Just for fun…

By Young Koh | Published: January 4, 2012

These are the remains of my old point-and-shoot Canon A80 from years ago. The part creative and part goofiness in me just couldn’t let these go to waste. I had to do something with them. I recently read about people attaching Holga lenses to their DSLRs to have some good ‘ol Holga fun. It got me wondering what would happen if I mount a compact zoom lens on APS-C sensor cameras. I just had to find out.
SLR with Point and Shoot Lens!

This is the result of some fiddling around with Nikon body cap, a glue gun, and left over pieces of the Canon compact. Now that this little lens officially became a Nikon f-mount I can mount it on my Nikon or my Canon Xti with the EOS-Nikon adapter. It even zooms in and out. How sweet is that?
SLR with Point and Shoot Lens!

SLR with Point and Shoot Lens!

SLR with Point and Shoot Lens!

Here is the result.
It’s not looking terribly handsome. And one has to wonder why anyone would want to do such a thing.
SLR with Point and Shoot Lens!

SLR with Point and Shoot Lens!

SLR with Point and Shoot Lens!

Here are the shots made with the silly frankenstein lens. The good news is that I can focus really close. I mean really close like 3/8 of an inch! It can almost serve as a cheap microscope. However, as you can see they aren’t terribly good looking. Also, at that focus distance you don’t get enough light between the subject and the front of the lens. So you’d need a tripod because you’ll be shooting really slow. Yes, the lens is crappy but fun. The same way go-carts are fun even if you drive a Bentley.
SLR with Point and Shoot Lens!

SLR with Point and Shoot Lens!

SLR with Point and Shoot Lens!

SLR with Point and Shoot Lens!

The screw head on these are 2mm in diameter.
SLR with Point and Shoot Lens!

SLR with Point and Shoot Lens!

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Little Camera with a Big Heart – Samsung NX100

By Young Koh | Published: December 13, 2011

This little mirrorless system Samsung is my ‘take-along-anywhere’ camera. It can go where my Nikon D90 or Canon Xti can’t. It’s light, compact, and discreet.
The NX100 has APS-C 1.5 crop factor sensor which is the same size as my Nikon D90 and slightly larger than the Canon Xti. So far, the little Samsung doesn’t disappoint. Great images, intuitive menu layout and easy access to controls make this camera an absolute joy.

The 20-50mm f/3.5 is decent. Seems to perform better than most of the 18-55mm that comes with entry dslrs.
Samsung NX 100
Samsung NX 100

The NX 20mm f/2.8 pancake lens is absolutely sweet.
Samsung NX 100
Samsung NX 100
Samsung NX 100

Samsung NX100 with Nikkor 50mm 1.8 D
Samsung NX 100

Samsung NX100 with Nikkor 18-105mm DX G
Samsung NX 100

Samsung NX100 with Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 S
Samsung NX 100
Samsung NX 100

Samsung NX100 with Tokina 100-200mm
Samsung NX 100
Samsung NX 100

Samsung NX100 with Tamron 17-35mm f/2.8 SP
Samsung NX 100
Samsung NX 100
Samsung NX 100

Nikon F-mount adapter. Works with Nikon AI, AIS, D and G series lenses. Allows me to use all of my Nikon mount lens collection.
Samsung NX 100 Nikon F-mount adapter

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Is Flash Dead?

By Young Koh | Published: November 18, 2011

Yes.

But don’t just take my word for it.

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Oh my, what’s up at Apple…

By Young Koh | Published: October 4, 2011

I really couldn’t care less about the fact that the new iPhone that Apple introduced three months late wasn’t an iPhone5. However, as a web designer, I do seem to notice somethings more than others. Things like how they present new products on their website, design, layout, etc.

If you visited apple.com today, you’ll see that somebody was in a terrible hurry to get the iPhone site up. The iPhone images used in the slides weren’t properly cropped. Someone forgot to remove the white background on the corners and between the buttons. This became obvious because they added drop shadows behind the phones (I’m sure Apple probably have fixed this by the time anyone reads this post).

iphone image on Apple.com

iphone image on Apple.com

Things like this never happens on apple.com. Normally, something like this would never fly under designer’s radar at Apple or elsewhere. There’s only one explanation for such goof up. The phone images were switched at the very, very last minute. So last minute that no one at Apple had a chance to review the page.
Maybe it was images of iPhone5 that was originally meant for this animation. We’d never know…

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Go, go Mini

By Young Koh | Published: September 12, 2011

Demo Ad

Original concept & photography by Young Koh.

(not a real Yakima ad, just having fun with photography and design…)

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Why are camera lenses so expensive?

By Young Koh | Published: August 11, 2011

Have you wondered why camera lenses are so expensive? Aren’t they just pieces of glass?
Pros and amateurs alike are often baffled by the prohibitive cost of high performance lenses which can easily cost several times more than the camera itself.
Here’s a video that briefly takes you through the lens manufacturing process at Canon. The video itself isn’t terribly exciting to watch. But it does give you an insight to the complexity of the lens manufacturing process.

By the way, the Canon EF 500mm lens featured on the video sells for about $9500.00 USD.


How Lens are Made

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Using Google Web Fonts

By Young Koh | Published: July 26, 2011

Google Web Fonts API now makes it even easier to use web fonts on websites. The days of choosing between Arial or Verdana are long gone. Hundreds of available Google Web Fonts are totally free and open source. The interface is simple and intuitive.

Google Web Fonts

The @font-face CSS stylesheet is automatically generated on Google’s end. All you have to do is embed the link and define font style as you would normally:

<link href='http://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Leckerli+One&v2' rel='stylesheet' type='text/css'>

h1 { font-family: ‘Metrophobic’, Arial, serif; font-weight: 400; }

You also have the option to choose multiple styles or font weight (on most fonts) before embedding the code. However, having to embed too many font or styles will slow down the page load. Thankfully, the interface comes with a nifty load impact meter. Although numbers indicated on the meter seems arbitrary, the colored zones give you a good idea of the relative impact. Have fun!

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Pretty Loaded

By Young Koh | Published: April 13, 2011

Days of Flash loading screens are long gone…, well, almost.
Designers used Flash loaders to retain visitor’s attention while pre-loading bunch of other Flash stuff. Some of these short movie clips from the heydays of Flash were very creative, entertaining and enticing. PrettyLoaded is a growing collection of Flash Loaders from the past.

Pretty Loaded

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Staples Home Robbery TV Ad

By Young Koh | Published: April 4, 2011

Like everything else TV ads have their share of hits and misses. There are commercials we love because they are entertaining to watch. And there are ones that are just annoying or utterly tasteless.
One of the worst examples this years is Staple’s “Home Robbery” TV commercial. It boggles the mind how something so obviously lacking in intellect have made it through the approval process. I can only assume that something like this has been hastily approved over the phone in the middle of a golf shot or something.


Staples Home Robbery Ad

First all, you have to be vary cautious when playing off a negative life experience, especially something to which people can immediately relate. Even more so when it’s a commercial where you’re trying to persuade people to buy your products.

“Maybe it’s time for a new computer”? “Now, this is something they would steal”? Gimme a break.
If the thief didn’t steal your old computer, it’s a good thing. Especially if you had all the photos, videos and other important files in it. You wouldn’t immediately replace it with something “they would steal”.

Somewhere in the midst of all this absurdness the ad tries to hint the existence of Staple’s free file transfer service (btw, which I’m not sure why it’s such a big deal to transfer files). However, the entire ad is massively missing the mark and fails to provoke positive emotions.

At it’s core, this ad is basically saying; buy a new computer at Staples and make sure the thief takes it next time.
It wouldn’t be so “easy” to retrieve your photos, videos and taxes then would it?

YouTube Link
Staples Home Robbery Ad

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Is WordPress Killing Web Design?

By Young Koh | Published: March 15, 2011

As a designer or developer if you’re simply tinkering with CSS that someone else has created or if your idea of of a layout is relocating ‘Widgets’, then your creative options may be limited.

But WordPress is much more than CSS and Widgets. The real beauty of WordPress is in creating your own theme and letting the WP’s framework take care of the database driven dynamic content. In creating a custom theme, you have as much freedom as creating any HTML from scratch. Building layout with HTML and WordPress PHP tags is like playing with Lego blocks where your imagination is the limit.

So is WordPress limiting creativity? Absolutely not. It’s not WP’s job nor its intention to dictate layout or design. All WordPress does is generate dynamic content in the back-end so that you don’t have to worry about it.

Wordpress

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