Beautiful Flowers

Went to buy Christmas Tree 2015.  And saw this pot of lovely flower at Far East Flora @ Queensway.

Old Photos Equal Memories

Date:  Oct 23, 2015

I bought a new gadget.  Jumbl High Resolution Digital Scanner.

It scanned old photo film (Kodak or Fujifilm) into digital photos.

I bought it from Amazon.  US$99 + shipping.  I am a Amazon Prime member, so local shipping in US is free.  Borderlinx shipping from US to Singapore is about US$24.

 

unboxing it.  It has the power adapter, the USB cable, the film (big or small) or slides container, and the Jumbl scanner itself.  Very simple packaging.

And a TV output cable.

The film scanner feels very light in your hand.

Very simple control.  Basically OK button to say OK, left right button to navigate or flip or mirror flip the photo.  And the scan button.

You can plug in the SD card.  (IT DOES NOT COME WITH SD CARD), whatever you scanned will be scanned into the SD card.

You can output the photo onto a TV screen.  Or you can plug the USB into the computer and use whatever software to view the photos.

Let’s get ready my old photo films.

Open the compartment of the film container.  Fit the film onto it.

You will notice that the rails on both side of the film will click and fit nicely onto the container.

Close it, and you are good to go.

Just slot in this film container to the scanner like this.

Turn on the scanner.

Move and position the photo container correctly.  And simply press SCANNED button.  Oh ya, make sure every time when you turn on the scanner, set the photo resolution to 22MP.

You can see from he LCD screen your photo you just scanned in.

What this device is actually a camera inside and you place the film on to a lightbulb.

Once it is done.  All the photos are saved onto the SD cards.  So, unplug and SD card and plug into your computer to read the SD card.

Every photo is 4032 x 3024 in pixel sizes.

But most of the photos are quite yellowish.

That is why you need the Photo app on Mac (For PC, use the one you familiar with).  Photo app can do a lot of amazing thing.

Change the white balance, change light exposure, contrast, or simply press the AUTO button in each modification… 

So, you remove the yellowish color, and it becomes like this.  Or you can change it to much vibrant color.  I like it this way the natural grey.

Compare to the photo I scanned from the actual photo itself.  It is much smaller.

The resolution quite sucks. (this photo is the actual size I took from my iPhone without enlarge it).

This is the big scanned photo I just scanned and change the color.

After the editing, this become a new album in my digital photo collection.  And look at the color is much better to my taste.

Also all photos are scanned into Jan 1, 2011.  I don’t know why and there is no way to change date.  So, select all the the scanned photos, and go to Menu to select Image -> Adjust Date and Time… and you can mass change all the dates.

Scanning old photos is a quite fun work.  I can now sent this photo to my brother’s friend.  hahahaha  His 17 years ago photos.

It is portable.  I will bring this home to my mom place one day and get all his film and scanned it for her.

Badminton as a CCA

Date:  Dec 6, 2015

Beside swimming (learn not to be drown), Taekwondo (learn self-defence), one of the major extra sport activity I sent the kids to is Badminton.

They learned their badminton from Singapore Badminton School.

It seems that they have some arrangement with the Sport Centre, as they always get the court #1-#2-#3 on Saturday 10am-12noon.

There are of course many other coaches and badminton school teaching at the same venues.  But I always see them changing different courts and sometimes never appear on Saturday (I am guessing those private coaches had some hard time booking the courts)

I think badminton is one of the easier sport activities that both the boys can learn, and they can play with each other in future.  

Of course, they can also play with their classmates, friends and even future girl friends.  hahaha

The kids will have to learn the basics.  One step at the time.  Kay has been taking the lesson since March I think.  And so far, he loves the game, and has been eagerly learning from the coaches.  He is only 6 years old, so I have no rush for him.  But the time when he reach P3, he should be able to have enough skills to join the Badminton squad.

It is a very sweating 2-hours training each Saturday.  And I think the kids really have fun!  They even have fun playing with the coaches.

I can see Jay Jay started to love and appreciate the games. 

I don’t want them to be champion, but to train their body in this sport will help them to get fit.  

Especially for Jay, he needs to get fitter and reduce his weight.  :) 

FZ1000 Notes Capture the Moon

Date:  Dec 25, 2015

Still learning to use my Panasonic Lumix FZ1000 camera.  This is the best I can get for yesterday.

ISO125, f4, 1/500, 0ev, 146mm

I also have the digital zoom turned on.  It is not as nice as my previous super zoom Sony camera.  But still learning it.

Yesterday I believe was full moon.  Very big the moon.

I wanted to take something like this.  But today will try it out again.  I need to learn how to set the Exposure comp. to -3.33 EV.  Yesterday, was playing with it, but could find the settings.

It is fun!  So, tonight will probably do it again.  But the moon moves really fast.  So, need to constantly adjust the tripod.  Also, the wireless feature of the FZ1000 comes very handy to take the photos using the iPhone App.

And the kids were having fun watching the stars using my iPad Pro.  Bigger screen with bigger info.  hahahaha