Night Walk At Punggol Promenade Nature Walk (21 Jul 2017)

The cost of repairing my Sony SLT-A58 camera that malfunctioned during my last trip was almost half the price of the camera, so I decided to buy a new camera since I had the camera for more than 4 years already. After doing some comparison on the various camera options, I decided to stay with Sony and bought the Sony A6000 mirrorless camera. Although it is an older model, the specification of the camera is more than I needed for macro-photography.

The decision was also based on the fact that I need not replace all my lens, especially the 1:1 macro lens which is pretty expensive. All I need to do is to buy a Sony A-mount to E-mount adapter at half the price or less of the macro lens.

Although I was at the tail end of a bout of flu, I am eager to field test out my new camera, and so I chose the night's macro session to be at the nearby Punggol Promenade Nature Walk, just in case that I need to cut short the trip due to my flu. Nothing special encountered except for this Stink Bug which don a rather bright underside coloration.

The first beetle for the trip were several of this Darkling Beetles found on a small tree.

My friend HW was with me on this trip and both of us found it strange that the number of beetles encounter was exceptionally lesser than our previous trips to the place. Nevertheless, we continued and found this Chafer Beetle (Apogonia expeditionis) after walking some distance.

After walking a distance without finding any other beetles, HW called out to asked if I have photographed this Leaf Beetle, which I have missed.

It was pretty odd that the number of beetles encountered was so low and it was only after a fair bit of walking before I found this Ladybird Beetle hiding under a leaf. The beetle looked like Epilachna indica Ladybird Beetle except for the extra spots on its pronotum.

The last beetle for the trip was another Ladybird Beetle (Henosepilachna implicata) resting on a leaf.

This trip was a let down as the number of beetles encountered was surprisingly small. I will likely to give this place a miss in the near future due to the massive development work that is going on near to the entrance of the Coney Island.

Nevertheless, this was not a total washed out trip as I managed to test out my new camera. My initial feel of the camera is that the grip of the camera is rather small for comfortable one hand operation, and the dials and buttons tend to be in the way (or rather I kept accidentally activating them) when trying to take photographs with one hand. I guessed it will take me a bit of time to get use to the handling of the new camera, but it was a good buy as the quality of the photographs taken were pretty good in my humble opinion.