For the night, as posted just before,  A Walk in Bangkok at Night , I use the 50mm f1.4 and am very happy with it.

I do not really cover sports and hence, do not really take advantage of one of the many features of the Canon 7D, the ability to shoot 8 frames per second, just happy to use all the other features. But well, my son plays sports, as all kids do, so we had the occasion, recently, to take pictures in a football match opposing young kids from the Lycée Français International of Bangkok to young kids for a Thai school.

So here we are, ready to shoot, and ready to play, a bit anxious though, what’s my pulse rate?

And so the match started, running after the ball

Catching the ball and trying to control it

Ooops, the opposition looks pretty big, how are we going to stop them?

Well, it is football, you need to run fast, big does not always help, cheers, we marked a goal

Went a bit downhill after this celebration, was just too hot, so no more football, straight to the swimming pool. And no more action, so we do not use the Canon 24-105mm anymore but the Canon 135mm f2, perfect for portrait from a distance. Relaxing in the pool.

And a bit of help from a cousin for the swimming part.

So, in conclusion, the Canon 7D with Canon lens  24-105mm can indeed help you take sports pictures but:

- You need to be pretty close to the action

- You need quite a bit of light, so no indoors sports

But for whatever reason, maybe because of the higher definition of the 7D sensor, I just can not get any good pictures with the 50mm f1.8 and the Canon 7D. Or maybe because it is damaged, I’m not sure. Anyway, to make a long story short, I now use the Canon 50mm f1.4 instead of the Canon 50mm f1.8 with the Canon 7D.

I started using it quite some time ago, and have a lot of pictures taken with it, especially in one of my farourite German micro-bewery on Rama 3 in Bangkok , this is the third entry of the “series” :  Tawandang – Part 3 but also on a cruise along the Chao Phraya river in Bangkok : “Dinner Cruise on Chao Phraya River”

Last weekend, I went for a dinner in a small restaurant reminiscent of the cool cafes you find in Paris or New York, Mininbar Royale and took the Canon 7D fitted with the Canon lens 50mm f1.4 with me. It is located on Sukhumvit soi 23 and here are two photos taken in the front of the restaurant.

This is the front window, so you can see that there is a massage venue just in front of it.

After dinner, we decided to walk back to the Asoke skytrain station, not too far from where had dinner. But if you walk on soi 23 all the way to Sukhumvit, you’re going to pass by an infamous soi, on the right side, just before reaching the main street, and will probably be “stopped” by the view of the many neon signs there.

This soi is known as Soi Cowboy and goes from Asoke to Soi 23, or in our case actually, from Soi 23 to Asoke. So we went in (and we were not the only ones).

I won’t bore you with a description of what you can find there, not the purpose of this blog, but will show you a few pictures that will probably give you a good idea of what to expect. Here are some girls advertising the bar in front of which they stand.

And another one

Here is a girl with a lot of tattoos sitting with a friend on stools on the street.

And talking about tattoos, this girl was kind enough to let me take a picture of a pretty large tattoo she has on her back

We ended up the night, not in the naughty places, mind you, but in a pub having a band (Country Road) and a quite nice female Thai singer. An enclosed environment with few lights is the perfect place to test the capabilities of the Canon 7D with Canon lens 50mm f1.4.  For the people interested by this kind of stuff, most pictures were taken at ISO 800 with the lens opened at f1.6 or 1.8. So here she is.

Since I was taking quite a few photos, she started acting up a bit but I do not mind

And to conclude this entry, let her smile at you and well, welcome you to Bangkok, it is The Land of Smiles after all

So, in conclusion, I’m as happy with the Canon 50mm f1.4 as I was with the Canon 50mm f1.8, both take excellent pictures in low light conditions but if your camera has a high pixel count, I would go for the f1.4

]]> http://farangrakthai.com/photoblog/a-walk-in-bangkok-at-night-with-canon-7d-and-canon-lens-50mm-f1-4/feed/ 9 http://farangrakthai.com/photoblog/canon-lens-135mm-f2-on-a-canon-7d-in-bangkok/ http://farangrakthai.com/photoblog/canon-lens-135mm-f2-on-a-canon-7d-in-bangkok/#comments Sun, 27 Nov 2011 10:07:39 +0000 farangrakthai http://farangrakthai.com/photoblog/?p=1337 My main lens is the Canon 24-105mm, it is on the Canon 7D most of the time and I have no complaints, it works perfectly for the type of photography I’m usually doing, street photography. But there is one Canon lens that seems to always receive good reviews, both by professional and amateur photographers, it is the Canon 135mm f2. And I’ve been tempted to get one for quite some time.

The reason being that, besides street photography, I also like portrait photography, and the photos you can find on the internet, taken with the Canon 135mm f2, sure look better than the ones I’m taking with the Canon 24-105mm. But isn’t the 135mm a bit long when used on a 7D? 135mm x 1.6 is 216mm, pretty long for a portrait lens. So I held on for as long as I could, up to the time I could not resist anymore and bought it, second-hand, in Bangkok. And here are my first impressions on this lens.

First, the lens looks pretty solid and nice, with a lot of glass, you can actually predict you’ll get nice photos just looking through it. And when on the 7D, you can’t really notice the difference with the Canon 24-105mm, about the same weight and the same size.  So you do not really need to learn how to hold the camera with it, in my case anyway. But there is a difference in diameter, it is not the usual 77mm for Canon L lenses but 72mm, hence you won’t be able to share the filters in between the two lenses. And 72mm is quite uncommon actually, so you probably won’t be able to share the Canon 135mm filters with any of your other Canon lenses. Here is a photo of the Canon 7D with the Canon lens 135mm f2 and the Canon 24-105mm f4 next to it. The photo was taken with a Blackberry phone, not really a phone designed to take pictures.

So now it is time to test it in the real world.  Let’s go for a walk in the streets of Bangkok. But this time, instead of the trusted Canon 24-105mm, let’s go out with the Canon 7D and the Canon 135mm f2. We’ll be using it first as a telephoto lens, not a portrait lens.

We first met a small squirrel in our garden, on our way to the streets. It was looking at the leaf as if it was some kind of competitor.

I do not live very far from the Channel 3 building in Bangkok and I kind of like the blue colors of their building. So the next photo is the top of the Channel 3 building on Rama 4 in Bangkok

From there we go to Sukhumvit road, the Thonglor BTS station, where you can take some pictures from an elevated position. Here is a girl looking for a motorbike taxi, plenty of moto taxis in Bangkok, and always quite a few next to a skytrain station.

Going down on the other side of Sukhumvit road, you also have the people waiting for the bus, not everybody likes to take the motorbikes. A girl waiting for the bus with slippers I actually would not want to wear for a walk in Bangkok.

A bith further on Sukhumvit, a guy is putting the sandbags in inner Bangkok to some useful use, he just sits on them. At the time I’m posting this, they’re still there because I guess everybody is now wondering what to do with them.  The flooding did not come to downtown Bangkok, what should we do with the bags?

From Sukhumvit, I went back to Rama 4 via New Ratchadapisek road. And on the sidewalk, there was a little girl playing.  Her parents were cooking food a few feet away from her.

On my way back home I found the kids playing next to the swimming pool.

And back home, we have a few monks living with us, their temple is flooded. Here is one checking the news on the internet, when will the flooding in Bangkok stop?

And since the Canon 135mm f2 is also a portrait lens, even with the crop sensor on the 7D, you just need to be a bit further away from the subject, here are two portrait pictures taken recently.

The first one is outside, next to a swimming pool

And the second one is inside the house, no problem doing it without a flash thanks to the f2 aperture.

In conclusion, what I think about the Canon 135mm f2 can be summarized by the time it spends on the Canon 7D. Before having the 135mm, it was the 24-105mm 90% of the time on the camera, these days, the 135mm is on the camera half of the time.  So expect more photos on this blog taken with the Canon 135mm f2 in the future.

And for the French speaking people and others, some more portrait photos taken with the Canon 7D and the Canon lens 135mm f2 on our French blog

http://eurasienthai.com/

Here is the Saphan Taksin station and the Taksin bridge. You can also see the train coming from the next station, Krung Thon Buri station. Underneath the bridge is the Sathorn pier, where you can take a boat-taxi to the North of the river (Grand Palace and all the big hotels, Shangri-La, Oriental, Hilton…) or to the South (not that many hotels, this is the way to the port, but Marriott is there, nice one).

Traffic coming from the West side of Bangkok is extremely heavy, so the extension of the line was very welcome by western Bangkok residents. Traffic should be reduced. And if you compare the photo above, taken this week, to the one taken beginning of last year, before the next 2 stations were open, it seems to be true. But well, the traffic has only be light since the flooding of West and North Bangkok started. So I’m sure the skytrain helped but there are just too many cars for it to have a significant impact.

The train will go from there to the Surasak station on South Sathorn road.

And if you want to buy a Honda car, you have a Honda dealer next to the Surasak station.

Next to the Taksin bridge, you also have two buildings facing each others, one is the abandoned Unique Tower building, not that unique actually, quite a few were abandoned during the 1997 Asian crisis, and the other one is brand new, just completed this year. Yes indeed, the Asian crisis is a distant memory that would be totally forgotten if some abandoned buildings were not there to remind us.

Going to the North, perpendicular to Sathorn and the skytrain line, you have the Sri Rat expresway, with the Millenium Hilton and the CAT building facing each other across the Chao Phraya river. Parallel to Sathorn and on the right side of the photo (not seen), is Silom road.

On the other side, same expressway, you go the the East of Bangkok, along the Chao Phraya river. Quite often some traffic on the direction of Taksin bridge and the North of Bangkok.

A little bit further West, you’ve got the Rama IX bridge, that you will have to take if you want to go by car from Bangkok to South of Thailand, to the beach resorts in Cha-Am, Hua Hin and about 900 kms South, Phuket.

And if you go further, on the same expressway, you will  pass by Klong Toey and the port of Bangkok and eventually reach Pattaya.

All the photos were taken with a Canon 7D and the Canon lens EF 24-105mm f/4 L IS USM

The French School is the school where our son studies but there are other choices that could be worth studying further. And the Singapore International School of Bangkok is one of them.

A Singapore International School in Bangkok, you say? Are there enough Singaporeans in Bangkok to warrant the need of a Singaporean School? Well, obviously, there is, since they’re building a new, huge, Singapore International School just in front of the French School in Bangkok. The reason I know about it.

And one of the building is finished already, waiting for students to register

We lived in Singapore for about 10 years and one thing we can say for sure, about Singapore, is that the quality of education is not too shabby. Probably one of the best in the region, if not the best. And not only because they teach you one of the language very much in demand these days, Chinese mandarin

I don’t know why they choose to build their school just in front of the French school since the road is not that wide. On the left is the Singaporean school, on the right is the French school.

We already get some traffic jam today, so it can only get worse when they will be fully operational. And why was the French flag raised the wrong way, looking like an upside-down Dutch flag? Is it in order for the red, blue and white stripes to be in sync with the ones on the Thai flag?

Here is a view of the road from the walking path on the “French side”.

And for the people who know Singapore, they added quite a nice touch to the design of their new school, a replica of Singapore Merlion, a small one

So, in conclusion, it is sure worth considering. I have no information about the curriculum or the fees, so you’ll need to look for that by yourselves.  And the location is in Ladprao where snakes still have some place to roam…

And this last remark was not a joke actually. It seems some snakes are keen to learn French and sneaked in the school sometimes.  They were always spotted before they could cause any harm but it reminds you that Bangkok is a tropical city, and snakes are still very much part of the landscape.