Backyard photography

Black-browed Reed Warbler (Ko-yoshikiri)

Early summer days ideal for trekking. The seasonal flowers seem to be at their best. Cloudy sunday afternoon pulled my self out of my den to shoot the flora, when I came across this pleasant pond the warble of the birds drew my attention. Switched the lenses and started hunting the birds. All the reads on birding ethics & tips (INP) for the past year and the lessons from the failure to launch on my maiden birdphotography trip early this year turned handy. Spent an hour or so birding and it was a kind of experience that I enjoy the most.

Black-browed Reed Warbler (Ko-yoshikiri)

The compound 400mm lens turned pretty heavy on me. Lesson learnt never get lazy, tripod is a mandatory. Unable to ID the bird dot on I gave myself to guestimation : warbles a lot + its on the reads for majority of time = how about a reed warbler.

Back home, googled on the name and the best match was Oriental Great Reed Warbler. As usual the excitement gave into the conclusion leaving the detail. Later threw my watson hat and dropped a mail to Setsuko Watanabe-san. A couple of days later I get a reply from this warm hearted Japanese birder that they have identified it as Black-browed Reed Warbler (Ko-yoshikiri).

Sir David Attenborough`s documentary "BBC : The Life of Birds" a 10 part series is a must watch for avid birders.


Location : Hirooka-Nomura, Shiojiri-shi,Nagano-ken, Japan.
Date : 21st May 2006, 1600 Hrs - 1900 Hrs.

Pollen & Pollen.

Yesterday evening I just wanted to shoot macro. Bi-cycled around the fields of Hirooka-yoshida. An bee flew into the frame which resulted in the above capture.

Now, whats the flower ID ?

Another macro shot. So what`s this ?

Guess Me II

Macro Shot.

In recent past I was a bit rusty with the camera and it shows no signs of bettering. With work in balance and spring on the offset its time I hit the road.

Vizag : Rushikonda Beach

My last memory of this place doesnt concur with what it turned out.The only think that ever came to my mind about this place is that my college GITAM is opposite to it and secondly its one of those standard picnic spots of Vizag.

I was pleasantly surprised to find a mela kind of atmosphere, all said and done I got down to my business of photography.

An anchor taking some timeoff.

A fishermen mending his net.

Finally the AP Tourism guys are in action.

Fisherman

D70 + 70-200mm VR f2.8 : 1/320 Sec, F4, 160mm

Rushikonda Beach, Visakhapatnam, India.

The old man was busy lost in his job. I positioned myself,took a couple of shots, not pleased I started correcting the camera settings when the old man acknowledged my presence. He was rather pleased by his facial expression and giving his best to pose for the shot, the end resulted in a rather over exposed frame but an acute expression captured.

Cute

My friend Sudhakar's daughters Pragyna and Samanvitha.







Samanvitha the laughing machine :

Darkness to Light

[Tamron 90 mm macro f/14 , 3 secs , ISO 400]

Asatoma Sadgamaya
Tamasoma Jyotirgamaya
Mrityorma Amritamgamaya

Check out: Sameer started C-blogging at Random Sketches, and don't miss his bird flu cartoon its quite amusing.

Lunar ecstasy continues..

2005,SEPTEMBER,16th


2005,SEPTEMBER,18th


Guess 18th was a full moon day. Both the pictures are 100% crop, shot with

Camera : D70
Lens : 70-200mm F2.8 + TC 2x.


HBD : Blog-san.

17th ,September 2005 this blog incremented its count to 1.
Better late than never; belated birthday wishes.

Lunar ecstasy !!

Image as recorded on 9th September 2005, 17:26 hrs JST.

Its been a while I looked at the moon. Last time when I shot him with the 70-200mm VR lens, I felt the need of a 400mm, so finally I bought the 2x teleconvertor that I promised my self. As expected the teleconvertor softened the image considerably.

Sharpening and applying a slight S curve in Nikon Capture revealed some more detail as under.

Camera : D70
Lens : 70-200mm VR f2.8 + 2x Teleconvertor (ie @ 400mm)
Aperture : f5.6
Shutter : 1/125 Sec.

Macro : A Rose

I was shopping at MaxValu, when I found the flower section inundated with fresh flowers like never before, only for me to realize that Mothers day is around the corner.

[1/5 sec , f22]

There were a multitude of rose plants to choose from and I picked a bonzai rose plant if I can call it so, back home I put myself to work with my macro lens on the tripod. The end result was rather OK kind of stuff.I was struggling with the lighting. Need to figure out how to illuminate macro subjects !!

Camera : D70
Lense : Tamron SP AF 90mm F2.8 Macro 1: 1
Tripod : Yes

Sayonara Autumn '04

Click Info : October 24, 2004 Akazawa,Nagano-ken,Japan.

Digital Click : Picasa

Organizing every day growing digital photographs was a grueling task for me for years. I been trying various kinds of archiving and viewing softwares but nothing ever came close to what I wanted as Picasa did.

Picasa is a freeware. Its interface and feature sets are simply the best what one wants in the process of archiving and viewing.Needless to say that quality and innovative software is powered by Google.

Here is the feature list of picasa :

Picasa's Album sorting just goes in a jiffy. It gives a feel of light and swift. Well for archiving 3000+snaps it made an internal db of some 11MB which is resonable.In every folder it creates Picasa.ini file. One can set options per folder basis: scan the folder or not, or to watch for changes.

Picasa's Slideshow gives you a 3D feel during navigation. It sorts itself on the basis of time stamp. It has an option of background music during slideshow(mp3 support).Navigation is really very intutive. Advanced options help u edit the timeline.

Picasa's Image editor does resizing, cropping, redeye reduction,rotate,color and contrast enhancer.

Picasa also gives options like creating a web-albums(html) or batchprocessing at the click of a button. Guess nothing can be more intutive than this for sure.

Well this is not a complete or partial review of picasa. Try this out its worth a look and sooner or later it becomes indispensable.

TIP : When you want to organize ur digital photographs the best way to name your folders is YYYYMMDD_CAPTION. I prefer this over other ways of categorizing as vacations, family etc as this is based on timestamp.

Digital Click : diwali timeout

To the best of my memory for the past 4 yrs I was never home for diwali, and for the last couple I ended up celebrating "Hanabi" the Japanese version of festival of lights. Well Hanabi here is more like the July 4th Fireworks display,the only diffence being that many japanese tend to dress more traditionally.

Copious mails of diwali wishes gave me a "Chelo kuch karte hey" kind of "josh" which once again pulled me into hobby tuned obsession (digital click). The Indian store on my last order sent a couple of complementary "diya"(clay made). To give a creative touch I started off without a plan. As said creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes and choosing which of them to keep. Since I was shooting lights I needed a dark background : set the table with a couple of black T-Shirts and used the sigma lense in macro mode at 300mm.Finally the snaps found their place in the diwali greetings card.

Greetings [zip,ppt]

[click on image to enlarge: images resized]

Diwali day was really cool seeing couples going traditional,the best part was the dinner at Anand's place,and the real diwali dhamaka was Deepu's X(which is obvious but not yet going public).

KISS : The Fluid Focus Lense

I was an advocate of KISS, acknowledging my inablity to comprehend complex theories. Not many innovations look as simple as the Philips FluidFocus lens.

Philips Research Labs cameup with a Fluid focus lense. The concept was something like emulating the human eye.To understand the design all one needs is basic school physics.Why not hear it from the horses mouth fluid focus.Dont forget to check out the video that demonstrates how it can focus on objects at different distances.

Q: Now what turns me on?
A: When I discover that there is some one out there who adores KISS.
KISS : Keep it simple stupid

Digital Click : Road So Far

Shortly there is going to be a population explosion in the file formats you guess which file format is going to outsmart Chinese+Indian population by leaps and bounds? .....???

No need to strain your grey cells its the one and only one JPEG.

In the winter of 1998 when I was flipping though a tech magazine at the college library I came across a term "Digital Still Camera", the concept was simple a CCD sensor --> Analog to Digital convertor--> DSP processor(Imaging algorithm) --> RAW/JPEG file. I said to myself this is it, this is the solution to all my problems. Well let me tell you what the problem was : I always felt I had a good eye for photography but could never afford one in the first place. In those days photography was always a rich mans passion.
wrt the DSC the Pros listed were : A. One time Investment B. Unlimited shots(limit: memory size).etc and virtually NO Cons other than the Price(is this true).

My long wait came to an end in the spring of 2001, I bought myself a Kodak KB-10 (a point and shoot)camera.It costed some 700INR/15USD with 2kodak 36/ISO200 film rolls free. I started my journey by pondering over the kodak website for the photo tips.With a point and shoot there was nothing to worry,just choose ISO100/200/400 film and all you need to look for is proper framing of the subject.I enjoyed it to the best. I captured real good memories with it(Elxsi SD group Picnic to Hognekal waterfalls,wayanadu trek,sabarimala yatra etc).
Lessons Learnt : ISO is inversely proportional to ur lighting conditions.


Kodak KB-10

My profession got me to the land of cameras : Japan, getting a decent remuneration I just went with the flow.We started touring Japan,and started with Osaka-Nara.I walked into a camera shop(may be yodobashi),was clueless on what camera to buy !! Finally made up my mine if its 1.2/2/3Meg pixel I will pick up the highest of all.Now which brand to choose ? only one brand I been hearing for my childhood Japans No:1 brand SONY. So I landed up with a 5 Mega Pixel Sony P10 cybershot.with a 3x optical zoom it looked really great. Well the other numericals were just greek and Latin to me.


Sony Cybershot P-10

Ended up paying 70K Yen/28K INR/620USD that includes a 32+128 MB Sony Memory Sticks.The funny part was that 8 of my colleagues bought the cybershot P8, some assuming that I bought it after a through review of all the models. Any way it didn't disappoint us todate.The best memories that I captured was my parents visit to Japan. By now I became a photography buff and day by day I started finding fault with the quality. I was most disappointed when I was not getting the right exposures. Realized that the camera was not built for what I demanded. Only option was to switch to a better one.
Lessons Learnt : Decent photographic print(postcard size) demands 3.2Meg Pixel.Dont be fooled by the mega pixel nos unless u need larger prints.
Of all the Digital Cameras my value to money camera happens to be the Nikon coolpix 3.2-5 Meg pixel range.

With my quest for perfection at an all time high. I planned to switch to Digital SLR. For almost 6 months I was in a fix of which religion should I choose. As its a kinda rubicon once I choose btw Nikon and Canon. A couple of trips to Yodobashi camera shop in tokyo left me clueless. I finally drew the line and Kissed the Digital Rebel Canon a Good bye and hugged the Nikon D70. One thing for sure the Nikon bodies give you a feel good factor in your hand.Nikon being my subconscious choice.

Nikon D70
Finally I got my baby on August 4th 2004,I dumped all other things and hanged around with it day in and out.D70 costed me some 1200USD which came along with a 18-70mm DX lense.I added a Nikon SB-800 flash(~300USD)and some filters.Since I plan to shoot in raw I purchased a 1GB Compact Fash(~150USD)

Offlate I Demystified the photography glossary to a greater extent and now feel at home with those exposure concepts. From here on I plan to start a Digital Click : Demysitfy X series and post it as often as possible.

If "A Picture speaks a 1000 words" is true, then if I use the rules of Mathematical Induction, does a Video playing at 30 frames per second : speak 30K words per second ?

Kamikochi : Autumn

I guess Lady luck knocks my door only on weekends : got an invitation from sahu for a drive down to kamikochi the following day, I had no reason to say NO. Last time I been to this place was on 19Aug`03. Kamikochi tends to be busier than Shinjuku around the peak summer. This is one of the starting points for hiking and trekking the Japan Alps.

We started off around 9:30AM. The route had vivid autumn colors,it scores over the Akazawa route that I been to last weekend.Enroute we made a couple of stops, there were a mutitude of streams that were flowing down the valley on either sides.


It took under 2hrs for the 65Kms drive. Well its a bit tricky out here vehicles are not allowed till the base.We needed to park at Suwando parking area and then take a Bus (to and fro costed: 1800Yen ~15USD). The weather was reported to be overcast and late in the afternoon its suppose to rain.

Finally when we set foot at the base the weather nothing better than forecasted.So I was not able to shoot those icon shots, thereby stuck to closeups and macro photography.I picked up the trail which I missed out last time. A sunny day would have made the river Azusa reflect green all around but it looked muddy(courtesy:overcast).

One of the sign boards drew my attention, which has some kind of a moss over it. It really awed me. I walked around it for some time and then called for a Macro shot, since I had one 70-300mm Sigma lense that I borrowed from Anand and it having a Macro support at 300mm. Incompatibility walked its way between the lense and the camera so I docked on to the tripod and switched to manual focus just to hope that it should work. But even my best efforts gave me a blurred shot. May be my best is not good enough for the combination. yup need to work on this later.

We had lots of japanese company and these people out shine themselves when it comes to courtesy. One gentleman asked us if we need a group shot and here we go. If I start writing about Japanese then it will bloat like Leo Tolstoy`s "War and Peace".Anyway some day I will do that for sure.

The acids in the stomach were taking their toll so we perched on the banks of Azusa(well the super fast train that runs from Tokyo to Nagano Prefecture is named after this river `Azusa`).Since all I carried was my photo-gear and a bottle of H2O, so decided to be the scavenger of the day, but I went luck to relish some good Sambar Idly , Kheer and some Pakoda. I guess I ate more than I can. Thanks to Sahu and Gunjan. During the course of luch the rain gods had some fun. I packed up my gear and the lowepro all weather bag came handy.

(click to enlarge)
We moved on for the destination of the day "Kappabashi bridge". It was pouring down. When I confronted another gamut of autum colors I couldnt stop myself from pulling the D70 out in the rain and it gave me the shot of the day.

We relaxed for a while and called it off for the day at 4PM.All in all it was a satisfying day.Now enough of this blogging stuff I need to getback to my studies offlate I am going all gaga with photography, need to strike a balance.

Basking in Akazawa

Its FALL and what can be worst if one doesnt spend time with those wonderful colors. So not to disappoint outselves we planned to go to "Akazawa", some 70Kms away from my home. "Aka" in japanese is "Red", so is this place all RED in Fall ??
I with my good old company Anand and Priya set out on a drive to find out.We crisscrossed the kiso valley river to reach Akazawa, the autumn leaves were just stunning. The river added its share of beauty to the scene.



But what drew my attention was not those colors but groups of Japanese photographers with their tripods, said to myself well I have some company.
[ As I was aware that there are 2-3 blotches on my camera CCD,and wanted to get rid of them but lack the guts. Last night out of the blue I opened it and started cleaning the mirror and some how messed it up with lense cleaning lotion, only to realize in the morning that the mirror looked really bad now. I fiddled with it for awhile to find that the focus is not working so called my camera 911 service "Ashok" {thanks for yahooBB to give me Japan to US calls at such low prices}, well all I needed to do was to unlock the Focus Lock button on his advise. Anyway tomorrow I will send it to Nikon Service Center, I have some complaints with the lense too.]
Once we reached the place we had good number of courses to choose from. We took the one along the river and moved up. We basked in natures splendid colors.
I started off with my D70 once more, but today doesnt seem to be my day, as every shot I tried missed the target somewhy or the other, may be I was not able to concentrate as I came to know yesterday that my aunt passed away. All that comes before my mind is she getting married to my Mamayya and then after 22+yrs of happy married life my mama and his two sons withering the rough. I was trying to get out of this pensive mood.

I failed to capture even a text book shot.I just wanted to walk home rightoff, but waited for Anand and Priya. It was a sleepy drive back. I was sitting next to anand who was at the wheel and Zzzing off. I hardly slept last night. When we reached home Anand remarked "Do you know when a driver feels sick on a long drive ?" yaa. I know that "when all the passengers along with the one next to are sound asleep".Very much I remember even Sudhakar used to complain the same back in india esp when I sit next to him on long drives.
Why dont these guys take it the other way "That ppl feel so comfortable when they drive that they fall asleep..!!"

On a whole todays Photo shoot was a mess. Back home when I was reviewing the snaps , I wanted to enhance the snaps in some way or the other.Offlate I was reading a chapter about Color. So wanted to experiment with HSI color model.Try to saturate so that it looks more pleasing.
Today I set the D70 to output NEF and JPG files on every shot. Color mode of Adobe RGB. I opened in Adobe Photoshop CS (I didnt buy it its trialware, wish someone presents me this ~US$800, oh fairy godmother why dont you!!). The saturations of the DSC_1429.NEF and DSC_1429.JPG are different though they are from the same shot and ( both encoded in Adobe RGB mode ?? ). Well thats the point in question ??

A. Color space management is really getting on my nerves.
B. Managing the growing digital content... guess I need to evolve a digital work flow,else i will end up spending hours trying to organize.

Well finally here is one snap which looked better off when I saturated it by 20% else it will look like the DSC_1430.NEF.

Panoramic Attempt

I was waiting for Anand to come and pick me up for a long drive to Utsukushigahara,but at 9:30 he called it off. Once more my plans of going for a panoramic view shootout seem drenched, but finally we moved out for a new Indian Restaurant "Turmeric" (dishes complemented the name), near the Asama Onsen ,Matsumoto City. After luch we drove down to the utsukushigahara heights. One of the stop overs presented us an awesome view. The silhouette really fascinated me.

(The below has been cropped and resized in Photoshop)

Every second day after I bought the D70 I been dreaming about shooting a panoramic view. I had a tripod which I bought for my Sony P-10, but that doesnt work for this assignment. I was longing to buy the Gitzo's 1228 tripod and Markin's QBall but right off I couldnt afford a US$800 grand, so settled for a 40 dollar one. I got dropped at the Matsumoto Castle to complete my assignment, with very few ppl around it was pleasant.

Back home I used the Panorama maker 3 software which comes with the Nikon Coolpix camera. I blended 4 images to get this one :


But when I tried to blend 5..!! here it went....


all the artifacts started appearing:

A. The exposure setting are not uniform.
B. I should have levelled the tripod more accurately.
C. Either (B) or should have messed up some S/W configuration during blending.

Well anyway one more lesson learnt.I even tried the 360 degree view.Will upload that sometime later.All in all,Not a Bad start, but still miles to go.