These Are Crap (But It Can Only Get Better!)

I finally got myself a D-SLR on the day I turned 45 last Thursday, a camera I've been lusting for a while. It's a Nikon D40 my friends - an entry level camera suitable for a newbie, or a recovering newbie, rather. But make no mistake, it's a Nikon - at the heart of the image - and I hope one day the images I make with my D-40 would be worthy of more than this blog...


Saw this relic from the past during lunch today, sitting on the countertop of Hj. Samsuri Satay Kajang Restaurant, Damansara Utama branch.

Sorry, can't help but take some tantalizing Satay Shots to go with the typewriter!

No, don't worry, I'm not turning this blog into a 'photo-blog' just yet, but it sure beats the heck of marshalling thoughts on paper, and arguably a lot more fun too...


As is with writing, it takes a while to find one's voice. It's the same with photography. I really don't know what the heck I'm doing (yet), but let me a learn a few things, see where this takes me.

Which brings to mind this phrase: The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Arsitek Serie (somewhere in Uptown, Damansara Utama)

In these 'Arsitek Serie' I found the D40 tend to over-expose a wee bit so I compensated by as much as -0.7...

All the small shots are just "filler material" but from the D40 nonetheless...

Man selling balloons at TTDI Pasar Minggu...same here, up to -0.7 exposure compensation was used...

Interior Shot of Restaurant - one of the first few shots taken with the D40 - handheld and AUTO everything of course. The AUTO WB (White Balance) did a fine job of 'correctly' guessing the lighting...

Superior metering of this "cheapest" Nikon D-SLR properly exposing the skin tones of my 5 year-old boy, even with the setting evening sun in the background.

Ok-lah, enough for the time being, even my daughter is getting bored!


Although the D-40 has 'only' 6.1 Megapixels, I find the metering hard to fault...skin tones are quite accurate don't you think?








Mat Salo's Camera Settings when in P (Program Mode): Auto ISO (Custom Set Max 1600 Sensitivity, Minimum 1/15 sec Shutter Speed), -0.7 Exposure Compensation, Color Mode IIIa, Saturation'+', JPEG Large, Basic. All the pictures you see here are untouched (I don't even have Photoshop in my PC) save for minor cropping and compression to make these files fly on the web.

All photos (c) Mat Salo Images '07. All Rights Reserve. Do not reprint without permission, Thank You.

N.B. Congratulations to my former classmate Dato' Aminuddin Mohd. Desa (ex-CEO Takaful Nasional) on being awarded the DSK from Sultan of Kedah in Alor Setaq today, Sunday the 21st. This brings to a total of a mere THREE (!) of my batchmates who are now Latuks - Dato' Sallehuddin Ahmad Kamal and Dato' Tengku Zubair Ubaidillah (who received his together with Datuk CT).