I am a practicing clinician, a recent doctoral graduate who finally graduated school but will never leave school, a huge technology lover, a man constantly fighting off the fat, and a father.
Laksa soup at Taipan- actually really really good and nice on the cool August evenings we are having now in the city.
This eggplant and pork was delicious and spicy.
Sweet and sour pork chop- always one of my faves.
A shrimp and egg dish at Taipan. The egg was very tender.
Hanging out at Drumheller’s Royal Tyrell Museum and trying my grip strength-very much cheating here and compressing between two arms rather than a grip strength, I managed to surpass everyone in my group by three times! Very proud of that (closest was 400 pounds/square inch) but then I saw that Gorgosaurus had an 11,000 pound/square inch bite and I was a mere weak human.
I love this diorama of the ancient seas. Didn’t recognize anything in it though. That’s a shark in the front, albeit an old prehistoric shark.
The world’s largest dinosaur is indeed large but kind of ridiculous and cheesy. It has a big set of stairs you can climb inside and stick your head out the mouth.
Hot plate with lamb and onions.
Kids playroom where you could pretend to be a flower and pollinate other flowers
Cave and Basin in Banff National Park, the first NP of Canada (I think). It was pretty neat to be in here, but it was crowded and filled with people shooting their flashes.
This Greek restaurant in Banff was DELICIOUS. this was the Greek fries which was spicy and crispy.
The lamb sandwich and tomato soup was nice on a cold day. W’s grilled cheese was wAY better though. It had a nice spice to it.
The Inn of the Rockies- a really nice two floor inn with a really modern gym (and crappy hours). Really enjoyed my stay here. It was wonderful to be here with friends and family.
Taking pictures along the Glacier falls (?)
The cold really kicked in at our last bit of adventure.
Trying one of the only professional lenses on the e-mount, the 70-200 F4 G lens. Really nice feeling set of glass, but disappointing in the lack of fast glass in Sony’s emount lineup.
Watching the Sea Lion show from afar. Crazy that they used to have dolphins here.
Put it on vivid and boom it looked way too artificial in this shot of WEM’s World Waterpark. Realized I want to goto the waterpark before school gets crazy again.
I got to try the Sony F2.5 30mm macro lens and it managed to zero in on the label letter. Crazy.
And I am back to Sony! After this year’s renaissance of Sony, I snagged a good deal on the Sony A6000 mirrorless camera with an APS-C sensor inside. This effectively allows me to merge my Nikon D90 DSLR and Coolpix P7700 carry everywhere camera into one. The AF speed is ridiculous and the size is the same as my P7700. Wifi capabilities have been pretty useful but I need to learn how to shoot again with this, mostly because the lack of a macro ability of the 16-50 PZ lens means a lot of my typical food shots are much more difficult to take. The grip fits my hand really well
This is about as close as I can get with the kit lens- some dim sum at Jumbo Seafood restaurant.
This Chinese donut was like the honey crueller at Tim Hortons with way more sugar.
Cha siu bau.
What’s this? My first digital camera experience and camera experience really- up at the top right- DSC-F77, DSC-F88 and a DSC-T9 (W’s). I loved the swivel lens design on the F series and fell in love with their unique look. Alas, they were limited to small sensors and high image noise and I eventually left Sony’s camera division for Canon/Nikon, then mostly Nikon.
I found this in my drafts of posts from back in 2014 that I never posted- I thought it would be good to get it out there anyways. In reflection, I spent a lot of time talking about Taipan restaurant- since then, the restaurant has totally folded in on itself. It was a shame, because we spent many years crashing here and I remember catching the sketchy bus in Chinatown to get there late at night, and then deciding that was too sketchy and walking home on the main artery roads instead.
In terms of cameras- pretty neat to look back- this year, after 7 years of trying out the 70-200 f4G, Sony has indeed released multiple fast lenses in their FE line up (not so much in the E line up) and their lens family has nicely filled out- I think its pretty much made their line up complete; whether that competes well enough with Canon/Nikon is another story; I rarely see Sony lenses receive the same praise, but that might be because of heritage alone. Sony certainly is to be applauded for making inroads on a tried and true market where it is so cut throat that Pentax, Olympus, Minolta, Konica and a myriad of others have called it a day. I have taken up a lot more full frame shooting since this post in 2014- and my lone FE body is from that time period. I totally missed out on the benefit of the a6000 with its hybrid phase detect autofocus that would end up being a blessing for shooting moving kids; at this time point I was only shooting stationary things. I’ve almost largely dropped off compact shooting as well. As much as I love compacts and their heritage, the iPhone 12 Pro Max is such a jump in IQ that any advantage from a fast lens/largish sensor is mitigated by the power of computational photography and convenience of instant sharing. If I am carrying a camera with me, I am carrying big. Consequently, the RX series and G1X series rarely get much field time, never mind the older small sensor/slow lens compacts. The hilarious part in this post was complaining about lack of macro ability with the kit lens. That kit lens is a) horrible; and b) really compact and neat. But I rarely shoot those food shots anymore unless I am trying something really interesting/novel. I also didn’t realize what shooting with Sony would mean for my camera line up- I have largely abandoned Nikon entirely and only recently bought Nikon (D3 for my dad this year with a 70-300VR !)
Im also certain my grip strength is much better- I’m doing circles around my deadlift now with my PR in 2014 as my regular set.
