Positano Get-Together

Everyone going Italian today to celebrate Big Daddy Dave aka Drakko’s birthday. We booked a long table of 12 right in the heart of the dining room. Ours was the biggest and the noisiest and pity the waiters taking too long to wait for people to arrive and also taking orders. It was nearly an hour apart!

Since have just gotten my 40D not more than a month, I am bringing them with me to test shoot ‘moving’ objects. During the blogging of this entry I have already discovered AI Servo mode and TV the Shutter priority. I overlooked both aspects and totally forgotten about it when I shoot.

The Italian restaurant was located in Mayflower St. and that establishment was famous for it’s pasta and lasagna. All of us turn up – CJ, Ivy, Tim, Gina, Jing, Li. Joerg, Soomi, Purav and myself. This opportunity was good for my DSLR as this will be my first time shooting people. It was a challenge as the restaurant was dim-lit. Being the novice, I boost my ISO requirement. This could have been solved if I had a flashgun.

The atmosphere was superb and everyone was chatting about. The service was awesome as well. The restaurant owner approached me about my DLSR and asked me what make was it. I told him it was Canon and he was impressed with the technology in cameras nowadays. He claimed that he himself was an avid photographer using 55mm film those days. We had a brief chat and he soon served everyone and took our orders.

The orders did take some time but we did not realise as we were busy chatting about. Our table was the biggest and noisiest table. We were surrounded with elderly patrons as it was probably a Sunday lunch. I ordered a beef lasagna and soon the order came. The size was massive and it’d took some time for me to digest that. I lost for the first time with Italian as I only manage to finish half of the portion. The overwhelming butter probably puts me off but the spicy hotness from the pickle saved me abit. At least it was something in my memories that I could remember about dining there.

I am the most quiet as I was busy fiddling around. I had the white-balances wrong for the first time. Also the shutter speed is not fast enough and therefore resulting in a lot of blurry pictures. I realise there was green flares in most of the pics. It might be the white-balances that I got wrong. Still, I think my lens is not up for this challenge. Kit-lenses does not do much justice for challenges like this.

The session was long as we were the last to leave the restaurant. I am satisfied with the takes although it was a mediocre job and quality. We head home in a drizzly condition, tums full.

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