2011/11/27

Eating Balut for the first time

WARNING: Do not watch if you don't like roller coasters or otherwise get queasy at things that don't look like hamburgers or apple pies.

For the uninitiated, balut is a Filipino delicacy sold by street vendors in Manila, Cebu, and small cities, towns and villages around the country.



This was my first time trying this native delicacy. Next time (if ever there is one) I'll add some Tabasco sauce and a San Miguel beer.

Sharp-eyed viewers may notice the Olympus 45mm/F1.8 sitting on the table behind the action. You might not have recognized it because it's got a third-party ebay hood reversed. Thanksgiving at my Tita J's house is a great time to test out new lenses - average indoor lighting and lots of happy chortling people used to having lenses pointed at them.

Anywho, the Olympus worked well in this environment. I shot all day wide open, just because. These are grab shots and just toying around, so doing things like shooting wide open when you don't have to are acceptable. There are some sample in my Flickr. I'll try to post here on the blog too.

My brother shoots too, and he had his Canon T3i with a Sigma prime (30mm?) mounted. In the past he's hauled his 5D to Thanksgiving, but he's trying to lighten his load. His got an older Olympus E-P1 that he brought a couple of years ago, but he's not happy with its low light AF performance. He's angling towards an E-P3 + 45/1.8 package. Once M43 matures a bit more I can see him ditching dSLRs altogether. He won't give up his growing MF film collection though.

This video, btw, was taken with the Panasonic GF2 with the 14/2.5. Along with the 45/1.8 in the video and the Panasonic 20/1.7 (on loan to a friend), that's a pretty amazingly small quality package. I could very well see shooting with this trio of lenses (maybe the PanaLeica 25/1.4 in place of the Panny 20) and a couple of small bodies all day long. The only thing this setup won't do well is action. Besides that, I could take this setup on my next motorcycle trip and not want for anything...

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