Taking advantage of the 618 sale on a trip back home, I picked up a new camera, planning to properly study photography in my spare time. I’m not a complete beginner — I shot with an RX100M3 for a long stretch back in high school, so I know a thing or two about the technical side of imaging. Aesthetics and composition, though, can’t be crash-coursed from cold theory; I’m hoping this hobby pushes me to keep observing everyday life. These photos are hardly portfolio work — consider them practice notes from a beginner.
My current setup is a Lumix S9 with three first-party lenses: an 18-40mm F4.5-6.3, a 24-60mm F2.8, and a 70-300mm F4.5-5.6. Some shots in this set are straight out of camera or with a LUT applied; the rest got auto exposure and light tweaks in Lightroom. As for color grading, that’s another rabbit hole I’ll be feeling my way through.
This post collects casual snapshots from June through early July: a double rainbow after the rain clears, a stroll through a lakeside garden, a rain-soaked airport, a moon stacked from telephoto frames, and a hike at MacRitchie Reservoir in early July.
I may share more photo-collection posts like this from time to time — stay tuned, and feedback is always welcome.
All image descriptions and part of the text were generated by an LLM; take them as reference only.
After the Rain
The mid-June rain kept coming and going. By day I was studying the tender green seedlings by the paddies; in the evening, just as the rain let up, a double rainbow arched across the sky.
A Lakeside Garden
A weekend wander through a lakeside garden — a lighthouse, a white pagoda, a stone arch bridge and pink lotuses, plus a chance encounter with a little dog sprawled on a bench, tongue out, cooling off.
Airport in the Rain
The afternoon I went to see someone off happened to be rainy, so all I could do was watch the soaked tarmac through the terminal glass.
It was also my second time aboard an A380.
The classic “smaller up close, bigger far away” illusion.
Night shooting with the 18-40mm is genuinely a struggle. If a budget-friendly domestic 35mm F1.8 prime ever comes out, it would be just the thing for shooting out the cabin window at night.
Night and the Moon
I spent most of the month-end evenings roaming the city. First I pointed the telephoto at the moon from a rooftop and stacked a close-up, then went on to shoot the glittering CBD skyline, diners resting along the street, and finally wrapped up with a bowl of rich-broth ramen.
The moon close-up was shot at 300mm and stacked from a few dozen frames. The focal length still falls a bit short and so does my experience — I plan to practice more before Mid-Autumn. The real pity is that I forgot to turn off the V-Log LUT, so everything was shot at ISO 640, which cost a fair bit of image quality.
MacRitchie Hike
On the first Sunday of July, I set out from the old shophouses and walked up Thomson Road into MacRitchie Reservoir. Through jungle trails and up the observation tower, I crossed paths with macaques, turtles, and a monitor lizard out for a swim, then rested at a lakeside pavilion before returning to the bustling streets in the evening.
