I found a gem in Detroit - the Detroit Institute of Arts (Part 1)

The city of Detroit is rather confusing... before I came someone tried explaining to me that the city is like a "donut". Honestly, this "donut" concept never really gel with me until today. Like the shape of a donut... the centre of the city is empty. And by empty, I mean while there are buildings... blocks and blocks of them, but these buildings are unoccupied. They are empty. You really cannot tell from a distance, it is usually not until you are near these buildings that the broken windows and locked doors become apparent.

Outside the donut is where the activities are. And one such place is known as the "mid-town" - where a little gem is housed - the Detroit Institute of Arts (or more commonly known as the "DIA" by locals. From the outside, the building structure is somewhat lacklustre ... but once you go pass the ordinary facet, you'll find a little gem. The entrance is only $8 for adult (and all Singaporean say "cheap cheap"). This is a place where you can spend hours strolling up and down the galleries & hallways - engrossed in the exquisite exhibits.

Mind you, this place is not small - I spent about 2.5 hours and only managed to cover about 50% of the exhibit. After 2.5 hrs, I felt that my sensory is a bit overloaded & so I decided to leave the remaining 50% for another day - hey, the $8 is worth every bit.

In the spirit of trying out my newly acquired Sony NEX 7 - I decided to bring the camera into the museum to try out its low light capability. Note - none of these photos was taken with a tripod, simply because tripods are not allowed in the museum.

Honestly, the Sony NEX 7 does a very good job of delivering sharp photos.. the fact that this shot was taken with a kit lens... really blows me away. I did apply some de-noise adjustment to this shot, but the noise did not really bother me for this shot.

Look at this low light capture... the dynamic range is really amazing on this camera. This is a in-camera HDR shot - I did some cropping in photoshop.