河國榮, An Aussie in Hong Kong

A couple of weeks ago before coming to L.A. while completing some chores in and around Causeway Bay, I was waiting in my car at a red traffic light when I suddenly saw something in the trees ahead of me. I immediately backed my car into the striped stopping zone behind me, picked up my camera and raced over to the trees.

In the 19 years that I've lived in Hong Kong, I've only seen these cute animals once, for just one glancing second in a tree near a friend's home in Repulse Bay. That was when I first realised that we have squirrels in Hong Kong. We don't have squirrels in Australia; we have wonderful possums but no squirrels; so getting the chance to photograph one in Hong Kong was a big thing for me.

p>My (relatively) new Canon 1D Mark III is in the shop getting a new focus mirror installed. You can read a lot about the problem on Rob Galbraith's page although it hasn't affected me as much as others. In addition, my Canon 70-300mm DO lense is getting a clean and recalibration, so I'm feeling orphaned and alone at the moment. Many of my photographs are of very small creatures usually shot at 300mm (x1.3=420mm for the 1D Mark III) and even at f16, the Depth of Field is extremely shallow, typically around 1/8". Manual focus is absolutely necessary to fine-tune the auto-focus and if the lense is not spot on, I return home with many non-ideal photos. 1/8" DoF means that I have to be very aware of my body movements while shooting because the slightest motion forward or backward will put the photo out of focus. The lense clean/recalibration will be very expensive but if you want great photographs, you cannot avoid these occasional expenses.