At The Thieves' Market, Petaling Street

Panoramas: The pull and the crowd of an early morning street market for used and vintage household goods, apparel, odds, and ends.

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You will have to be early to pick up the best bargains here, as the market starts just after 5 am in the morning, and lasts till about mid-morning. As I was just as early, with the location was still pretty dark, I took an hour off for a spot of breakfast at a nearby 24-hour outlet, and was on my way back to the scene, the sun was breaking the horizon.

Heaps of goods and merchandise are stacked on makeshift stalls or just strewn on display mats laid on the ground. There were as many sellers, and a steady flow of patrons and bargain hunters streaming and weaving around, selecting and picking the items they were after. I brought along the Lumix DMC-GH2 mounted with an M.Zuiko Digital 17mm f/2.8 for the shoot.

The smallish and compact Lumix DMC-GH2, a 2010 release by Panasonic, is neither conspicuous nor intimidating when lugged around or held up to the eye when shooting. As a single-lens shooter, the camera has served me well, even when used with my other lenses, and in the camera bag, which also carries an ultra-compact as a support camera, the DMC-GH2 and lens are hardly a burden.

Though acknowledged for its advanced video capabilities (which I do not have), the camera's high-quality imaging functions and user-friendly design are very notable to enthusiasts looking for a low-cost entry into the genre.

The 6 elements in 4 groups (including one aspherical element) M.Zuiko Digital 17mm f/2.8, a pancake measuring only 22mm in length and weighing only 71 grams, is a lens you want to look at if you are into not only landscapes and street photography, but other genres as well. The lens is equivalent to a 35mm lens on a full-frame camera, the all-rounder focal length favorite of many professional photographers, and a must-have for advanced amateurs.

Panasonic Lumix DMC-GH2, M.Zuiko Digital 17mm f/2.8

For a change, I trimmed the images to the '65:24' image aspect ratio to accentuate the 'wide-angle' nature of the lens. The format is reminiscent of the image format of the Hasselblad Xpan (and Fujifilm XT-1) 35mm film camera.

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