Nex-3 - A month later.

I wrote an initial review about this camera here.  And after a month of intensive usage in Thailand.  I have more thoughts on this little camera.

My Dog Cindy

Truthfully, its an impulsive purchase out of curiousity and fun.  As I was really interested in dabbling in video and the sensor size (1.5 crop of 35mm) is a big plus point for me to get it.  And the ability to mount serveral old lenses makes me jump straight into it.  A month later using this camera, I find it to be very capable and good but there are still some essentials things that are missing which makes this camera not really good enough for my needs.  I think I should have waited a bit longer for the next generation of Nex.

Ah Boy Having Lunch

Firstly, no view finder.  I am just so used to using a camera with a Viewfinder.  Even its a little optical window it will be great asset for me.  I think I'm just too used to peering into a small window while taking pictures :P  The Nex does have a 16mm optical viewfinder accessories but it kinds of look wierd when attached on top of it.  Moreover, once you attached it, you loose the flash!

Panoramic Mode! Sea of Green.

Secondly is the flash.  Its just too puny and how I wish they use the Standard ISO hotshoe or even the Minolta hotshoe would be great.  If not, a PC sync port will be great.   They just have to come up with a proprietary connector which kinds of spoils the fun by not allowing other 3rd party flash accesories to be used on it. Dear SONY, you allow other lenses to be mounted on the cam, why not the accessories too??

Thirdly is some interface issues I encountered.  (which is solved recently with the new firmware) I have updated it but during the month long period of shooting with the old interface is really a bugger sometimes.  I have not tested the new interface extensively, so hopefully its better now.

Colour gel fun..Girl and her friends posing.

Fourth, I find it a bit too small :P  (small oso complain. hehe) This is just personal but I find the ideal small compact size camera is my Bessa R3M.  Its just the right size in my hands and its not too big in my hand.  How I wish Cosina would build an affordable Digital RF (Epson RD-1 is a joke)

And lastly, its APS-C sensor leaves me a bit wanting.  Why why why not 35mm FF :P  ahaha.  Going back to APS-C is a pain in the ass for me.  I'm so used to the working distance of 35mm that I often missed shots on this little camera due to forgetting its cropped.  I need to reprogram myself that 35mm on this camerea is no longer 35mm but 52mm..

So I was thinking should I keep the camera or sell it?? Its a hard decision but I decided to keep it for the time being.. Although it won't be a camera I would use often.  I would used it to test my M lenses in digital and maybe occasional video shoot of my kids with the kit lens.  But I seriously think I would not bring it with me for overseas expeditions or serious photography... That would leave it to my Bessa and upcoming Hexar RF :P  If its digital, most probably my trusty A900 (without the grip) with my 35/2 or 24-70 Zeiss. 

You can view more photos taken by this camera here.  Most of them are straight out of cam jpegs with some slightly enhanced in Lightroom.  Wonderful colours and the kit lens is surprisingly good :)

 

Things half-done again...

I am flying back to Singapore today and will start my shift work on Firday.  The kids and my wife left early this morning to Keng Tung to my mother-in-law place to have a short break and annual ancestral worship.  Our Meh Ban (house keeper) tagged along too to help out.  So now I'm alone in my house in Thailand.. A bit too quiet for my liking.. hehe

Sad to say but we could not complete the Marriage Certificate ontime.  The Nai Amphue is still in overseas and although the Pa Lat kindly wrote a note for us yesterday to go Chiang Rai to register.  I declined as its a 2 hours drive back and forth.. A bit too rushed and since the children and wife is going off today.  I decided to postphone it till my next trip.  The Pa Lat was a kind gentleman and he apologised to me for the screws up even though I know its not his fault at all.  Hard to come by a good government official here in Thailand but there are a lot of good and helpful people in such smaller district in Thailand (not BKK of course)

Anyway, suppose to announce I'm married today on this blog but I guess its postphoned till Dec when I'm back again.  Now, just relax and maybe take a nap before I go off around 2pm to catch my flight back to BKK. 

Burn more money again!!!

If you are not sure about my new found hobby ever I came to Maesai... here's some recap

Link 1

Link 2

Link 3

Hahaha.. Every year around this period sure "burn" money again on fireworks..  This year got some more new versions of crackers and toys for me to play.

The black box shiok.. Its actually those rocket fireworks but 25 shots in a box!! Really like missiles shooting out from a container.  The red UFO next to it is an upgraded Spinner which emits cracking sounds and spud more sparks then the usual one.  The bottle like (blue top) is actually illegally sold to me by the vendor.... BLOODY LOUD bang.. I think it has way too many firepower in it.. REALLY REALLY loud.. hehe

The one behind it are cold sparklers in tube forms.. nothing much but its much safer.  And finally the last one is another crackling bomb which emits different colours of sparks.  Nice name given to it too.. 金玉滿堂.  Which means rich and pospoerous for all..

100baht for this lot... hehe which is about SGD$4.50.  Nice cheap fun... Early Loy Krathong fun and its getting cold in the morning!!! WHoo hoo!!!

The 2 baby rockers!

 

 

Wife took this while I was away and I burst out laughing when I saw this.  The original video does not have any music in it so I just added a short clip of "Salvation" by the Cranberries.  Enjoy!! :P

More Waiting Games.

Its always like this... whenever I want to do something in Thailand..  I kena the worst situations.  Just on Monday, my wife and I went down to the local Amphur Maesai to register our marriage.  Everything was done except a signature from the Nai Amphure (Head and Judge of the local district).  He was busy with some other issues and this is actually gahment related...

What happened there were some gahment movements of the officials in the North.. Where a lot of high ranking officers at the district office was asked to move away from their current post and be transferred to Bangkok.  Naturally these officials are more "red" then yellow so they are not bulking and did not leave on the intended date.  So the central gahment actually stopped their payment of the entire salary of the local district office.  This is so in Mae Fa Luang as my wife and I made some friends with some of the employees there when we were up there contantly. 

So the distict officers are contantly not in their office and the situation is getting a bit out of hand (from what we had heard is that a lot of these officers are refusing to bulk at all and are currently entering a negotiations with people from the central gahment)

Thus, a 1 to 2 day thingie was dragged till today and the Nai Amphue is still not back in office.  The Pa Lat informed us that he should be back next week on Tues... And I'm flying off on Wed!!  Stressed up now...

Tiger Airways sucks...

This was in my draft for quite sometime.  Its actually written before the previous post but I took sometime to refine it a bit before publishing this.  I want to write this down as take it as a record and reminder to never fly this airline again.

To get a better picture of what happened.  Do see these links and understand that I was one of the affected traveller in this saga.

http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/singaporelocalnews/view/1084591/1/.html

http://www.razor.tv/site/servlet/segment/main/90/55056.html

I was much "luckier" as I received an SMS informing my flight was cancelled 12 hrs before my departure time!  A joker also called me to inform me that the flight was cancelled.  I tried to asked for more details and he just rudely said I called to inform.  You have 7 days to amend your flight.  I asked to speak to his supervisor or manager and he said there is no supervisor or manager.. (duh.. I work in a call centre too and this is a lame excuse man!!) Asked for this rude joker name and he just cut me off...

Fuming, I tried to call their hotline and guess what??  Kept me on hold for bloody 2 hours until it cut off at 10pm automatically... WTF..

So I booked another flight with Airasia and tried to call their toll free hotline in Thailand for 7 consecutive days before I got through.  Refunded my flight but need to wait 4 to 6 weeks to process... Duh...

Anyway, the person on the line who took my call was at least courteous and polite... But the whole situation could be handled much much much better.

For example.  The person who called to inform should gave options.  Like do you want a refund or maybe a reschedule of the flight.  Not just ask the customer to call back the service hotline??  You're already speaking to a frustrated customer and this would only just aggravate him or her furthur.

Provide information and be truthful about it.  I strongly suspect 2 grounded planes would affect more than 40 flights being cancelled.  There must be more to it and I suspect their pilots or crew were leeched by other carriers.  Since there was recently news about Pilot shortages in Asia.

And finally, please!  If there is a crisis like this.  The hotline should be 24hrs instead.  Get proactive and call the customer.  Yes, it may cut your profits even furthur and maybe incur more losses but at least you save your bloody IMAGE!!  Now you have a bunch of disappointed customer (including me of course) who would be throwing all the negative points of your service to other potential customer!

Yes there will be customers and you will still earn money because you are cheap,  but you won't have loyal customers like Airasia (and they are really improving!) You would forever be stuck serving the worst customers (those cheapo ones and complaint the most!)  Good luck Tiger... I think you really need the teeth to continue after this fiasco..

 

Surrounded by red tape again...

I'm currently back in Thailand and its almost a week since I'm here. There was a screw up with Tiger Airways as they canceled my flight less then 12 hours of my flight time.  I willl post that in a later post...

I stopped over in Bangkok to settle some documents for getting married in Thailand and again encountered some interesting red tapes with our dear Singapore Gahment agancies again.  This time none other then the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Singapore stationed at the Singapore Embassy in Thailand. 

I have collected all the neccessary documents for the affidavit that need to be notarized by the embassy before translating it to Thai and officiate it.  This is what happened.  After going through the checkpoint of our fugly embassy (It's like a bloody fottress!!) I rang a little electric door bell and was greeted by a young thai lady.  She speaks quite fluent English and I stated my business here. She said my wife needs to be with me... WTF no1. I easily countered why that time I came it was not stated?  And how come their letter of instructions did not mentioned my wife needs to be with me?  I also explained we have tow kids and my boy is only a year and a half and you want them to fly over here just to see her in person????  She was a bit baffled and got struck by my no nonsense explanations.  She said she checked with her superior and they agreed to do it for me for my kids sake.  Round 1 I won :P

So I handed the stuff to her and she came back 5 mins later asking me why my wife is not a "Miss" but "Mrs" on her Thai national ID.  OK .. Need to explain this portion.  For Thai people, the title is important as it kinds of indicates that if you are a Mrs that means you had married before.  So I explained to her that on her Si Kio Kok Daeng (her old IC) her title is already Mrs as the army personal who registered her in writing put it wrongly.  She was never married before.  We have a document from her district Amphur that states that was a mistake.  But I did not have a copy with me.  So I asked if I could fax to to them now.  She's ok with it and I called my wife to fax the document over... Round 2 is a tie..

Recieved the fax and then another lady who I clearly believe she is a Singaporean (I think the former Thai lady knows I am difficult to handle so passed the baton to her :P), came over and told me the document only says she did not get married but did not specifically say her title is wrong so cannot accept the letter.  WTF!  So I spoke to her nicely and explained my wife's WAS stateless and the whole story.  So I countered.  Why don't you help me write me a letter SPECIFICALLY tell me what you need so I can pass this letter to the district Amphur to produce a specific letter of what you need before you need to proceed.  She was a bit shocked by my insistance of having this letter as I explained that we had no issue with this letter when we did the children and my wife's passport at the Thai MFA. So why MFA of Singapore want to play punk and did not want to accept this letter.  She said she checked with her superior and get back to me. 

10mins later she came back and said they will do it for me as they are more concerned about my marriage status rather than my wife.  Whoo hoo!  Round 3 I win again..  So I asked them why they have so much regulations if that is the case in the first place.  Give me a lame excuse say that they want to PROTECT me as they scared my wife was married .  Sincerely, I nearly want to burst laughing on the spot.... Anyway, I say thanks for your concern but I am not worried on that part..  She went on explaining that the local amphuer might gave us trouble but I thanked her and sacartiscally replied no trouble is bigger then what I encountered here today... hehehehe. 

I send the letter to be translated just at the building next to the embassy.  While waiting,  I can't help it but laughed to myself on how Singaporeans and these Bangkokians are so clueless on the current state of the world.  They think that everyone in this world has an identity and a state.  Unaware that just up North in Thailand,  there are hundreds and thousands of people having the same state as my wife used to be.  Its a sad joke if they do not understand their plight and why these people loved Thaksin in the North.

Anyway, took a victory photo (by myself) using my instax camera... hehehehe

 

Boy.. I look so fat in this picture... :P