koknia

I have Kuang Seafood on my soi (Rang Nam). Great value and very fresh seafood.

Someone else's write up here:

http://limfong.wordpress.com/2010/01/06/kuang-seafood-bangkok/

They have a fairly active Facebook page.

Maybe try ordering a small item first to gauge the service.

I used to shop at Fotofile in the 90s, but their prices now are really high compared to Hong Kong. For HK you can check pretty accurate street prices here.

I always compare against the B&H price, which is usually about the best price you will find from a reputable worldwide dealer. Then I just make the call whether I need the gear enough to pay the local premium.

I've never fished in a pay for pond. (Canadian, we don't do that.)

In Thailand I fish mostly from a kayak in the Andaman for smallish jacks. For THB22,000 I can take a charter out of Ranong to the Burma Banks and catch 20kg jacks etc for 18 hrs a day for 3 days.

I lived in Cambodia for 6 years and while there are some tasty dishes, there's not one I actually miss and/or crave.

Every shooter has their own work methods. Personally I underexpose a tiny bit, as I would when shooting slide film instead of neg. I find it retains colours better and I can dodge out the darker areas later in Photoshop rather than trying to use highlight recovery to bring back detail.

I was visiting friends here in '91. They had just gone out for their first meal after having a baby. They took their 2-month old to a restaurant on the first floor of a mall somewhere out on Sukhumvit. When the waitress asked if they could hold the baby they handed her over, not thinking twice. A couple minutes later they saw a small crowd out on Sukhumvit and wondered what the fuss was, when they realized it was their daughter being passed around.

I was recently on a small chunk of beach in the south that had a large pack of dogs, a couple from each of the 6 or so bungalow operations. One of them was getting into some chickens at a cluster of houses behind the beach, so the locals set out poison. Within a few days every last dog on that beach was dead, even the ones that never left their properties. Outside of the city these issues are dealt with quickly and decisively!

I lived in Phnom Penh from 1994 till 2000 and have to say it was 10X more interesting and fun in those days. I can't stand the place now.

When were you last back and for how long?

2000 was 11 years ago...............

I have been back probably 10 times since 2004, most recently a year ago.

I have been experimenting with HDR, but not going for the 8 exposure complete OTT look. Instead I have been applying it to single images to give a bit of extra snap. Couple samples:

http://www.iantaylor.ca/sugarcane.jpg

http://www.iantaylor.ca/starferry.jpg

http://www.iantaylor.ca/loadships.jpg (shot with a tilt-shift lens)

The first one was for a job, the others just playing.

Losing the falang accent has an easy answer that will take some time to execute - learn the tones and practice them like crazy.

When I studied Thai 20 years ago it was all about learning the written system and tone for each word.

I have just moved back and hear a lot of people trying to speak Thai without any conception that they are speaking a tonal language. Sounds horrible, and wrong.

Had a 35 minute wait at outbound immigration on a very early flight this week. Usually much shorter.

I have 6 or 7 TBs of WD drives of all types and have never had a problem.

(I still back up everything twice though.)

I lived in Phnom Penh from 1994 till 2000 and have to say it was 10X more interesting and fun in those days. I can't stand the place now.

Just kayaked from Ranong to Krabi. 300kms over 2 weeks.

Some video:

^{I am using the micro 4/3s Lumix GF1 in a 10Bar housing. Apparently the micro 4/3s are really starting to dominate the underwater stills market given the small size, cost, excellent lens options and image quality.}

^{And it shoots HD video to boot.}

^{The housing is made in HKG and costs about a third of what some of the big name brands go for.}

I'm a kid's photographer living here, but working mainly with the expat communities in Hong Kong and other large centers. In HKG this is a big issue there with the huge numbers of mainland tourists who completely overrun Disneyland and Ocean Park on weekends and holidays. Tourists will literally push the parents out of the way to take photos of the kids. If the kids are blond it's like a feeding frenzy,

The upshot is that the kids resent being treated like zoo animals and get negative associations about certain groups early on. I know it's not that bad in Thailand, but now that everyone is a photographer it can become very tiresome.

Try doing this in NYC and see how long it takes before you have a major problem, if not with the law, with a very angry dad....

GF1 should be cheap, especially used, now that the GF2 is out.

I am using the Benro C-069 for the GF1.

Tripod is only important if you take shots that require it. (i.e. long exposure landscapes, night shots, some types of portraiture.) As I mentioned in another thread, the Benro's are great value. Gitzo knock-offs at a fraction of the price. My big tripod is a Gitzo but I've bought a couple of Benro sets recently for certain projects and have to report that they are great. I pay the premium for the carbon fiber stuff. Can't go wrong.

Hard to find specific Gitzos here.

If you are through Hong Kong you can find the full range of Benro tripod, basically excellent exact knockoffs of Gitzos. I have both brands and find the Benro's great at less than half the price of the Gitzos.