Countdown...
Monday, April 09, 2007
Yippee! One of the heaviest (most probably THE heaviest) burdens in my Uni life is off my shoulders: the thesis.
Spent the Good Friday planning the China itinerary with Cheryl and Nikki. It was pretty fast; since the plan was based largely on a Chan's Brothers itinerary which caught Nik's eyes. The planning déjà vu from the last Europe trip was overwhelming... I can never estimate the huge amount of time spent on the constant visits to travel forums, official travel destination websites, train schedules sites, domestic flight schedules, hotels, reviews, recommendations... Lots of clicking, traveler's anxiety, excitement and anticipation :D Had a talk with Sean, a travel executive with Pricebreaker in the evening; he helped us much with his travel tips. Night: Sino-Singapore outing at Timbre. The live band was great.
Explored the Nikon Capture NX software during the weekends. The noise reduction algorithm and RAW conversion engine are just fantastic (very good reasons for me just to try the software). The greatest weakness of Capture NX is its demand on system resources. I am running the software on a Pentium 4 M 2.0GHz with 768 MB RAM and the rendering of JPEG preview is so, so, so slow. Painfully slow. The upgrade from .NET 1.0 to .NET 2.0 speeds things up quite a bit though. Lots to explore: the optimization (fellow chemists, it brings back memories, right? ;P) of sharpening and noise reduction values, the U-point technology... However, it shouldn't take long for me to become proficient in the software, the user-interface is very friendly. I feel more and more like a technical geek rather than a photographer...
Anyway, two portrait shots from the Sino-Singapore farewell dinner. A little back-dated, I know. All processed from Nikon .nef RAW format to JPEG via Capture NX 1.10. 
Nikon D50 @ ISO1600
with Tamron 17-50 f2.8
Noise reduction with Capture NX
posted byWilliam at 12:11 AM