About 6 months ago, I toyed with the idea of going for LASIK surgery. Of course it wasn’t any easy choice especially when I get a lot of objections especially from my mum, my optician (duh, of course she was going to object. I would have stopped buying glasses and contact lenses from her!) but I got plenty of encouragement from quite a few number of my colleagues who went and completed this procedure with no issues.

So after checking about and mucking about, one fine day after a training session, I decided to pop by over Vista at The Curve to have a check. Mind you that about 4 years prior to this, I also went to Vista to have a check and they gave me the go ahead to get the surgery. So why was it after 4 years that I only decided to go for the surgery. Well I can say that finances is definitely one of the main reason because it wasn’t cheap!

The procedure for LASIK surgery is very straight forward and easy! First, go for a round of tests. Lots of them. If you pass the test, the doctor will then recommend which surgery you should go for (this is all based on the conditions of your eye). Once you have decided which surgery you want, you can then proceed to either think about it or just schedule your surgery. Secondly, you go for the surgery and after the surgery, get 4 hours of sleep and voila! You can see clearly without your specs/contact lenses.

The first round of checks included a series of tests to determine the condition of my eye, to see if it is thick enough so that if LASIK was done, would there be enough space. There were so many tests that I completed, I couldn’t remember how long it took but the after effects of these tests was that since they dilated your pupils, driving back was not going to be possible at all! Yup, so remember to plan your transportation home after your test.

As mentioned earlier, after receiving the results of your initial tests, the doctor would then explain to you which of the procedures would be more suitable for you. Luckily for me, my test results were good and I could go for any of the surgery. Unluckily for me, that means also the most expensive ones! So I was deciding to go for either the best or 2nd best. The price difference was a few thousand so the decision was quite tough! I kept asking myself, is the extra few thousand all worth it or not?

Then my mum said the most brilliant thing (I tell myself that to convince myself ). She said, “since you only have 1 pair of eyes, you better get the best”. Yup, that prompted me to unwillingly say to the doctor, I will take the best procedure out there.

So here I was sitting in the room informing them which surgery I opted for. I quickly set my appointment date and planned in my leave at work. The surgery would commence on Friday morning and they promised that after a good sleep (4 hours minimum) after the surgery, I would be able to see clearly. So me being extremely “kiasu”, I stayed up as late as I could on Thursday night in order to be able to easily sleep after my surgery.

That didn’t work too well because on my day of my surgery, there were a few other people who were there as well. Good thing was that a lot of people had faith in LASIK surgery but the bad thing was that I had to wait about 20 minutes for my turn and while waiting I fell asleep.

By the time it was my turn, I lied down on the chair/bed/surgery thingy and the doctor used a clamp to ensure that my eyes were open throughout the surgery. When the nurse was applying the clamp, I did feel a bit of pain an uneasiness. I was extremely nervous and I kept moving, so much so that the doctor gave me a pillow to hug in order to release some of the tension.

The first bit of the procedure after the prep would be to cut a flap on my eye using lasers. How this is done is that the lasers create a small air bubble in a circle and once that is done, the flap is removed (manually from my eye). It took the machine about half a minute to create this flap for each eye. So technically that took only a minute.

Now that the flap has been created, I moved to another chair/surgery bed and lied down there. This was when the doctor manually opened the flap to my eyes (one flap at a time). Once the flap was removed, another machine would then correct my eyes using a laser. This took about 45 seconds and it also depends on how still you can remain (it takes time for the machine to track your eye movements). So in total, the procedure for both eyes took about 2-3 minutes.

Once the machine has corrected your eyes, the doctor would then put the flap back into the correct position over your eye and voila, that is the end of the procedure. The doctor then proceeded to ask to me read the time which I could do immediately (although not 100 perfectly clear because it takes a while to get the “mist” out and also at that time my pupils were fully dilated hence not everything was perfectly clear.

After taking a quick photo with the doctor, I was checked out (took less than 5 minutes) and the nurse gave me a bag containing a pair of sunglasses, loads of eye drops (natural tears and antibiotics), surgical tape and eye protectors. I got my dad to send me home and once I was home, I put on my eye protectors and slept for about 4-5 hours.

The moment I woke up, I could see everything quite clearly except for the small side effects of halo or ring around lights. That cleared up after about a month. My eyes looked bloodshot but that was one of the side effects as well and that cleared up after 2 weeks. Every time I went to sleep I had to put on my eye protectors (this lasted 2 weeks) and every time I went out I had to use sun glasses.

Some things to note after procedures are:

• You need to wear sunglasses outside especially during the day. This helps reduce the glare as well as dust from getting into your eyes
• You need to refrain from rubbing your eyes!
• You can’t play sports for a month (especially contact sports, poker games are fine )
• You can’t swim for a month
• You need to wear eye protectors when you sleep at night (quite uncomfortable initially but you will get used to it)
• You need to apply eye drops on your eyes (side effect after the surgery is dry eyes). The eye drops come in the form of both antibiotics and natural tears

Frankly I am extremely satisfied with the whole procedure and how everything turned out very well. I now have good vision and I noticed that I see less glaring lights especially when I drive at night. To me, it was one of the best decisions I have made in my life. So much so that after I told two of my colleagues about it, they went and had LASIK surgery as well. Now one is very happy with her new vision and another colleague of mine is planning his surgery soon.

For more information, I would suggest you schedule an appointment with your nearest LASIK centre. I went to Vista at The Curve at Mutiara Damansara and the procedure I took was the NASA iLasik procedure.

Disclaimer: The opinions and story here only accounts for my own personal experience with LASIK at Vista. With every other type of surgeries, not all results and experiences are the same.

After it’s inaugural launch a couple of months back, I decided that I needed to send in one of my DSLR bodies to get it’s sensor cleaned. One of the big annoyances I had was that previously, sensor cleaning was a free service which Nikon Malaysia provided but recently since the 1st of February, Nikon has decided to charge for it. Anyway before I head into that bit, I was fairly impressed with the new Nikon Discovery Centre located at Berjaya Times square. A huge difference from the service office located at Menara PKNS at PJ State.

The showcase area wasn’t exactly ginormous or anything but it displayed quite a fair bit of Nikon’s equipment as well as had some 300mm, 400mm and 500mm lens mounted on tripods available to be tested out. I could spy on several taxi drivers sitting by their cars having a smoke and they never suspected a thing. It’s a pity the lenses didn’t reach any of the adjacent buildings but hey, I guess this is one of the few times I ever get to touch one of those huge lenses.

Anyway, back to my purpose of heading to the new centre was to inquire on how long is the current queue it would take to service my cameras which I intend to send them in as well as send in my D700 to have it’s sensor cleaned. Now you must be asking me why would I need to have it cleaned since it had a sensor cleaner in it as well. Well I kept seeing spots in my viewfinder and hence that sort of annoyed the hell out of me.

Upon arrival at the service desk, I was asked to pick a queue number. Now that was a surprise as I was the only person in line. But processes are there for a reason, I know, I implement processes in IT organizations so I do know how effective it might be. The moment I picked the number, it was already my turn so I brought my cameras to the desk and informed the agent that I wanted to have my sensor cleaned and inquired how long it would take to have my cameras serviced.

At that time, she informed me that it could take 7-10 working days so I needed to plan in my time so that I don’t have any shoots at that time and send in my cameras for a thorough servicing. Back to cleaning my sensor, I saw a notice there in regards to the charges and at first I saw a price of RM20 charged. Upon further inspection, I noticed that RM20 was to be charged for cameras which are still under warranty. All I know that, in order to clean the sensor for my D700, it would cost me RM80. That was the price I paid.

Oh well, I guess ever since Nikon has outsourced their services to Futuromic, there has been definitely a lot of good praises about their quality of service. Good things don’t come cheap. Not too annoyed by it, frankly I was glad it took them only 20 minutes to clean it. Now I can really consider getting a sensor cleaner myself and clean my own sensor the next time!

p.s. Even after getting my sensor cleaned, I kept seeing dust in my viewfinder only to find out that the dust is located in the viewfinder and not on my sensor. Just a point to note, the Nikon Center at Berjaya Times square can’t clean the viewfinder and they asked me to go to the Nikon Service Center at PJ State.

Warning, more images to come

As a continuation from my previous blog post, after a heavy buffet lunch at Shangri-La (believe me, the food there was so good that it was so difficult not to want to try everything!), we all proceeded with our own individual assignments. Individual means that we split up into various groups and each group consisted of 4 team members. Each team would have a model assigned to them and we had to split our time to photograph the model.

Both Shen and Hafiz were in my group and I was the 3rd person to have a go. Part of our assignment was that we were able to borrow any of the equipment available there. From the image below, you would know that we took an Ezybox softbox with an SB-900 and an external battery pack together with another SB-900. We also made used of our own equipment as well. Since we only had an hour, we had to decide on our location as soon as we could. We had the beautiful Melissa first.

Here was Shen attempting his shot with us helping out by carrying the C-Stand

This was my attempt within 10 minutes. Wished I had more time to get the lighting set up a little bit more elaborately

After the hour was up, we moved back into the workshop room where we were assigned another model to work with and we again had the usual 15 minutes. Our next model was Shirlyn who was a professional dancer (you can guess that Joe really likes dancers especially if you have read through both “The Moment it Clicks” and “The Hot Shoe Diaries”).

My first attempt to begin with one light first before adding in additional lights. The first idea that came into my mind was to try out a multiple exposure shot but with movement but after consulting Joe, that setup would have taken me more than 15 minutes of my allotted time. I then decided that I would stick with the simple double exposure and the results are shown below.

Double exposure, courtesy of a Nikon technology

Since I managed to set things up pretty quickly, we then experimented with a few other shots with a simple two lighting system. Again still sticking to small flashes.

After the assignments were over, we gathered downstairs for Joe to show us a little bit more of his concept and his ideas and how he actually came up with the shot.

Joe took out the big gun for this, the 200mm f/2 lens which is a huge lens and cost a bomb!

After the workshop ended and Joe had to rush over to Business.FM for a radio interview, we quickly had our books signed as well as took photos with Joe.

Not forgetting Drew as well

Ok, I definitely need to lose lots of weight. Totally put on too much recently.

After the workshop, I had to stay back a while for a secret performance practice which was due to be showcased the day after at Joe’s Seminar. This portion was for Louis’ talk on guerrilla lighting. Whilst waiting for Joe to get back from his interview, Ian was toying around playing with his Alien Bees and while he was still setting up his lights, I took this shot of Melissa using available light.

After a brief and expensive juice at the cafe, practice started and I somehow managed to spy this guy in the ballroom taking shots of the practice using an unmarked camera. Some say that it could be a Sony Alpha but others might say that its actually a new Canon. I don’t think it was a Nikon because of shape of it but before I start to speculate, we can’t really really tell what camera is that.

An unknown person with a Sony Alpha 5D Mk2

And of course Johan was assisting out the whole day that after almost 16 hours of carrying light stands and small flashes, it seems that he has really gone bonkers

This was how I spent my birthday this year with those crazy photographers as well as the honour and pleasure of meeting Joe and Drew as well as learning from him. I must practice what I learned so do drop me an email if you are interested in having your personal portraiture done.

I spent my birthday which was on the 5th of February at Joe McNally’s workshop here in KL a couple of weeks back. This is of course thanks to Louis from Wedshooter as well as the Wedshooter team who made it all happen. The workshop was a hands-on as well as a full day course which grouped 15 photographers on a Friday in Shangri-La in KL to learn about lighting and get to know Joe a little better.

In case you do not know who Joe McNally is, Joe is the most amazing photographer I have met and you might have probably seen most of his work on the cover of the National Geographic magazine. He is also the author of two amazing books, “The Moment it Clicks” and the more recent “The Hot Shoe Diaries“.

When I got wind that Joe was coming to KL, I was quite excited but a little hesitant as well as I thought that the workshops were going to cost a bomb. Frankly, it was a big sum for me but it was an investment for me. The best part was that I managed to schedule the workshop on the same day as my birthday! (Joe had five 1-day workshops here spanning from the 1st of Feb till the 5th of Feb).

Here is Louis introducing himself as well as Wedshooter.TV before introducing the man of the day.

Joe started off the session with some quick introduction about himself as well as his assistance, Drew Gurian. He then went on to get to know each of us and asked us what are our expectations for this workshop. This was good start I felt as I managed to see who the other participants were. There were of course familiar faces in the group as well.

Friends in the photography industry such as Ian, Shen, Edwin, Hafiz and Gabriel were also attendees of the workshop. Funnily, Joe mentioned that our group was the only all guy group. I can see the testosterone levels shooting up, I guess the mix and the environment was a lot more different compared to this workshop. Look at all the female participants there!

Louis, listening intently to the participants as they introduced themselves

That’s Drew over there!

After the rounds of introduction, Joe shared with us some of his videos as well as showed some of his latest work which was absolutely incredible and amazing. What made me smile was that he also had a couple of photos in his portfolio which was shot using available light which was what I normally do. Joe then mentioned that he himself also continued to learn by attending workshops such as the recent one where he attended Jay Maisel’s workshop in NY.

At every workshop which Joe teaches, he carries with him lots of gears. And when I mean lots, I really mean lots! Frankly I didn’t take the rest as there are way too many equipment about to capture it all. But what he had prepared for us included around 16 flashes for us to use, an array of Justin clamps and battery packs, Lastolite softboxes and many many more.

I spy the Twin Towers in the LCD screen of Joe’s Nikon D3s

The workshop began with Joe showing us the various equipment that were about in the workshop and then teaching us on how to use them and what the effects of using these equipment would do to an image. After trying out several shots indoor using both a white and black background, we proceeded outdoors to learn more about light shaping tools there.

We also had a journalist in our midst, Jan Shim, hailing from Brunei who was covering the workshop

Then we moved indoors for another shoot again. This time it was in a service corridor where Joe showed us how to use our surroundings to create an amazing shot. Of course Ian had to pose for the shot as he would normally do.

Then we headed out again. Here we have Joe’s camera setup to tether on his MacBook Pro which was very helpful for us participants.

We even had fantastic props to use as backdrops and for our models to pose with. I wish!

After an intense session of learning how to use various light shaping tools as well as understand various light placements, the group adjourned for lunch.

More photos from the workshop as well as our own personal shoots coming soon!

I would like to wish everyone a very Happy and Prosperous Chinese New Year for this upcoming year of the Tiger. May the year of the Tiger be a roaring year ahead for you and your loved ones.

For those who are traveling, I bid you all a safe journey to your hometowns. Its times like this where caution is the utmost importance.

I am here in Malacca as usual celebrating the Chinese New Year so if you all are about the Malacca area, do let me know and we can catch up