Got me a new camera now, finally. And that is some days ago already, just so that you know. A few problems arised and all of a sudden there were a game show going on, so I weren't able to post this article by the time that I wanted.

My shiny new DSLR of walletbane.
It's a Canon EOS 50D with a Tamron SP 17-50mm F/2.8 Di-II attached.

Cannon states this camera is somewhere between novice and professional. As far as I'm concerned, it outputs signifficantly better pictures than my point-and-shoot Sony Cyber-shot, and is able to take many consecutive shots pretty fast compared to other cameras in its class. The lens is of course, probably more important to overall image quality. It's a wide angle lens that becomes normal when you zoom in. It doesn't zoom much for an all-around camera, but I'm still planning on using only this one for now. Am not taking a lot of pictures of landscapes or hard-to-reach objects, so my expensive lens should be enough. It deals with lots of people moving around indoors pretty well, and has surprising capabilities for portrait shooting. And then, it's not that it was really-really expensive. It's third-party after all. 18000 NT$

The sharpness of the lens is really great. And then it's good for taking pictures during night time, which is my top priority for now. The combination seems also to make the pictures more luminous. I feel that this way, I can snap photos that are more true to the extremely well-lit Taipei.
Above picture is taken with the new camera by 6.30 pm just outside Taipei World Trade Center Exhibition hall 3 (somewhere near Taipei 101).

This picture is of the park by Banciao Main Station - which contains the MRT station nearest my current home.

And there goes another shot in Taipei 101's neighbourhood. A lovely well lit place with lots of people around.

Went to Taipei Game show again today (Saturday), and snapped some more pictures. I'm quite amased at how easy it is for me now to get really great shots of single people. On the point-and-shoot I used before, I had to point at the exact right position and then make the planets align. Obviously, that's the idea of point-and-shoot, and there's a good reason people are willing to pay so much more on the bigger cameras. Still, I am really surprised at how easy it is to do this. Can decide amongst a number of autofocus points and the camera focuses exactly on the object I'm interested in. The camera adds in a little bonus bokeh (blur on out-of-focus objects) by itself. Actually I don't need anything but to zoom and the auto feature gets the other stuff just right. And that is, much more just right than the unintelligent Cyber-shot that doesn't let you pick anything.

Yet, I pretty quickly got to love control. Setting ISO, Aperture and shutter speed by yourself actually isn't such a big work to do, and I'd say it vastly improves the photosnapping in changing conditions. High ISO speed causes ugly, digital noise. An aperture that's wide open will reduce picture sharpness, (although it's pretty hard to see the difference with my lens.) And finally, low shutter speed blurs out moving objects. High shutter speed, low ISO and narrow aperture makes the photos darker - less exposure. It's really that simple it seems. You pick the lowest shutter speed when not much movement is going on. When outside during night time, slam the aperture wide open (that is, set it to the lowest possible setting) as well as setting the ISO up around 800-1600 (or 400-800 if your equipment is awesome) depending on the shutter speed. (Lotsa cars and people around this place, so I can't leave it too low.)

That's what I know so far at least. You can find that stuff all over the internet pretty quickly. They're well explained too, but to me, it seems really just terribly advanced when you read it compared to just snapping photos yourself. All that stuff about how to take it the right angle and golden panels and whatnot, I'm not an expert on currently, but for just 3 days of rampant snapping, I feel the manual control is no bother already. I can never go back to point-and-shoot again, that's 100% sure.

Now, to be a little Canon EOS 50D specific, there's one feature for this DSLR body that's worth noting. As stated earlier in this post, it can spree photos pretty quickly. 6.3 photos a second, actually. Which is just great for taking photos of giveaways where people have to catch the stuff. - Or perhaps more likely, sports. I don't have such a great control of this feature just yet, so the pictures I've taken so far are not really the best of those I have.

What an awfull lot of people.

I wonder what kind of blog post this became. Some sort of cross between review, guide and computergame exhibition? Or just ramblings in excuse of posting more cute Asian girls?
Sorry to dissapoint you again, eventual female readers.

Went to the annual Taipei Game Show today. It's on from Friday 2/6 to Tuesday 2/9, so I just reached it on it's first day. A bit late though. It's open from 10 am to 6 pm. As with the book exhibition last week, I arrived at 4 pm. Too late to try stuff. But still plenty of time to locate all the booths and take pictures of loads of stuff. Took 148 photos while there, which is almost half of what my camera can contain. And that's in just 2 hours. (I make it save a raw together with a JPEG, so total size per shot is usually about 22-23 megabyte. I could cut it down to 2-3 per shot by not saving raws, should I have to snap more when I'm going back.)

In this place there's many booths and several stages for different kinds of performance. Some of them they have turnaments. At others, you can just jump up on and get a brief instruction like this guy above is, and you're in a competition of some sort, competing for freebies.

The whole event is actually mainly consisting of just two things: Loads of booth babes and hordes of guys taking pictures of them. Which is probably exactly the blend it takes to market computer games these days. Or at least it's the only combination used these days.

Wanted to buy a camera, but entered the code to my ATM card wrong 5 times yesterday. After getting a new bankbook, as I just found out I lost that one too. I got it fixed and found out there were not enough money left to buy the camera. Then drew my VISA card to pull out some money. Can only pull a few out every day while abroad (for preventing theft), so the amount I can withdraw in one day isn't enough. Still, I try to get a few coins for the day and the code is wrong, three times. The card is locked. Of course I can't tell, because all the machine bothers to give me, is a 4 digit number as error code. Bleh. Denmark then tells me the problem when I call them - luckily, they can just give me another few tries and I get it right. 10k NT$ comes out. Better wait for tomorrow to get the last few money bills, but then what? Left my VISA in the machine and it's eaten. Have to go back to the bank and show them a bunch of stuff to get it back tomorrow morning.

I wonder what else might be in store for me before I can get my hands on a professional camera.

Untill then, I would like you show you a picture of some pretty wicked art that untill recently could be found at the Visual Attract and Attack exhibition in one of the many art museums in Taipei. (It's over now, but that museum was Museum of Contemporary Art Taipei.)
Before you click this link to the picture of a somewhat amusing sculpture, which is maybe not safe for work in more conservative environments, here's another photo of some images exhibited in the same department. Sorry if the one below offends you. I myself don't consider this stuff overstepping the mark. And the many guests at the museum would at least be an indication that people are not overly conservative here.

It's small. It has to be. Or well. That probably depends on what you compare it to. I still have another 6 months here, and I'll have to pack it down with all my other stuff once I get to go back to Denmark. Not that I think packing is going to be much of a problem. I didn't pack much when I went here and still don't have a lot of extra stuff to take back home, even though I had to buy a few more clothes to get through the Taiwanese winter (which is short, not really cold, yet terrible because of the sheer lack of insulation in houses here.)
I'd just like to be on the safe side. Also because these little things might just take damage if I don't pack them really carefully. Besides, I might actually decide on wanting to take some rice cooker with me later on and than one is going to be expensive in space.

Took this photo on Monday. The day before, I had been adding 3 more pieces to the collection. At that time, there had been a very long period in which I didn't visit the Japanese entertainment shops I like to casually drop by. (That's only likely to be caused by my winter vacation and me therefore not going to the area near Taipei Main Station as much.)

I bet you're tired of me whining about getting better cameras. These two girls from the ToHeart2 series are a rare sight in the secondhand stores. Only a few times before did I see the red uniforms from this series, and I didn't really feel the figures were true to the drawing style of the Anime that I watched a few episodes of. This time I thought the two figures here as aesthetically pleasing and coped with their low price.
Actually, I liked the original series of ToHeart more. That's why I only saw a few of the episodes for the second one. It's kind of a different story and even the drawing style seems slightly different, but the young girls from ToHeart2 all make for pretty nice merchandise.

And then they also provide some extra fanservice that you usually don't get so much of from other figures.
This makes me think of the ToHeart franchise actually having started out being love simulators (hentai games), but then developed into the more innocent stories in the visual novels that spawned the manga and anime. Never saw any of those games though.

This one is somewhat more special. First of all, it's the biggest and most expensive of the figures I collected so far. It's also the first figure I buy without knowing what character it's a depiction of. Found her in two places that Sunday. At one shop selling a bunch of different stuff, I could buy it in it's original package for 1800 NT$. The package probably showed her identity, but I could only make out the sounds of a few of the japanese characters and read she was some kind of princess.
At one of my favorite stores - those stores where people can rent a box to sell their used stuff - one could buy her secondhand for 700 NT$. I think it's a just recently released model, and the secondhand figure was at least very new. I can buy secondhand figures here without fearing much for their quality, as people preserve these things pretty well. This one seemed unused. It even still has some plastic remaining between the upper body and the legs. Usually you'll remove that, as it's only to protect it against shocks during shipping.

Finally, as promised yesterday, my as of now latest addition to the collection: Len Kagamine. That'd be the first male character in my collection. What a lucky boy he is.

Went to this annual event in Taipei, where a bunch of books and lots of other stuff is exhibited and, most of the time, sold. You pay 100 NT$ (students: 80 NT$) for a single entrance - which isn't an enraging price. Look out for lots of 2D gals.

TiBE. Sounds like the name of a Danish city, doesn't it? And about the i - there's apparently no real reason for it to be tiny and colored retro-apple-logo style.

Oh yeah. I didn't write much lately did I? Sorry about that.

The exhibition is split across 3 different locations, all located in storage houses around Taipei 101. There's one for childrens books and one for international books (i don't know exactly to what measure, but most of those were English, and there would be Korea-, Japan-, USA-, Federated States of Micronesia-, Afro-Asian Publishing Company-, and what-not stands).

And then, there's the one with all the people: The comic-book department.

By the entrance, (actually, I think that's the less official one), the first thing I ran into was this wall where people can draw stuff on as they like. The above was taken about 5 pm, as I entered, which is quite late as the exhibition closes 6 pm.

I bet this is a pretty good warning to what this place is all about. I didn't get an idea of it as biggest comic con evah, but I bet it's going to be more crowded in the weekend. Today was a rainy day, and students still go to school, even though they have winter vacation now. I'm hoping there'll be cosplayers on Saturday or Sunday (it'll end by then), but I have no idea if there's a chance or not.
I put the photo above here mostly because of the drawing right above the head of that little girl in the middle.

This is a photo I took just before the exhibitions closed on the 28th February. I wonder how it will look by Sunday.

Just found out I photoed something with cosplay written over it. Should probably go back there and ask someone to translate that one of the coming days.

The vampire lives eternally, for it was promised so.

Let's not forget that this is Taiwan, so with everything Japanese, you have to mix some Chinese into it. (And just by the way: It's going to be Chinese new year pretty soon, so better keep your heads up.

Finally decided to go into a stand. Or store. Or whatever. Full of people. And I even had to stand in a line for somewhat less than a minute.

But where's the books???

Heck, who cares? They have pillows with onelegged hamster/cat-hybrids and stuffs.

Let me just tell you before it becomes too unmistakable: One piece is probably the biggest anime/manga/merchandise franchise in Taiwan while a bunch of goth stuff is competing about the relatively big market of young people who hate the world. (The size of which should be no wonder with such shitty high schools.) Stuff that's popular, or at least more or less known where I'm from such as Naruto, Dragonballz, Bleach, Haruhi with more, is less visible. Stuff such as pokemon, digimon, yu-gi-oh and other crap is apparently extinct here. Which is good. I bet people never bothered to write a manga for those?

Lot's of pillows for anyone in desperate need of a franchised bed. (Look elsewhere in this building and you'll find blanket and bed covers too.)

Long time since I watched Bleach. I wonder if they bad guys are finished explaining their German-named fighting methods yet.

Finally managed to find books. Had already bought some stuff from Hot Dog Toyz, but after I bought some heavy books from Kadokawa here, they gave me this lovely bag to carry stuff in:

You could, (and probably still can the next few days,) see lots of young people in the MRT's and nearby the exhibition buildings carrying these bags.

And there's the stuff I bought.

The anime for these books, called ご愁傷さま二ノ宮くん (Goshūshō-sama Ninomiya-kun), was one of the series that got me really hooked to that kind of stuff. (Although I must say, My Neighbour Totoro, which I believe I saw during my very early childhood, was probably the one planting the initial seed for my attraction to Japanese entertainment.)
Bought one, probably as a tribute, as I don't have much hopes of being able to read complicated Chinese soon.

I have two of these Lucky Star Books that I'm trying to study once in a while, but usually give up on within less than a minute. Also translated to Chinese, of course.

I am suddenly reminded of 4Chan, and the absence of influence from their internet memes on people here. I bet if someone here gets rickrolled, they probably don't have a clue. It's not like they rule Denmark either, but at least there's still a handful of people who know what longcat is there.

This place looks so awesome from the exit that I feel like going back in.

Suzumiya Haruhi reaching out for you there. I bet Kadokawa, with it's Japanese sounding name, is more into the stuff that's mainstream in Japan. Found much more stuff I could recognize there.

Too bad they don't even sell any of the posters they stick in the top. There was at least a few of them I'd have liked to see the price off. Oh well. There's other stores for that.

I never knew much about Spice and Wolf before I got to Asia. Saw a few episodes of the Anime, but didn't realise it was really popular before I visited some of Taiwan's Japan-dedicated areas.

Yup. There they are. Posters for sale, and for Chobits even. I don't know if it's because the franchise was never super popular or just 9 years old. I'd put my stakes on the latter. I love Chobits.

Seems to be the last picture at the exhibition. Sorry for my total un-Otakuness. I'm not a person attracted much to mainstream, but when it comes to this stuff, it just gets me. I should probably dig some more into K-On sometime soon, before it's not totally the new thing any more.

Will open this nendoroid box tomorrow. Have absolutely no idea what this stuff is all about, but I bet Google will yield me some results on "Vocaloid" or something. Right now it's kind of late. I have winter vacation of course (and there's no way I'm going to school as everyone else, but still need to walk around town with my Chinese teacher and look at stuff while practising. Like this again, perhaps.

I hope this post can make a little up for the recent lack of content. Goodnight.