On Saturday I spent the afternoon with Tom, St. John and Denise travelling over to the huge camera market in Wu Ke Song in the west of the city. The place is amazing, absolutely huge, and with prices supposedly lower than Honk Kong. They have a huge selection of new and second-hand camera equipment ranging from the latest dSLR’s to old Leica’s and box cameras. Stranger still is the fact that they also have stalls selling wedding dresses, makeup and wigs. I’m not sure what level of impulsiveness is required for someone to go shopping for a digital camera and come back with a wedding dress, but it seems that in China your wedding and camera needs are all provided conveniently under one roof. Ah… China. No matter how long you live here there are always new surprises to catch you off guard. Hilarious…

After trying a number of different lenses, I purchased a Canon 50mm F1.4 EF, a very fast lense that lets a lot of light in to the camera. The upshot of this is that you can use it without a flash in low light which enables to you to take more natural photos in these conditions. It is also good for portraits because its depth of field can be used creatively to blur the background of photos. Mastering it is clearly a leaning curve but so far I am really pleased with the results. You can read a review of it here and, if you are interested, it is available from both Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk.

Later in the evening, having a spent a few hours in Ditan park with Will playing frisbee, I headed out armed with camera and new lense to celebrate Tom’s birthday. We had an excellent dinner at a new Yunnan restaurant near cafe Sambal in Hou Hai (the name of which currentlly escapes me) before heading off to the Tree in San Li Tun. Supposedly we finished the evening in poachers but my recollection of that part of the evening is a little foggy…. Anyway… Enjoy the pics.