Mohammadpur and Dhanmondi, Dhaka, Bangladesh
Panasonic Lumix LX-5..... had been thinking about it for a while now, but didn't really make progress for a lot of reasons..... the most important being the lack of supply in Dhaka.... the market looked almost too pessimistic in Dhaka.... but things really took a nice turn when I arrived at Kualalumpur..... it didn't really seem that there were any kind of crisis going on in the supply of photographic equipment.... at least, the impression that I had received in Dhaka was shattered to pieces during the first several hours of my transient stay at KL..... there was an abundance of camera and accessories in every store I looked into..... that gave me strength to go for the LX-5....
had been reading online reviews for some time now.... I shortlisted the brands to LX-5, Canon G-12 and Nikon P7000..... the list contained 3, as there was apparently a "crisis" in the supply chain..... the situation in Japan was talked about so much.... but my visit to KL made the list shorter.... the LX-5 was everywhere.... so, no issues....
anyway, the LX-5 deserved some tryouts.... and this Friday was the day..... because of the presence of the hot-shoe and complete manual control, I decided to start with my improvised studio.... Lamisa volunteered, as usual.... this was her first photoshoot since she lost her hair to an angry hair-stylist.... she advertised my newest DIY thing..... a very small diffuser that can be stowed within my small netbook bag... the diffuser is 60cm x 38cm in size.... folded, this comes down to around 20cm in diameter.... Lamisa displayed the "product" in front of the LX-5 with Elinchrom Skyport trigger.... the Skyport triggered a Ranger A-Head and that, in turn, triggered a Yongnuo YN-560 flash in optical trigger mode (see diagram).....
I shot in RAW mode.... the speed of the LX-5 in RAW mode was definitely impressive.... its not as fast as a D700, but it certainly isn't slow.... struggled with editing the RAW file for a while.... it eventually worked out..... but after that I confined myself to shooting JPEG only.... and I had received some opportunities of that during the day.... went out with the family and had some shooting opportunities.....
used a YN-560 flash sporadically to test out the practical aspect of carrying a flash in some situations..... its portability and capability certainly made it my camera of choice for at least some occasions..... I'm sure that the kind of shooting opportunity I had during the day, I would've left my D700 back home just to save my shoulders..... it was a cakewalk with the LX-5; even with a YN-560 flash and Elinchrom Skyport radio triggers.... I even carried that DIY diffuser that Lamisa tried to market in the earlier images.... the carry-on pack was extremely comfortable.... I usually carry my netbook in it... and in fact, that bag gave me a real push to look for a P&S camera.... another push came from that weird problem I encountered during the Jessore Safari....
I loved the 24mm perspective of this Leica lens... its truly a revelation.... didn't really expect a P&S camera to come up with a 24mmm lens, although now-a-days a lot of the P&S cameras are actually coming with a 24mm wide lens... the image stabilizer is really good.... tried out this below shot at 0.4sec....
the wide aperture and close focusing of the lens gave me a surprise... it produced some nice background blur.... the following was shot at 60mm equivalent at f2.8.... there was a YN-560 flash on top of the camera shooting at the ceiling....
I've also tried out that small diffuser.... it was a bit clumsy to work with, as the wire structure is a bit wobbly for hand-holding.... certainly not for any windy situations.... but it works well for such a small pack.... the light source needs to pretty close to subject to produce soft light.... thats not a real issue for a lot of shooting types....
more to write soon..... especially my KL diaries.....
