colors presented by the LEDs so that all those who are keen in purchasing the high CRI HDS clicky would understand what makes it so good for use in nature especially. I apologize that there would be no white wall beam shot photos here.
With me on the trip are my good friends James, also a CPF member, and Alan. Both James and Alan are kind enough to grant me the privilege of sharing their faces within some of the photos here. They have also been of great help in helping me hold the lights while I am shooting. This allows me to position the light source exactly where I had wanted. Without them these photos would not have happened.
I am not a botanist nor am I a naturalist so I wasn't able to accurately identify what are some of the plants, insects, or animals taken here and I seek your understanding in regards to this. If some of you could identify what you see, you may notify me and I would put it down.
So, without further ado, let me just go on with the sharing.
For most of you here, I believe you may not have seen or tasted this tropical fruit. It is known as Durian, aka King of Fruits. It has a pungent smell but tastes wonderful. Durian is a fruit well revered in all of tropical South-East Asia, but due to it's rather pungent smell one either loves it or hates it.
HDS High CRI clicky
During the durian season we would move around the island looking for potentially good trees and then await patiently for the fruit to drop from it's branches. In this photo you see Alan in dark blue with a 120 lumen Surefire E2DL, and James in yellow, with a HDS high CRI clicky.
Both of them lit up with my HDS high CRI clicky and a tight crop to show James holding a HDS clicky
Durians grow along the branches of the tree. This particular tree is quite tall so I had to light it up using James' warm white Quark 123^2 turbo and Alan's SF E2DL.
Quark warm white Turbo & Surefire E2DL
As I was saying, we waited below for the durian to drop before picking them up. James almost got hit on his head when a durian fell and "exploded" just inches from him, and we joked about him having these durian "cum shots" all over his feet.
High CRI clicky
We have Alan here opening the durian for us.
High CRI clicky
And a side by side comparison of a durian lit up with a HDS high CRI and a Zebralight H60w neutral white.
Left, HDS high CRI, and right, Zebralight H60w neutral white
Don't want to bore all of you with my durian photos. There are some nocturnal creatures there. Owls, civet cat, snakes, mouse deers, and so on but they seem rather elusive. We managed to spot a juvenile Spotted Wood Owl. Here are two shots showing you the comparison in colors between the Surefire LX2 and the HDS high CRI clicky. I am not able to get any shots of the owl's frontal profile whenever the LX2 was used. The owl seem to turn it's head away whenever I had the LX2 on him.
Left, Surefire LX2, and right, HDS high CRI clicky
Some bugs, a Hammerhead Worm of Bipalium genus (thanks to Don, edc3 for pointing it out), a slug, and a scorpion which I have no idea what their names are.
All HDS high CRI clicky
Further down the trek we came across some coconut trees about 30 meters out which I thought would make good targets for showing all of you the difference in color rendition from all the HDS clickies.
Left, high CRI; right, 140 GT; bottom, 170 tactical
I saw how nice the moon seem to compliment this coconut tree and I asked James and Alan to help me light up the entire tree with our HDS high CRI clickies which they happily obliged.
2X HDS high CRI clicky
An almost withered tree lit up with two HDS high CRI clickies. Alan lit up the front with my high CRI clicky using a Surefire F04 diffuser and James helped light up the tree from the side with his high CRI clicky but without any diffuser.
2X HDS high CRI clicky
Here are some more comparison between the 100 lumen HDS high CRI clicky against the 140 lumen HDS guaranteed tint clicky
Left, high CRI clicky; right, 140 GT clicky
See how the high CRI brought out the colors between the greens and the browns?
All HDS high CRI clicky
And also how some of the colors on this house appear with the high CRI clicky?
HDS high CRI clicky
Saw some guys fishing near the jetty and they caught a snapper. Couldn't resist taking a shot.
The cool light is from their friend's headlamp and Alan (in photo on right) just lit them up with his Quark MiNi 123 warm white.
Here is James with his Zebralight H60w neutral white and a HDS high CRI clicky in his hand walking back to our campsite. The smoke you see was from the mosquito repelling coil that he carries in a canister. Alan helped me light James up with my high CRI clicky for the shot.
HDS high CRI clicky
So, after all the walking we would head back to our campsite. James would be in-charged of lighting up some mosquito repelling coils and Alan would do us the honor of cooking a simple but yet delicious meal before we go catch our shut-eye.
All HDS high CRI clicky
Well, that's it. I hope you all enjoy viewing this as much as I enjoy writing them.
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