I had forgotten that April is ending soon. I had still thought that we were in the middle of April. But in actual fact, it will be May tomorrow.

As April draws to a close, the school term at NUS is also ending. With only two exams left next week, I'm finding it increasingly difficult to stay focused on studying.

I made the trip out to the International Business Park yesterday where RoviSys Asia is based. There I reviewed my internship contract and signed the next four months of my life away.

I'm a bit sad when I see all the Facebook status updates saying things like, "Back to Canada in 6 days!" Because for me, I suppose I could update my Facebook status to say, "Back to Canada in 4 months!"

To be honest though, these past four months of studying at NUS have really flown by. So what's another four?

Some birds were making noise outside of my room today, distracting me from studying. Caught photos of two of them below. Unfortunately, the 130 mm equivalent focal length of my compact camera doesn't even begin to get close enough for a more detailed shot (not to mention that the cloudy day meant shooting at ISO 400 which is terrible on most compacts).

What am I going to do if/when I get a Lumix G1 then? The kit lens is only 14 - 45 mm, which is 28 - 90 mm equivalent. The 45 - 200 mm zoom lens for the G1 is crazy expensive haha.

 

I dropped by an electronics store at Vivo City today after church to see if I couldn't find a Panasonic Lumix G1 to play with again (I got a chance to try one out at the IT Show earlier this year). Unfortunately, the assortment of G1's present (black, red and blue) were all behind glass. There was a small platform which bore the name "Lumix G1" which was situated between other similar platforms upon which sat DSLR cameras from other brands. But unfortunately, the G1 stand was empty.

So no chance to try it out again, but what I was able to do this time was get a rough idea of the size difference between the G1 and other DSLR cameras (when I was at the IT show, the G1 was only situated beside other Panasonic cameras, as Panasonic had their own area, as did Olympus, Nikon and Canon).

While I couldn't do any side by side comparisons, what I could do was take a good look at the G1, behind the glass, and then quickly run over to the Olympus display case, which had the new E-620 DSLR.

In some reviews I've read about the G1, people were rather critical of the size, citing that it's actually not that much smaller than some of the entry-level Canon Rebel DSLRs, and even less so when compared to Olympus' DSLRs.

To an extent, when I roughly tried to compare the size of the G1 versus the E-620 (very unscientifically), there wasn't too much of a size difference when you look at the camera head on - the width and height of the cameras are for all practical purposes the same, as many reviewers would be quick to point out.

But what did really catch my eye was the thickness of the cameras as well as the size of the lenses. I had already known that the new m4/3 system allows for significantly thinner cameras when compared to the old SLR design, but this was the first time that I could actually see the difference. And it was quite noticeable. Secondly, the lens. THe m4/3 system also promises smaller lenses. And to be honest, this was the most outstanding difference that I noted. Of course, maybe this isn't a completely fair comparison as I did not actually check what the focal length of the lens attached to the E-620 was. But I might assume that it would be the kit lens (as was mounted on the G1). While the body sizes were somewhat similar, the lens size really made a difference. I didn't realize how small the G1's kit lens was.

A good rundown of the G1's size is available through this video here. (Those guys are even based in Toronto!)

So at that, I find that I'm increasingly being drawn to the G1, and slowly drifting away from the E-620, or any other DSLR for that matter. For one, the G1 is now cheaper than the E-620. And when compared to other entry-level DSLRs, one of the aspects of the G1 that I'm beginning to find an attractive selling point is the EVF. While some reviewers have commented on some of the draw backs of the EVF, one of the thing that no one has denied is how generously large it is. You apparently can't find such a bright and sizable view finder on any entry-level DSLR on the market. The other side effect of having an electronic view finder that I'm beginning to like the sound of as well is the fact that the camera is able to give you a relatively accurate representation of the exposure in the view finder even before you take the shot. This is something you'll see in most consumer point and shoots, but on a DSLR with an optical view finder, this is impossible.

The DSLR user will have to take the shot, and then review the image on the screen afterwards. Obviously not a deal breaker for someone looking to not pick up the G1, but I feel that it's a useful feature for someone who's upgrading from the point and shoot world. Not to mention the other benefits of actually being able to properly compose shots taken at aspect ratios other than that of the view finder.

A lot of people complain about the lack of lenses for the m4/3 system at the moment. And that is one concern. But at the same time, one of the things that I find interesting about the m4/3 system is that due to its design, the m4/3 user actually has at their disposal a large amount of old and outdated lenses. The physics behind the design of the m4/3 system allows for this, whereas current DSLR systems do not. Adapters are somewhat pricey, but it's a nice option to have.

I've gone back and forth on my thoughts about the G1 a couple times. But the more I read and think about it, the more I think it might be the first interchangeable lens camera I purchase.

The question is just when. The price of the G1 has already dropped by quite a bit, considering that it's already been out for half a year or more now. Moreover, with the recent release of the GH1 (the updated version of the G1 sporting HD video recording), I'm hoping that the price of the G1 will be driven down even further.

I'm debating if I should pick it up before I leave Singapore in August, or if I should wait till I get back home. Cheapest street prices I've seen in Canada recently were in the order of $700 to $800 CAD for the single lens kit.

I'm curious to see how my dad might like the camera too, as I know he's been missing his old film SLR camera since he traded it away for one of the earlier point-and-shoot digital cameras some nine years ago. Maybe he'll enjoy taking photos again. And maybe I'll enjoy taking photos even more.

Join the ranks of DSLR touting UWCCF members haha. (Only, don't tell anyone that the G1 technically isn't a DSLR).

Uploaded my photos from Phuket in record time to both Facebook and my personal gallery. I still haven't even gotten some Hong Kong and Philippines photos up to Facebook yet!

Either way, traveling is always a great opportunity to play around with taking photos.

Read more to see a few of my favourite photos... There are a lot more in the album here on this site or on Facebook.

If you have a moment, click "more" below and let me know which photos you like/dislike and why. Maybe I should one day pick some photos to post for people to give feedback on at dpreview.com. I'm just scared of being picked on for image quality issues, since I'm still shooting with a compact, while most people there would be using DSLRs or if not higher-end point and shoots like the Lumix LX3.

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It's exam week here at NUS and I should be studying. But it's Saturday morning and I can't bring myself to right at this moment. Maybe after writing this entry, I will get cracking.

A lot of people ask me how different the schooling systems between Singapore and Canada. I suppose in particular, all I can answer to are NUS versus UW.

On the whole, I think typically once you reach the university level in any prestigious university, things are fairly similar at the end of the day. That said though, there are some differences between NUS' way of doing things compared to UW's way of doing things. And with respect to these, I like UW better.

First and probably most obvious is the aspect of competition. Perhaps it's a Singaporean thing in general, but NUS' marking scheme is all about competition. There are only a fixed number of A's and B's to go around. So in a nutshell, how the grading typically works is that a small top percentage of the class will receive A's, followed by B's, and then C's and D's. So you got a 95% on your Control Systems exam? Good for you. Everyone else got 99% - therefore you might end up with a C, or B at best.

In some ways, this is reflective of the real world. But it creates in me a sense of uneasiness, in that my best is never good enough. It also tends to create some nasty behaviours in students. According to one article in NUS' student publication, The Ridge, students have often been known to purposely misplace and hide library books such that their peers will not be able to find the necessary resources they will need to complete their assignments.

I admit that I even felt a bit questionable of my "niceness" towards other students. For example, in our EE2001 project, a couple of students from other groups were interested in my strain gauge instrumentation circuit. So being the friendly classmate I am, I gave them a bit of insight into what I had done. In general, this is a nice thing to do. But for the betterment of my grade in the class, it would have been more "politically correct" to not divulge any details about my work, or perhaps even give them incorrect information all together (so as to waste their time). On another occasion, another classmate in a different group was having difficulty in rigging up their RF transmitter/receiver circuit (which I had already spent considerable amount of time perfecting for our group's hardware). Again being the relatively friendly person I am, I gave the other group a helping hand by debugging some of their problems.

I don't know if the sentiment that "we're all in this together" is one that all the NUS students share? I know that it's often one that UW engineering students share. But if the performance of your peer directly and severely affects your own performance, that sentiment may dissolve completely.

The second difference I not after completing the majority of the course work seems to be the focus of the course material. I now feel that UW SYDE profs are of particularly high quality. This is not to say that NUS profs are bad. Only, I feel that the methods of teaching and the focuses of UW SYDE profs are better than those of the NUS engineering profs I've had so far.

It seems so far that most of the course material here focuses on a heavy amount of theory and "know how to." That is, there is heavy emphasis on being able to take a question and get an answer. A lot of emphasis on the final answer. This is not bad, and no doubt UW engineering has a certain degree of this as well. But what is missing I find is often the bigger picture. Some profs do manage to incorporate this, but I don't see this on as large and integrated of a scale that UW SYDE profs are able to pull off.

That is to say, UW SYDE seems to focus a lot of application of techniques rather than just the techniques themselves.

For example, a UW signals and systems course assignment question might be: given that a patient has hearing loss at this particular frequency, design a filter to correct this with a certain specified gain.

An NUS question might instead be: design a filter with the following cut-off frequencies.

At the end of the day, the questions will have the student churn out the same result. But the UW question has more depth, having the student design something based on a perceived need, rather than some numbers on paper.

Either way, I think I need to cut this deliberation short and get started on studying.