M e m o r i e s C a f e: September 2014

Thinking of what type & brand of camera should I bought recently, DSLR or compact camera ? Canon, Nikon, Olympus, Sony ?? Although I love photography but I’m not sure which brand is better and which model is more suitable for me. Searching and compare between the brands online and Youtube-ING , with all types of models, they really makes me confused for some time. For me, holding a bulky DSLR for long hours especially while travelling can be very exhausting and troublesome. So I prefer a light compact camera with DSLR quality convenient for me to carry around, with NFC/WIFI function, either stylish/retro design and the most importantly affordable price. With all these conditions, and finally I found a perfect alternative to DSLR, Sony A5000 just fit all the conditions I wanted ! It’s you destine to be mine !

So, just the day before the Hari Merdeka promotion ended, I carried back my darling and playing around during my holiday. Just realize I’m just LOVE photography but don’t know HOW to photography. This is my first time handling a interchangeable lens camera. Photography becoming a ‘big knowledge’ for me with all the ‘alien language’. Should start to learn hard by now before become a pro photographer for my coming trip.

Reading some reviews from a few bloggers just knowing that this is quite a perfect camera for bloggers, especially for girls. This model is available in 3 colors, black, white and pink. At first I was attracted by the beautiful white color but after think twice and decided to take the black one as the white one is too difficult to take care of it. A5000 can be consider as the new generation of NEX series. But this is not the latest models which is the A5100. Due to the my budget, so I just give up that one.

Sony Alpha 5000 is the world’s lightest interchangeable-lens digital camera weighs only 210g without lens and battery, and 269g with battery and kit lens. But inside this very portable camera is a 20.1 effective-megapixel APS-C image sensor for superb DSLR image quality. It is pretty light and convenient to carry around, and best of all I don’t need to bring a large camera bag. It also equipped with a 180 degrees tiltable LCD screen for easy selfies, and Wi-Fi and NFC capabilities, for easy transfer or photos to my smartphone using the Play Memories app which is free for both iPhone and Android. This makes capturing and sharing photos really fun and most importantly - easy!

The basic set comes in a Sony Alpha 5000 body and E-mount 16-50mm kit lens f/3.5-5.6.

Never realize I’m such a ‘super’ Sony fans … My 3rd Sony’s camera

As usual, there are a few modes in this camera such as intelligent auto, superior auto, scene selection, manual exposure, shutter priority, aperture priority, program auto, sweep panorama and others. But the specialty of this camera is on the photo effects. There are quite a few to choose from: Toy Camera, Pop Color, Posterization, Retro, Soft High-key, Partial Color, High Contrast Mono, Soft Focus, HDR Painting, Rich-tone Mono, Miniature, Watercolor & Illustration. I just mostly used with Superior Auto mode to shoot where could adjust the brightness, the amount of background defocus, colour temperature and colour vividness. This is great when you don’t have time to manually set the ISO/shutter speed/aperture. However I’m hoping to improve, and I’ve read up a little online how to properly set up with ISO, shutter speed and aperture... So I'm slowly but surely learning how to fully utilise the camera!

Here are some photos shooting in my home garden. I prefer using the background defocus effect with manual focus in intelligent auto/aperture mode which softens the background and makes the subject of the photo more prominent rather than macro mode.

Just a normal keyboard can be so much different with this cameraBackground DefocusRetro EffectToy Camera EffectRich-Tone Mono EffectHigh Illustration Effect

So that’s all my reviews on this Sony A5000. Can’t really show you much photos other than that because there’s really nothing much to capture at my home here. Should try shooting at some night scene or sunset next time. I pretty sure that it will give me a surprising effect too. I’m quite satisfied with this camera but not my photography skills. Give me some more time and I’ll surely discover more on its features. Few more days I’ll be off for my family Japan Trip, can’t stop looking forward to the shooting for my blog, will surely bring back lots of beautiful pics for u, see u then and hope you have a nice day ! ^^

LaraChin♥

In our semester 2, we have a interesting module called principle of food preparation. As a dietetics student, understand the principle of science behind food is so much important to us. There is a interesting session in this module which we have to prepare the food ourselves with discussion and presentation after the cooking session. Many others might think that we were so fun to play around in the kitchen, but honestly speaking, it was great during the cooking session but not after that as bitter come after the sweet, we still have to submit reports after every session. We were divided into groups and each group prepare foods with different ingredients or cooking method. It was more to be explain as food experiment than cooking class.

# FISRT LAB SESSION #

Let us took some selfies before the first lab !We’re pretty chefs ^^This is our clean and tidy ND Lab

# BAKING SESSIONS #

Baking self-raising butter cake in our first lab, this reminded me my first time baking cake during the ERT class in my secondary school time …

Zzang Zzang !!!

other group preparing potatoes with different cooking method

Guess what’s this ?They are gluten balls ! Looks cute right ? ^^Discussion & Presentation TimeCarrot Muffins others group of raisin muffinmy group of carrot muffin Can you guess what are we doing？Yes! We are making cream puffs !!!First time making cream puffs, soft but crispy, taste good !Zzang Zzang ! Cream puffs with lemon filling ♥Anyone wants to buy our cream puffs ?our first loaf of bread with a stone-like texture Yeah! cookies time !!!Sorry we didn’t follow the recipes but added with lots of chocolate chips & walnuts ^^Sugar cake with the 100% sugary taste O-O Pastries baking Delicious chicken pie

# MILK TASTING SESSION #

We were asked to taste the difference of various types of milk : fresh milk, skim milk, full cream milk, chocolate milk, soy milk, carbonated milk, almond milk, rice milk and even evaporated cream milk … my mouth was filled with all types of awful milk tastes O.O