Got my Olympus E-3 yesterday! The top-of-the-line pro DSLR by Olympus~ I got it used off Ebay for around $1350, body only (it’s around $1600 new), but the deal also includes a Zuiko 14-54mm F2.8-3.5 lens (worths $400 new), a Olympus HLD-4 battery holder/grip (worths $200), and a couple other goodies like an extra battery, a diffusion filter, a HUGE camera bag (looks bad though guess I’m not gonna use it), a 4GB Transcend compact flash card, and a USB card reader. The whole thing would have costed me around $2500 new (after tax)! So it was really a huge savings. Now I just hope that the camera won’t die too soon, even though the ebay seller (she’s really nice) told me that it’s only been used to take around 30 pics of her kids (I did find a couple pics of her kids in the memory card, lol).

I’m still thinking whether to sell my current Olympus E-520 or not, if I do I’d probably sell it with the Zuiko 14-54mm lens that I just got (for free, kind of). Or maybe I can just keep it since it’s MUCH lighter and smaller to carry out for a casual photoshoot…

Anyway, I’m super excited now to start using this pro camera. I hope that I can produce some really outstanding imagery with it in the upcoming months.

Got these close-up filters today in mail, bought them of Ebay last week. It was the Hoya Close-Up Filter Set with 3 close-up filters: +1, +2, +4. I was so stoked to test them when I got them but as soon as I screw them onto my new 50-200mm lens, I knew something was wrong. My camera wasn’t able to auto focus! Well I then tried manual focus, it worked but I had to be at a certain distance from the target, which makes it very impractical to use in real life. Also the image taken was very blurry near the corner, and also I had to use a really low F number like F11 in order get a sharp picture.

Overall, these filters are hopeless. I’ve just posted them onto Craigslist hopefully I can get rid of them ASAP

Received this 72mm polarizing filter from mail yesterday which I bought from ebay about a week and a half ago. It was the cheapest branded one I could find. I didn’t really want to get the unbranded ones even though they were like many times cheaper. Hoya is a pretty huge brand for filters I think. I think I got this one for about $40US. This filter will be paired up with my precious Zuiko 12-60mm zoom lens. What the filter basically does is to filter out unwanted light waves reflected from surfaces of objects so that the camera does not “see” annoying reflections from water, glass windows, etc. Also it gives bluer sky and greener grass. I can’t wait to try out the filter in a sunny day. Can probably use it a lot during the trip to Japan/Korea.

One interesting thing I noticed instantly was how the filter actually filters out the image on my LCD monitor! Look at the photos attached, when I rotate the filter it actually changes the visibility of the screen that’s behind the filter! This is pretty cool.

AHHHHHHHHHHH long time no post, a little more than a month…. so much had happen, will try to recap in the next couple days…

Anyway, just got this spare battery charger for my Olympus E-420 digital SLR camera. Got it from ebay and I’m pretty pissed at its quality. Like I don’t mind stuff being made in China but, this one just have the gayest design ever. As seen from the pic there’s this little plastic thing that sticks up near the lower end of the charger that holds the battery in place. It looks super flimsy and I’m sure it’ll break very easily say if I stack it into some travel bag with some other hard stuff. ALSO when you remove the battery you’ll have to push those plastic sticks back a bit in order to take the battery out…. the worst design I’ve ever seen in years. But anyway, I got them for cheap so I guess this is what I get for the money I guess as long as it works. If it breaks guess I’ll just get another one….lol. Now time to do a charge see if this thing blows up.

My little Roomba vacuum had been acting weird lately, like it would stop vacuuming after running for about 15 seconds and the red LED light keeps on blinking. After some searches on Google, I realized that its batteries might have gone bad so I continued my research on replacing the batteries. The original Roomba batteries from iRobot costs around $60 and after shipping and taxes it might be well over $80. After some more Googling I found that I could get some 3rd party replacement batteries, and install them into the Roomba’s battery casing. I bought them from this Ebayer for $26, great deal! This is the item i got.

It took 2 weeks for the batteries to arrive. I spent about an hour today on it. It was pretty tough to open up the battery cover as you first need to use a Philips screw driver (triangular shaped head) to unscrew 8 screws, then use two flat screw drivers to open up the cover carefully since the cover is glued to the rest of the casing. Then I soldered three wires to the original metal contact plates, and carefully put everything back together. I place the battery into my Roomba and, “blink!” it turned on :):):):) Now I’m waiting for it to charge up and then I’ll see if it really works and if it runs longer than the original battery (which the battery seller claims.)

I just sold my Fujifilm F50fd digital camera that I got from Ebay like 3 weeks ago…lol. Sold it to a guy on Craigslist for $350, not bad at all~ Reason selling it was to invest in this Canon G9 camera, much higher end than the F50fd even though both are 12 megapixels (here is a review, here is another one with sample images.) The F50fd was overall a great camera, slim, handsome looking, powerful… but the image quality was worse than expected so not too long after getting it I was already in search of a replacement 8O. After couple dozen hours of research, I ended up picking up the top-of-the-line Canon G9, which is a 12 megapixel with a 6X optical zoom and an image stablizer. Turned out to be one of my best decision made this year, the image quality is stunning. Great color, accurate focus, good low light performance (ISO 400 with not much noise), and solid steel sturdy body. Macro performance is amazing too, I was placing the lens as close as 0.5 cm from an object and it was able to focus with ease! Movie taking quality was great compared to the Fujifilm F50fd - color was accurate and I was able to zoom in/out during recording.

I’m looking forward to utilize my new camera to its max during my next vacation to China in the coming month!