Sunday, October 28, 2012

Lord of Ten Thousand Years, Our Eternal Gratitude

Loving the Silent Tears musical have just ended, and the audience were treated to a supremely gorgeous show with a multi-talented star studded cast. The Irish tap dancing session was very beautifully done and elegantly presented the country's music very well. Another memorable performance was when three singers with powerful voices representing the Arab and middle east world entered the stage, and two whirling dervishes adorned both ends of the stage in an exotic, intoxicated dance to God, a most representative moment of the sufi mysticism. All artists wore very beautiful costumes evocative of the world's culture and the vocals of sopranos and tenor alike adorned the wonderful night. The same location at the 6,500 seat Shrine Auditorium LA, in December 1998 where Supreme Master Ching Hai's lyrics was first put to music by the renowned composer Mr. Bill Conti at the "One World of Peace Through Music" charity event now played host to the second ever musical called Loving the Silent Tears. At the end of the 4 hour long show, three charitable organizations dealing with welfare for animals received contributions of a hundred thousand dollars each.


In this joyous occasion, Supreme Master Ching Hai also presented an important video message to the world, saying we have more than ten thousand years of continued existence of our precious planet to look forward to.. and our most heart-felt gratitude to the most High Divinity for saving our Earth.


Be Vegan, Make Peace.


Loving The Silent Tears Live Webcast

Loving The Silent Tears musical showing live web cast now at http://www.suprememastertv.com

Saturday, October 27, 2012

First impressions of the Sigma DP2 merrill

For some time now I have been increasingly intrigued by the reviews and wonderful pictures available online on the amazing colors of the Foveon technology. Having personally experienced the powerful images that the now extinct Kodak DCS Pro 14n camera was capable of producing, I became convinced that the Foveon camera is worthy of further investigation. Recently I decided that market prices are just about right for the price of a premium APS-C compact camera that the Fveon cost at around US$ 1k and went ahead to purchase one. The blow of the pricy premium enthusiast model was soften somewhat by the vendor giving away a "free" Sigma flash and two included camera batteries, which of course have already been factored into the marketing price. This blog is a first impression of the Sigma DP2 merrill if it may be helpful for someone thinking of buying this camera.


 Sigma DP2m with free flash

Right out of the box, the signs of cost savings become apparent. No software CD, you get to download it from the internet yourself and no printed manual either. I made the mistake to download Sigma Photo Pro 4.2 which does not recognize the X3F RAW files, but installing the latest 5.3.2 version solved this problem.


Sigma  DP2 merrill


The first few seconds upon seeing this camera right out of the box was what an ugly black box it looked like. But when it is placed on the hands, the experience quickly turned positive. It has a metallic feel to it and appeared to be solidly built, of a quality better than the dying breeds of cheap plastic compacts. For people with big hands, there is no problem here as the rectangular box design has plenty of area for the fingers to grip.The buttons and dials feel solid enough and provide good tactile feedback in line with other premium compact models. I like the embedded pinch style lens cap, easy to take on and off the fixed camera lens. There are just enough buttons and dials to satisfy the enthusiast photographer and their functions are easy to understand without much confusion. I liked the Quick set button which in effect transformed the physical four direction button into a virtual eight way button. It is Sigma's version of the ubiquitous Fn or function button commonly found in some enthusiast models. The four way button is each individually programmable, and also very logical so I find there is no need to change the assignment of the buttons. Clockwise from the up arrow direction, the first set of the QS button control iso sensitivity, AE metering mode, drive mode followed by flash mode. I find these are exactly the kind of features I would be accessing frequently just before taking a photo, so it is abundantly clear they have put a lot of thought into this design. The second set of Q menus are White Balance, Image Size, Color Mode and Image Quality. I find that these features are less frequently used and therefore logical to group them in a set, which again indicates the designer is a hands-on photographer not just a techno wizard. The Q button is so useful that I mistakenly pressed the menu button instead and wished that the button locations for Quick Set and menu to be switched, making it easier to access the Q-menu after pressing the four way button. However since the menu button also function as a cancel button, its prime location in close proximity to the four way button is also a logical and efficient design choice. It just need some time to get used to the camera placement of buttons.


Sigma DP2m with EF-140 DG Flash


Without the physical QS button which transforms the four way button into virtual eight way buttons, accessing frequently used camera functions requires diving deeper into the menu structures, meaning more presses of the buttons and command dial required. The usefulness of the QS button to me cannot be over-stated.


Changi City


Another convenience feature of the Sigma DP2 Merrill is the used of 3 custom settings. However unlike the CS functions found in dslrs like the Nikon D7000 and Canon 7D, there is no dedicated dial for this in the Sigma which makes it less useful. To access the C1 to C3 custom settings require an additional press of the mode button followed by turning the command dial. However I feel that the feature sets available in the Sigma DP2 merrill not sophisticated enough to make the CS function really useful. Unlike the DSLR cousins with advanced AF features and incredible feature set combinations which makes the Custom functions really needed, in the case of the Sigma, its electronic sophistication can be toured in a matter of 10 minutes to 20 minutes top.So the 3 CS settings is a nice bonus from Sigma but not really useful for my needs. Some people though, may find the CS useful. Here is an example scenario. Set CS1 to high image quality, ISO 100, RAW, AWB etc to get the most image quality out of the camera under ideal conditions. Set CS2 to low light situation, Flash On, Custom White Balance, Single Frame Shooting, ISO 400 etc. Set CS3 for continuous shooting or self timer or for handling the camera over to a perfect stranger or fellow tourist to take a self-portrait, in which case set shooting mode to P, JPEG fine, Flash On, Single frame shooting etc. The possible combination of use is only limited by your imagination..


Changi City Food Court


I like the useful design of magnification in the Manual Focus mode. There are basically two ways to get the magnification window. By half press of the shutter button and turning the focus ring on the lens, or another surprisingly quick way, just by pressing the OK button. By half pressing the shutter button, the focus ring of the Sigma lens behaves like a rudimentary i-function lens found on the Samsung mirrorless compact camera series. The ability to change the magnification ratio and inclusion of distance meter is a nice touch. A 5 minutes tour covers all you need to know about the MF features !


Changi City


While still on the subject of physical handling, about the only major complain I have is the design of the USB/AV cover. When open, the door sticks out in 90 degrees and the door hinge is uncomfortably close to the USB port, allowing no room for any play of the connecting plastic cable's thickness. The ninety degree opening of the door is a disaster waiting to happen. Since I don't plan to use the USB connector it doesn't affect me at all, but it is my firm believe that the USB door is designed to break !


Changi City


After 10 minutes of fiddling with the menus and finding my way around the camera settings, including powering on and off the camera for a dozen times, there is a noticeable warmth from the battery heating up. It is not unusual and it can be felt also on my Panasonic GF3 micro Four thirds camera, but subjectively slightly warmer than that. It doesn't feel quite as warm as a 2700 mAh rechargeable nickel-cadmium battery after a four hour slow charge, and certainly there is no cause for alarm. Thanks to the thickness of the camera and its wide girth, the heat has more room to dissipate than a smaller sized compact.


A saint's lunch


Now on about the battery life. Everything horrible said about the DP2 merrill's battery life or lack of turns out to be true. I have read someone said half jokingly you need about 6 spare batteries for a day's worth of shooting, and I find that this is not an exaggeration at all ! Here's my experience. On the first fully charged battery I used on the first day of playing with the DP2 Merrill, I spend a total of about 10 minutes getting familiar with the menu and feature sets, including a dozen or so times of powering up and down the camera, and I thought I was ready for some shooting test at a lunch appointment with a saint. His whole life is an endless story of amazing miracles and synchronicity both prior to and after stepping on the path to Sainthood. So in between lunch while chatting with him I had some photo opportunity of approximately 20 minutes before the battery juice died out and the battery indicator turn red. I shook my head in disbelief.. One fully charged battery can only take 30 minutes of total use, producing only a miserly 32 X3F RAW files of between 44 MB and 54 MB file sizes... Only 32 exposures !! Oh My God, this is unheard of battery performance in the digital age, even less than a roll of analog film !!


Vegan meal


In retrospect I have already set the camera to take RAW only instead of RAW plus JPEG to save on battery usage, and this doesn't help at all. About the only other battery wasting setting I have to undo is the 5 second playback display ( instead of default 2 second ) which I doubt would give much impact if any. I might have to forgo MF usage entirely and the magnified LCD display in the interest of saving battery life. It is a good thing that the camera package comes with 2 original batteries; some people posted that other brand batteries of similar capacity can be used in the DP2 merrill. (Footnote: It was discovered that the cheap replacement batteries cannot fit within dp2m battery compartment, as the battery door cannot be closed, even though the electronic contacts and voltage are similar.)


Vegan lunch

Here's the baseline specs for almost all photos taken in this quick review. Camera mode manual, Flash Off, ISO 100, Center weighted average metering, RAW only (to save battery power), image quality Highest, Color Space sRGB, Color Mode Standard, picture setting (Contrast, saturation, sharpness) default nil, color adjustment default nil, noise reduction default chroma 0.5 luminance 0.5. The last three parameters for color adjustment and NR apparently cannot be set in-camera and can only be set in the RAW processing software Sigma Photo Pro.


Dough sticks


My initial workflow is just to convert from RAW to 16 bit TIFF using Sigma Photo Pro, then do any further adjustment using my favorite RAW processor. The additional step to get the 16 bit TIFF is necessary because at this point in time only Sigma Pro can read X3F files. Sigma Photo Pro is an impressive software with a wide array of processing parameters. Certainly it is possible to produce JPEG directly from this step alone. It is way better than the anaemic SilkyPix from Panasonic or Olympus Viewer 2. It is on par, if not more usable than Nikon ViewNx, Capture NX or Canon's DPP.


Dough Culture @ Changi City


In Sigma Pro, there are three processing options, X3F default, Auto and Custom. Since I am not contemplating using the Sigma RAW processing at this point, I only alternate between using X3F and Auto. Auto tends to produce a more contrasty image with a loss of some brightness, though this is image dependent..

Dough Culture @ Changi City


As a result of my workflow trying to extract the most image quality from the 46 MB X3F files at the start of RAW processing, it came out as a 16 bit TIFF file with a gigantic 86.5 MB ! The file size ballooned to almost twice its RAW size !! Lots of Megapixels to keep your quad-core CPU busy for a couple of seconds at least ... and in case anyone is thinking of spending three times the money to buy the Nikon D800E, why not go for this cheaper compact that has the AA filter removed and gives gorgeous colors ?


Vegan Fillet


The first thing which impressed me when working on the RAW processor Photivo, is the fact that the Sigma RAW files are incredibly sharp. Sharpness starts to creep in at 75% viewing magnification and becomes increasingly apparent as it reach 100% and beyond. It is the kind of sharpness that is often associated with expensive prime macro lenses for the DSLR. Details such as minute hair can be seen, whether this is a result of Sigma 2.8 lens or the AA filter or lack of, is anyone's guess. But it does mean that technique is important, you can't blame the equipment for an unsharp photo, it is as good as it gets, in fact, there may be situations when turning down the sharpness a touch may be required for certain images.


vegan fritters


It seems that saving in 16-bit uncompressed TIFF gives the advantage of about 2 f-stops headroom, so you can pull out the shadows and highlights comfortably. If you need more leg room, you can always go back to Sigma Photo Pro and work in there..


tempura soba


IF Sigma can come up with a FX dslr at competitive prices it will be sure to outsell all the major brands out there, but knowing how slow the Sigma works it will be the day when everyone on earth turns vegan ;-)


tempura soba


So, in summary, this is the camera for:
1 - people who cared about quality colors.
2 - subject you are shooting is stationary.
3 - the lights are good..
4 - you like to shoot 7-9 shots continuously then take a cup of coffee.
5 - landsacpe, still life, portrait
6 - you enjoy taking 5 spare batteries in your pocket.


vegan fritter


This is not the camera for you
1 - if your subject is always in motion
2 - low light and high iso shooting
3 - you are not an available light shooter
4 - you are a snapaholic with zero patience.
5 - you have a strong aversion to processing RAW files.


tempura soba


Some discussion on non-Sigma flash connection is continued at ..
non-Sigma flash discussion if you are interested in hooking up with non-Sigma flashes and studio strobes, you can see some discussion going on there..


Sigma DP2m with Nikon SB-600


In the future : I am looking forward to this flash configuration and just about half way there, things are looking bright...
Some kind soul on dpreview.com passed me this valuable tip: "To save on battery life, set the camera to 30 second auto shutdown. The default is 5 minutes. It will make a huge difference. Also, turn off auto review.". Thanks to villebon !


Sigma dp2m


More test pictures added here... Dp2m works with these radio and infra-red triggers.


Sigma dp2m

Next stop, we will post an article on dp2m accessory..

Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Evolution of the Vegan G Rice

Looking back, one of the earliest offering of vegan G Rice could possibly be the Vegetarian Era stall a few years ago when it first started at West Point Plaza @ Pasir Ris...
This is the G Rice that is commonly found in Singapore, Malaysia food scene but the requirement to be vegan means that margarine or butter cannot be used to flavour the rice which is the standard practise in all vegetarian stalls for decades.

XZ-1 wireless flash 1

So we can definitely say that it is easy to make flavourful G Rice if the traditional ingredients like Planta or margarine is used in the cooking, in addition to other conditments like coconut juice.
Noticed that the vegan G Rice appeared in roasted version, without the use of margarine at all, using instead condiments such as pandan leave and vegetable oil for flavouring.
Much more rare, and harder to find, is the White Cut version of the vegan G Rice, which once again was poineered by the Vegetarian Era stall in the West Point Plaza days...

X-Sync 1

It's not easy to pull off this cooking feat. Most vegetarian stall owners who cooked the traditional way would not be able to produce a vegan version without doing some research on cooking techniques..
X-Sync 2

Let's take another look at the white cut G rice which we have said before is rather rare in the vegetarian food scene. In order to have a lovely product such as this, not only must the ingredients itself be vegan, the process of cooking should not involve any non-vegan products as well... Only such strict requirements will meet the expectations of the pure vegan Saints who are out looking for a good meal.

Vegan Chicken Rice

In the vegetarian Era cooking, the white cut G Rice was excellent. The white protein has texture and bite, and more importantly the rice flavour is authentic.

Which bring us back to the latest inarnation of the Vegetarian Era stall, now located at Block 122 @ Ang Mo Kio Avenue 3..
Their latest version is back to the Roasted G Rice, though one would hope that sometime in th'e future they could bring out the nostalgic White Cut version as well...
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We are looking forward to more trips to the Vegetarian Era and bringing to you news about the continuing evolution of the vegan G Rice here in Singapore...

Saturday, October 13, 2012

5 Saints' Dinner

On the first weekend of the opening of the vegan shop at Hougang 805, 5 Saints decided to gather together for a food sampling dinner session. We took the opportunity to reminise on the past year when four saints from the table were touring the US on the first ever musical the Real Love, featuring Supreme Master Ching Hai's awesome poems. Last year, the venue was at Pasadena Auditorium. This year, two saints from the table will be able to take the 12 hours long haul flight to LA to attend the upcoming second musical "Loving the Silent Tears" at Shrine Auditorium LA. One of  them may even get a small role to represent the culture of the local community !


Iron Rice Bowl Two of us were early for the date so we proceeded to order the Iron Rice Bowl.This is the $4 rice set featuring the delicious and tasty sun-dried vegan salted bits served in a hot iron bowl..

Unforgetable Lor Mee

The next dish we ordered was the Unforgettable Lor Mee as we have heard that it's sauce is especially nice. While we were happily chatting away, another saint and her spouse appeared to join us and they ordered the Kway Teow Soup..

Hainanese Kway Teow Soup

She was a vegan foodist and find the Kway Teow Soup was very tasty... 5 Stars for the Vegetarian Era cook ! Her spouse is also a foodist and ordered the famous Hainanese Hericium Noodle.. we will call it the HH noodle for short. Hainanese Noodle

Very soon the samll table was getting crowded as two saint pairs showed up and we moved to another bigger table . All of us have been following the interesting development of the H.H. noodle since it first appeared on the East part of Singapore, so they all wanted to know how it taste like in this new location at Hougang..


Hainanese Noodle

Traditionally, the H-noodle is served in the white thick rice noodle version, similar to the one used in making Laksa. Just for fun, we ordered a yellow-noodle version of  the H-noodle and the cook is happy to oblige..

We talked about happy events in the last year when we were touring LA just before the musical and sampled many vegan dishes all around town. This year the event Loving the Silent Tears promised to be even bigger than last year in terms of cast number and celebrities involved. We were very envious of the lucky saints who are flying there and wished them an enjoyable and memorial musical of the year 2012 !