Family Days Out | Dinosaurs Live! | National Science Centre | Kuala Lumpur

© 2012 Wazari Wazir | Family Days Out | Dinosaurs Live | National Science Centre | Pusat Sains Negara

My on HaiQal always love dinosaurs, we have many dinosaurs toys in our home and I think most kids like my son age do like dinosaurs a lot. Actually the night before we went to this Dinosaurs Live! Exhibition, my son saw a big dinosaurs picture at The Star newspaper and We told him that the exhibition are currently being held here in Malaysia at National Science Centre, yes my son doesn’t know what the National Science Centre are but he get the ideas that the dinosaurs is somewhere here in Kuala Lumpur, and he wanted us to take him there.

So the very next morning, we take him there,as far as I can remember, this is my second visit to National Science Centre, the first one is when I’ve an assignment there back in 2001. It took us less than half an hour to get here from our home and we are among the first few people who have arrived here.

Dinosaurs Live! Exhibition, jointly organised by Cityneon Holdings (the events and exhibition services subsidiary of Star Publications (M) Bhd), EMS Holdings and the National Science Centre, is the first one of animatronic dinosaurs in the country. The dinosaurs are able to move their bodies, eyes and tongues, looking as alive as they did millions of years ago.

The exhibition will run for three months from May 1st  until July 31 2012, with admission priced at RM15 for adults and RM12 for children aged from seven to 12.

Once we get the ticket my son was eager to see the dinosaur but the funny thing is that once he saw a big skeleton of T-Rex, he wanted to go home, if you can see from the photos above, my son face doesn’t look cheerful but scary, maybe uncomfortable, in fact he did cried inside the “cave” of the dinosaurs and quite a few times he ask us to take him home, maybe he is afraid because the dinosaur are able to move their bodies and the sound of the dinosaurs can be scary to a child like my son age, but nevertheless we manage to persuade him, telling him that the dinosaurs are just a robot, a giant  dummy creatures, can’t eat people, just a plastic and after awhile he get use to it but still carry a scary face.

Anyway, a little bit about photography, yes you can take a picture there and you can use flash but I don’t have any and my camera doesn’t have any built in flash so I’ve to increase the ISO to 2500 to captured the dinosaurs with a shutter speed that I can handheld comfortably. If you wanted a brightly lit face of your family members here, flash is a must, otherwise with available light there you will get multi colored color cast on your subject face.

But is you wanted to captured the real scenario, the real ambience there, don’t use any flash because flash will kill the mood, will kill the multi colored environment there. Those two picture from the top are taken outside of the exhibition and the light is quite bright, I don’t use flash there but once you get into the “cave”, then only you will be greet by a multi colored lighting, the environment really came alive especially with the sights and sounds plus the body movement of the dinosaurs.

If you wanted test your Low Light Photography skills and wanted to try how good your camera when shooting at High ISO and at the same time wanted to entertain your family, this is among the few places that you can do just that. When you are in this situation, only you know how important having High ISO on your camera body and why camera manufacture always proud themselves with a camera that can shoot at super High ISO with very little noise and the good news is that, most of the newest entry level DSLR on the market today are great enough at High ISO compared to few years back whereby only professional level DSLR are capable of shooting at High ISO with minimum noise. Just to let you know that most of the pictures inside the exhibition were shot with ISO 2500 with  the shutter speed of 1/50 – 1/100 depending on how bright the  area is. I use 24mm fixed prime lens for all of the pictures above.

So what are you waiting for, enjoy the low light photography and make your family happy, the dinosaurs are waiting for you…

* Dinosaurs Live! Malaysia currently held at The National Science Centre from 1st May to 31st July 2012. Open from 9am – 5pm daily (Close on Friday).