In Singapore, there's a unique food dish served during the 15 days of the Lunar New Year. Served almost everywhere it sells for as little as $8 to $188 Yu Sheng provides one with an interesting insight into the Singapore psyche. With ingredients that carry symbolic references to luck, wealth, health and prosperity, it seems the populace is tucking into this with more fevor than I'd witnessed during past years. The toss of Yue Shang seems higher, more vigorous and on the ends of hopeful chopsticks. I think its akin to clutching for straws in a desperate bid to turn around one's fortunes.

This year's Chingay parade kicked off at 8pm. For us with cameras, it was a collective groan ("Darned it! No warm light, 800 flim and where'd I keep that flash unit?") .....of course those with rangefinders and super cool dudes who're able to handhold at 1/2 sec were smiling all the way to the lab.

Ran into photo-brothers Andy, Greg, Ah San, CK and Red Dawn. I gotta admire Red Dawn......he was still running all over decked out in a photog's vest, Domke bag, big Canon and a long white L WITH a Leica M+flash unit+handgrip.....without breaking a sweat in the damned humidity.

Some equiptment observations (the sick Peeping Tom in me showing itself). Canon EOS with white L lenses shared equal prominence with Nikon F100s (only sneaked a peek at one F5) Loads of Pentax and Minolta slrs with built in flash units popped up and ready. Now digital pro slrs......THAT was VERY prominent and one was spotted every few yards. Mechanical slrs were rare.

Surprise (or maybe not)......consumer P&S digital cameras were EVERWHERE. It seems about 50/50 on the flim and digital P&S front. This should tilt in digital's favour over by the time the next Chingay comes around (Nay! Maybe by the time National Day comes around)

Big surprise....no less than 5 Voightlander R rangefinders (one a very cool Olive Green) were counted and Leicas actually seemed on the fringe of coming back into fashion with a few spotted (the de'rigeur color now seemes all-black with only 2 chromes spotted)

An even bigger surprise.......lots and lots of girls.....slinging serious looking cameras (digital and flim)....saw one with a monster 300/2.8 at the Pidemco VIP area.

Curious note:

1. Lots of sweet looking tripods from Manfrotto, Gitzo and Velbon and among the lower ends.....the Slik U Series seems to be the top budget tripod of choice

2. I think Canon's doing a great job pushing their lower end slrs. Lost count of the number of all-silver body+lens combos that I'd come across.

3. Fascinating to see how some prosumer digital camera shooters wired up their off-camera flash units and how they worked with swivelling lenses/LCD screens. It was an eye opener....some were using off-camera flash brackets (a Nikon 995 rigged up like this looked really groovy with the flash above camera when held in a certain position. or below in some other contortion with the head swivelled

4. I'd bet my last dollar that digital cameras picked up the bulk of whacky angles and perspectives (saw a guy with a Canon G3 with camera 2 inches off the road and screen swivelled up to give the shooter a comfortable view of THAT perspective....which I must say was an unusual cat/mouse/rat's perspective enjoying the parade)

Camera spotting aside, the VIP stands and common viewing areas in front of Funan were overly jammed packed and police security was ruthless and bordering on the barbaric. Further down the road at the end of the parade route at the Ministry of National Development VIP stands, the mood was much more relaxed with a smaller crowd. The MC was great and the police were well loved by the photographers (they pretty much allowed free reign to anyone with a camera just as long as we didnt get in the way or became a nuisance or safety hazard to others.

Spent sunday morning out early at the temples. Lots of incense burnings going on and put the M6 through its weekly workout. I must say, this camera feels good in the hands paired with a 28mm. We'll see how the pics turn out tomorrow.

I watched a DVD last night One Hour Photlo. Photo Lab manager Sy Perkins (Robin Williams) discovers the husband of his favourite client having an affair when said husband's lover dropped off, by coincidence, a roll of flim showing husband and lover in intimate poses. Movie featured product placements by Leica (Minilux) and Agfa and I must say some of the pics were pretty good. I loved Sy's montage of a few hundred color prints on his wall at home. The ending leaves one thinking and turned my expectations completely inside out.

Talking about labs, I dropped off 5 rolls of flim to be developed and scanned to CD this morning at a lab which I'll save from embarassing by not naming it, around Peninsula Plaza. These guys were great......up until 2 months back. I warned the guy that the scanning was going down hill with more incidences of sloppy grainy scans and lint/marks on the scans. "Its gotta to be a speck or something in your lens...." without even taking a look at the scans in question.

I told him silently "go eat shit you idiot......you have NO idea of how I care for my equiptment....ESPECIALLY lenses" I hate it when excuses are offered instead of solutions to correct quality. Guess its Adios and Good Bye from me the next time it happens. Anyone knows of a lab that can do a half decent scan?