Photospot

Ever seen one of these?

2007-03-27T21:23:00.000-07:00

Found this in cafeteria. Couldn't resist doing some "Product Photography".

Sparkling water - for Bats and Sloths only

Setup
I placed the PC Monitor Stand under the lamp on my desk. Placed a plain sheet of paper against the wall and the monitor stand, then placed the bottle on it.

Shot with 50mm 1.8, in aperture priority , at F3.2 and ISO 100. I also over-exposed by one full stop (exposure compensation +1EV) yet, at 1/60s it looked a bit underexposed. In the end, I had to use "Fill Light" and "Tuning" in Picasa to get a brighter background.

Oh! The Joys of Childhood!

2007-03-26T21:57:00.000-07:00

It was a fun weekend. My daughter loves her new bubble maker - "Infinite Bubbles". So on Sunday evening, we went to the near-by play area.

I wanted to shoot colorful shots of all the reflections. I had my 50mm F1.8 prime attached to the camera as I knew I was not going to shoot wide angle. I wanted to use narrow depth of field to make the bubbles stand out. But pretty soon I realized that it was too difficult to take any good pics of shiny bubbles in it with the windy weather.

It was very sunny and taking pictures of my daugher was also difficult due to high dynamic range. As evening sattled and shadows grew longer, I started getting better shots. Out of 50+ shots that I tried, this one is my favorite.

Focal Length: 50mm
ISO : 100
Aperture: F2.8
Shutter Speed: 1/500s
Mode: Black and White (with red filter)
Editing: Sharpen and Glow with Picasa (Free from Google), Noise reducation with Neat Image (Free Demo)

And, I could see parallels between both of our toys. She was making lots of bubbles effortlessly and enjoying running behind them. And I was taking lots of pictures, trying different settings, checking thr results and trying something new.. almost a child's play compared to what photography enthusiasts had to go through a generation before.

I wonder what her first dSLR would be like !

A year later...

2007-03-22T19:39:00.000-07:00

Wow, it has been almost a year since my last post! I never thought I'd leave such a large gap in my posts. But time never stops for anybody.

Hmm... if you could stop time, then what shutter speed would you use to take a picture ? ;)

My sincere thanks to the netizens who have linked to this blog, provided this blog as reference to others in forum posts or left encouraging comments right here. This is not a "Photo a day" blog or my "daily diary". So all your back links have helped this blog stay relavent even when it has not been updated in a while.

Here are some topics I am planning to cover in next few posts.

Selecting lenses for your DSLR
Understanding Exposure Value
Understanding Histograms
Any suggestions ?

The purpose of this blog is to capture things that I have learned about Photography so that someone else can benefit from it. So your feedback is valuable to me if you learned anything from this site. Please voice your comments and criticisms for the writeups.

Soordasji - a Candid Portrait

2006-03-25T13:05:00.000-08:00

Earlier I had posted a candid portrait that I had clicked in India during my previous trip back home. Well, here is another candid portrait from India but with a subtle difference.

Soordasji
(c) All Rights Reserved

First of all, what makes a "candid portrait". From what I have understood so far, A candid portrait is an image of a person where

the subject (the person) is not deliberately posing for the shot
the image should capture the essence of that person's mood or character or some other unique property

As per this description, the above photo does not look quite candid, as it seems the person is posing.

Well, he is not! He is blind! He had no idea that I was taking his picture or even I had a camera in my hands!

The subject
The person in this picture is Soordasji. On our India trip, we also did some pilgrimage to a holy place in Madhya-Pradesh (which literally means Central State) of India. Soordasji has dedicated his life to taking care of inner sanctum in a small shrine located inside a larger temple. I don't know much about him other then the fact I have seen him at the same shrine almost two decades ago, dedicated to the same activity. When I say "dedicated" I mean really really dedicated! The number of visitors is not very large on any given day at the shrine. But day and night, he keeps the inner sanctum clean by washing and dusting. He hardly even moves away from the place.

In fact it was quite a humbling experience to see him there. I remembered when I visited this place when I was a kid and my father told me about him. And now I was visiting the same place with my daughter and seeing him do the same dedicated service.

Composition
I thought of taking his picture next to the shrine door etc. But none of that would have done justice to the character of this man that I had in my mind. So I took a close-up. It captures this mans simplicity, his age, and his eyes in a way that I liked. This man is really pretty much what you see in this picture. He does not have much worldly possessions, nor is he interested in anything other then keeping the shrine clean. I am not sure how to capture his dedication in a picture. But once you know his story, you start seeing that in his face and eyes.

Editing
The original was obviously in color. But to bring out details in his dark skin, I had to do some editing (Fill Light, Contrast etc.) that caused the color quality to suffer. So I ended up converting it to Sepia, then exaggerated contrast a little further and moved the temperature control also to get the kind of colors I liked. All of this was done in Picasa2.

One last note. Before you think I exploited the blind by taking his picture, a clarification. I did tell him after taking his picture; he didn't mind. I gave some donation too and wondered what a man so detached from the world will do with the money I'm donating anyway! Well, it only took a few seconds to find out. On our way out, an administrator told us that the temple in which the small shrine is located was going through some reconstruction, And the new beautiful gate that was being built, was entirely being sponsored by Soordasji!

Found a Friend in Fatehpur Sikri

2006-02-23T02:19:00.000-08:00

After visiting Taj Mahal, next day we visited Fatehpur-Sikri, The mughal captial built by Akbar. Main attraction over there were Akbar's palaces, a beautiful Shrine of sufi saint Salim Chishti and The Buland Darwaza (The Gigantic Gate).

But for my daughter, the main attraction was this puppy that followed her around. I took a few shots of them interacting.

Found a Friend in Fatehpur Sikri
(c) All Rights Reserved

Prince Pup of Fatehpur Sikri

It was a good change from the rest of the scenary - which was all full of very high dynamic range. My choice of timing to visit the place (afternoon) was very bad. But I did manage to get couple of interesting ones... which I'll post next time.

Taj Mahal - at a different perspective

2006-02-14T07:54:00.000-08:00

Here are some pics of Taj Mahal from some not so obvious angles. I have not seen many pictures of Taj Mahal with this perspective.

Taj Mahal!
(c) All Rights Reserved

It was possible to take these pics only because I was using a wide angle lens (17-40mm F4.0L). Even then it was difficult to capture the entire central structure from the base of one of the minarates. I took two shots (3rd and 4th above) thinking I'll join them using Canon PhotoStitch. Unfortunately, Canon PhotoStitch refrused to even try to merge them saying the focal length is too small and it cannot do a smooth merge with the perspective at such a focal length.

More 'Taj Mahal' - my favorite shot

2006-02-12T02:23:00.000-08:00

Taj Mahal in evening lights !
(c) All Rights Reserved

Out of about 60 pics of Taj that I snapped, this one is my favorite. I did make some enhancements uing Picasa2, but I think the picture itself was great to begin with. With the beautiful symmatry of its design, once you have Taj Mahal in the middle of your frame, there is not much left to do in composition to make it more applealing. Just keep the Taj in the middle - symmatric - and shoot !

Although I did try to take some pics of the Taj at some not so obvious angles... I'll post those in the next post.

Taj Mahal in evening lights!

2006-02-09T21:40:00.000-08:00

Taj Mahal in evening lights !
(c) All Rights Reserved

We did sight seeing in northern India for about 10 days. And of course the first attraction was Taj Mahal! I visited this beautiful monument after about 22 years... i.e. first time in my adult life. It was a memorable experience to see and apprecitae this beautiful work of art and engineering.

We also visited Fatehpur-Sikri, New Delhi, Gokul, Mathura, Vrindavan, Haridwar, Hrishikesh and Panna (MP).

Through out the tour, I carried 3 lenses with me.

18-55mm F3.5/5.6 : the kit lense
50mm F1.8 : the prime
17-40mm F4.0L : my proude new purchase for this trip

So what did I really use the most?

17-40mm F4.0L ... exclusively.

Why ? Mostly because ...

it was the best quality of lens I had with me
and because I did not want to even attempt to change lens while I am lugging my camera bag on shoulder, a heavy camera and a heavy lens in one hand and carrying my one year old daugher in the other hand :-) ! Camera, The L lense, My daughter... can't drop any of them, can I ? :-)

India Trip !

2006-02-08T21:42:00.000-08:00

(c) All Rights Reserved

Hello folks! I just got back from India!
Had lots of fun with friends and Family and also did a lot of sight seeing in northern India. Snapped about a 1000 clicks with 20D and a brand new 17-40 F4L !

I will try to share the best of the shots and lessons in the coming weeks!

Regarding the shot above. Well I wanted to capture the sense of scale of Taj Mahal. So I tried to fill the frame such that the smaller objects - people - do get some attention with the Taj in Back. However, with the 17-40 F4L being a very wide lens, I had to come closer to Taj for this picture.. which unfortunately caused the perspective (top narrower then bottom). Anyways...

A view from Pier 39

2005-08-09T08:05:00.000-07:00

Here is a view of San Francisco from top of a Parking lot at Pier 39

Original was a color image. Applied following enhancements using Picasa2.

Crop
Fill Light
Sharpen
Sepia
Gradient
Auto Contrast

At The Bridge

2005-08-08T06:40:00.000-07:00

Recently, I drove somone to see Golden Gate Bridge. Here are some pics of the bridge I snapped while on site. It was very foggy that day and I couldn't get the shots I'd love, but I tried to make the best out of the situation. These are few that I liked.

A Trip to Yosemite Valley

2005-06-08T01:04:00.000-07:00

Residents of San Francisco Bay area are very lucky to have so many beautiful and fun weekend getaways like Carmel, Santa Cruz, Half Moon Bay, Napa Valley, Lake Tahoe and Yosemite Valley!

We try to go to Yosemite Valley at least once during the month of May. During this period, the snow in the sierra mountains is melting and there is so much of water in the Falls. This year also, we planned a trip for May second weekend (although it turned out little different this time).

Also, this was my first trip to the valley with a digital cam in my hand. So I was very excited.

Preparation

A total of 1 GB of memory (1 of 512MB + 2 of 256 MB cards)
I grabbed the laptop also just in case I ru out of memory
Housekeeping camp, where we were staying, do provide an electrical outlet. So I was not worried about battery recharging etc.
For the camp fire side shots, I also bought a Canon 50mm F1.8 Lens (more on this lense in a separate post)

First Problem
I was testing my new 50mm F1.8 lens for sharpness and tried various very small apertures, and suddenly a hairline started showing in all the pics. Upon further Investigation of pics, lense and camera, I concluded that this was due to a scratch on the 20D sensor! This was a really BAD news as this would rule out all the long exposure (smooth water shots) ! I contacted Amazon and they promised to replace it. But for this trip I had to live within F9.0 or so! Anyways.

Overall, I took about 125 shots only ! And most of them I did not like once I got them on the computer. I mentioned about this feeling of "It looked better then this picture" feeling earlier too. Well, it was like Deja vu. But this time it was for different reasons. Check lessons learned. Pics posted below are the few I liked.

I wanted to do better post processing with Adobe Elements 2.0, but it is becoming so hard to find time for everything, especially when weekends are busy withmore opportunities for taking pictures. So finally I did simple fixes with Picasa 2, and created a gallery with Adobe Elements 2.0. Please View the Gallery for higher resolution images.

Entering the valley Floor
For the first time I hit bumper to bumper traffic in Yosemite National Park. Here are a couple of pics of Yosemite Falls that I snapped from the driver seat, when traffic was at stand still.

[View Gallery]

Despite our best attempts, we wasted a whole lot of first day in just reaching to the camp. And thet was the sunniest day of our trip!

Camp fire
I had grabbed the 50mm F1.8 lens especially for the camp fire shots. Here are some of the camp fire shots.

[View Gallery]

Curry Village
Between running behind kids (my nephews) and doing BBQ, I don't know how the second day was gone already. Both days, I wasted so many shots due to lack of Dynamic Range. I won't blame it on 20D though, it was just too bright and sunny and I was trying to take pictures in the middle of the day!!! Here is a decent one that came out nice, because it was in shade.

Pizza Patio at Curry Village

And soon it was evening, and then clouds and rain!!!

Leaving Yosemite
Next morning, we were wondering if we wanted to stay for the day. It had been raining all night and was still raining. Suddenly park rangers showed up and informed us that we had only 15 to 20 minutes to pack up and leave!!! All that sunny weather on the previous day plus the rain all night had the Merced River over flowing and it was about to move in our tents. We packed the cars in 10 minutes in rain and left hurriedly. I made BIG one mistake, placed the camera bag behind other stuff!!!

On the way out, we could see the river moving in our tent, which actually created an increased sense of urgency to get "out of the woods". Although it was nothing dangerous, we just did not want to get stuck in the park, if they close the access roads.

The best photographic opportunities showed up at this totally unexpected moment. Although I had passed up on the raging rapids of Merced river, the beautiful scenes below were just too good to pass, so I pulled over and had to get the camera out again. And I'm so glad I did :-)

[View Gallery]

Lessons Learned

Rushing out of the woods
Looking back, this did not turn out to be the kind of trip I expected. But I learned more about photography by making some mistakes and I guess that makes it worth. Here are some lessons learned.

Dynamic Range:
I had not even thought about dynamic range before this. Dynamic range in short is the range of brightness the camera can capture from the brightest object to dakest object in the scene. Anything brighter then upper level shows up washed out or white anything darker then darkest level of the range shows black. In very bright situations like what I faced, either I can get a beautiful bright and blue sky or I can get details from shadows in the trees. Getting both is tough. Either the sky will be all washed out and white, or all the shadow details will be dark underexposed. Many of my shots of falls did not come out right. I lost the detail in water while trying to make sure the surrounding greenary came out properly detailed. More on dynamic range some other time.
Viewfinder does not show Dynamic Range
Now, think about this. When I shot the picture, viewfinder showed an excellent detailed optical view, so I clicked. But, the viewfinder in no way indicates, what will be underexposed/overexposed. You have to review your image closely in preview. I did some preliminary review, where I missed the fact that water was completely whitened out(overexposed). This would have been OK, if I was taking long exposures at very small apperture for that smooth water flow effect. But due to sensor scratch problem I was limited by F9.0. So at faster shutter speeds (no smooth effect) , the overexposed water made the picture look mediocre to totally bad.
Time of the day is important:
because, Sun does not follow your time table. If you wanna get good shots, get out of the bed/tent earlier or wait for late afternoon or evening. Atthese times, Dynamic range is smaller and with patience, you can get a good shot. My evenings were reserved for family activities, and mornings ... well... I went there for rest too :-)
Pack your Camera First, but keep it on top of the luggage
Later on, in the evening I saw the park being closed, and the Merced river rapids that we passed by, regreting not taking pics. Safety first, but leaving the camera in an easily accessible locationwon't hurt.
Make a Plan
I was more disappointed because, I really did not take any trips to more scenic places like Mirror lake etc. If you go with other family members, your options can be limited. Advanced planning would have helped. I guess, I am just spoiled because Yosemite is a weekend getaway for us here in Bay Area.

Leaving Yosemite

Since this trip, my camera has been replaced by Amazon and I think I learned some valuable lessons in this trip. I hope to visit Yosemite again before end of summer!

Please feel free to post any comments or share your experince.

Tags : Yosemite, 20D, Photography

Yosemite Falls

2005-05-28T18:02:00.000-07:00

Been too occupied lately with other stuff, so I've not found enough time to do some post processing of the pics from Yosemite. Here is a quick one using Picasa2 and Adobe Photoshop Elements 2.0. I took this picture while waiting for traffic to move (Yes! Traffic! Even in Yosemite!). When you are on a very short trip with family, you have to grab every opportunity you get :-).

Yosemite Falls, Yosemite National Park, CA

Increased saturation a little and resized the image with Picasa2
Sharpened using Adobe Photoshop Elements 2.0 using Unsharp Mask filter (Amount 120%, radius 0.3 , threshold 0.0)

Bridge at Happy Isle, Yosemite Valley

2005-05-26T08:29:00.000-07:00

Couple of weeks ago, I had a weekend trip to the beautiful Yosemite Valley. Below is one of the pictures from this trip.

Here is the same pic after applying following changes in Picasa2

Fill Light
Warmify
Saturation Increase
Sharpen
Glow

Stay tuned for more from this trip...

On a Rainy Evening

2005-04-30T20:10:00.000-07:00

If you live in San Francisco Bay area, you might have noticed that gorgeous full rainbow yesterday evening. I rushed out to try a picture of it after I reached home from work. But unfortunatetly It was too faint by then. Disappointed I returned to car and noticed the rain drops all over the windshield. It looked very interesting with the backdrop of sunset colors. So I clicked away...

Canon EOS 20D, F8.0, 1/125 s, ISO800

Canon EOS 20D, F8.0, 1/200 s, ISO800

I wish I had used more depth of field. But it was already at ISO800 at F8.0, and to decrease the aperture even further, I'd have to go to ISO1600. I wanted to keep the shutter speed as high as possible for maximum sharpness while holding the camera in hand.

Pink - Erica Heathers

2005-04-27T00:16:00.000-07:00

Updated

Erica Heathers

Native to South Africa

(c) All Rights Reserved

Shot handheld with Canon EOS 20D, 18-55mm EF-S Kit lens in Canon Raw format
F13.0, 1/50 s, ISO 800
Did minor adjustments and converted to JPG using Canon's Digital Photo Professional bundled with 20D.
Applied "Glow" and "Soft Focus" Effects in Picasa2
Did a very tight crop, makes it look like it was taken with a macro lens. Well it was not. The 8.2 MP gives you so much of resolution to play with.

Although, I do wish I had the 100mm F2.8 Macro lens to capture the beauty of these tiny flowers in great detail.

Update

Couldn't resist posting one more picture of these beautiful flowers. This time, a 4:3 aspect ratio wallpaper. Click on the link below to download the wallpaper.

A very colorful toy

2005-04-20T01:24:00.000-07:00

Tiger Piano
Canon EOS 20D, F5.3, 1/8 s, ISO 800, 55mm (using 18-55 kit lens)

Modified with Photoshop Elements 2.0

Unsharp Mask : Amount 300%, radius 0.3 , threshold 0
Resized Image to 400 X 600
Resized Canvas to 422 x 622
Stroke with black color, 1px, inside

I just like the funny gaze of this character, and wanted to emphasize on it, at the same time, wanted to capture its full spectrum of colors. I was, shooting in low light, so opened up aperture to its maximum F5.3, allowed by 18-55 mm kit lens at full zoom (i.e. 55mm). Hence the shallow depth of field, which actually puts even more emphasis on the face of the character. And, yes I know it is not perfectly centered in the frame.

Little Pomeranian

2005-04-14T00:19:00.000-07:00

Canon EOS 20D, F9.0, 1/160 s, +2/3EV

Here is a picture of my colleague. Recently, one day she brought this cute little pomeranian puppy with her. It was only a few weeks old, and in fact my 20D looked bigger then this puppy. I forgot to reset the Exposure compensation Dial back to zero EV, so some over exposure and loss of details in white areas. But I am glad that the pic came out nice otherwise.

I did some sharpening using Unsharp Mask filter in Adobe Photoshop Elements 2.0 (bundled with 20D). Also created the white border using the Stroke command.

Why I chose Canon EOS 20D

2005-04-13T01:09:00.000-07:00

OKay, time to finish of what I had started. Here is the second part. You might want to read first part from the link below.

Part I : Why I upgraded to a digital SLR

Part II : Why I chose Canon EOS 20D

In spite of the limitations I was facing with G5, I was overall happy with my decision to go with a Canon product. I knew that it was not a limitation of canon's technology but rather the class of camera I had chosen. So when I decided to upgrade to a dSLR, I simply started looking for what Canon had to offer.

300D or 20D ? A $600 question.
At the time of buying G5, it was first time for me so I was a bit skeptical spending a lot of money. But when it was time to upgrade, I knew that whatever I'll get I'll make good use of it. And therefore I was willing to spend little more if I liked the product. When I started looking, there were mainly two models that were within my reach. Canon EOS 300D (Digital Rebel) and Canon EOS 20D . 20D is the next incarnation of Canon EOS 10D. 10D was still available in the market but discontinued by Canon after 20D became available. On simple side by side comparison, it was quite clear that 20D was an entirely different class compared to 300D. See for yourself at dpreview.com. 300D was the first dSLR under $1000 and has had a revolutionary impact on the advanced amateur class of consumers. But by all means, 20D was a significant step forward in so many respect, for $600 more.

It was lot more robust compared to 300D. (Magnesium Alloy Body vs. Plastic Body )
Lot faster startup times. (0.2 seconds vs 2+seconds )
twice as fast continuous shooting (5 frames per second vs 2.5 frames per second)
Better, smarter, faster auto focus (9 point AF in 20D vs 7 point in 300D )
Faster Download speed for pics (USB 2.0 vs USB 1.0)
Bigger and better images (8.2 MP, better noise performance vs 6.3 MP)

300D is definitely smaller and lighter. But again, I was not shopping for a point and shoot here. I was shopping for serious photography, so I had size and weight at bottom of my priority list anyway. So it came down to, "can I justify spending $600 more?" Looking at the difference above, and thinking long term... Absolutely! I had learned my lessons well on G5 and knew what I wanted - a fast camera with great low light performance, that will last long. And definitely 20D was better at that then 300D. Still, I decided to put it off for a couple of more months to see if the prices go down further for 20D.

Canon Digital Rebel XT : 350D
Earlier this year, right around when I was closing in on placing my order, canon announced the next incarnation of 300D, the Canon Digital Rebel XT - 350D. And this caused a lot of dilemma! 350D or 20D ?(many folks are going through this right now... May be you too... Hmm let me get inside your head).

By all means, 350D was more like 20D's guts and brains cramped into the 300D's body and then shrunk even further. Moreover, 350D was to be sold at $500 less then 20D. So why in the world myself or anybody else would buy a 20D instead of this 350D. Well this is a completely debatable topic that can compete with Canon vs Nikon argument. There are strong reasons to buy either of these cameras. It's upto you to find out what is more appealing to you. Below is a list of what I thought about these differences.

Image size
20D : 8.2MP
350D : 8 MP
This was negligible.

Image Quality
They have different sensor, but both camera produce almost equal quality pics in identical conditions. A pro may nitpick little bit here and there. But hey, if you and me can not see the difference even at closer inspection, the difference is not there.

Build Quality
20D: Very robust, Magnesium Alloy Body with Rubber Grip.
350D: Plastic Body, no rubber grip.
First time, when I held my friend's Olympus C5060 camera in my hand, I could feel the difference between his camera and my plastic body Canon G5. C5060 felt much more robust because of it's magnesium alloy body. So I was definitely biased towards 20D with Magnesium Alloy body. Also, for someone, just wandering into dSLR world for "higher megapixel" or "better image quality" or "smarter auto modes", preferences would be still like "I still want something light and small". I was coming in from a different angle. I wanted to build a good lineup of lenses over the coming years. So whatever I get had to last few years, and had to be able to hold heavier lenses. Naturally I would go with 20D.

Weight
20D : No doubt this guy is heavy, 27.2 oz
350D : And this one is even lighter then 300D, Only 19.0 oz.
Now that is a BIG difference of weight. But again, that's what it will be if you want it robust and well built. You cannot be an 8 seater, off road vehicle and be feather weight at the same time.

Size
20D is 0.7 inch longer, 0.5 inch taller and 0.3 inch thicker then 350D. 350D is actually even smaller then 300D. For me, a person with relatively large hands, 350D felt too small for a better grip, while 20D would just fill my hands for a perfect stable grip.

Another temptation was, why not get 350D + a nice Canon lens with Image stabilization, in the same amount for which I'll get 20D with the entry level kit lens? Well, I thought, lens I can always add later on. Why compromise on camera body right now?

So I ended up choosing 20D over 350D as well. Even though the image quality differences were minimal, I selected 20D for better ergonomics and robust build quality.

Why not Nikon D70 ?
In the week I was about to place an order for 20D, I had a couple of friends over for dinner. When the topic came up, I was asked if I considered Nikon D70. And I had to admit, I had not looked at D70 closely. Eventhough I was so close to ordering 20D, I thought I should at least take a close look at 20D vs D70 comparison. And few things jumped out to me.

D70 was Nikon's answer to Canon 300D and was lot more like 20D or 350D then like 300D.
It was NOT magnesium alloy body.
Noise performance was not as good as 20D.
It's a 6.0 MP camera compared to 8.2 in 20D
The price difference was in the range of $200 to $300

Canon or Nikon
While looking at the comparison, what I realized was, this was not a simple Camera Model choice. This was a whole product line and brand choice for future investments as well. Once I choose Canon I'll be buying Canon's EF or EF-s Lenses. Once I choose Nikon, I'll be buying Nikkor lenses etc. Obviously with no experience of Nikon product, I'd feel better selecting something from my safety zone only, and that's what I did. Also, both of my friends who suggested the Nikon product, were themselves Nikon owners and had not tried Canon products yet. We all have our own safety zones! So 20D was it for me. My Canon vs Nikon decision was not completely objective so instead of going into details of 20D vs D70, I thought it would be best to document the main reason, my safety zone!

Update #1

If you are looking for side by side comparison of 300D, 350D, 20D and D70 then the right place to look at is the side by side feature comparison at dpreview.com. Use this as a starting point and then read full reviews for each of these cameras.

Update #2

dpreview.com has detailed comparison of 350D with 300D, 20D and D70 as part of 350D review.
bobatkins.com has nicely summarized Rebel XT vs 20D.
kenrockwell.com has detailed comparison of 20D vs D70.

Why not wait for the next model ?
Finally, why buy now? Canon has been announcing new dSLRs on annual basis. Why not wait for the next model that is very likely to show up this fall? Of course patience has its pay offs. But for me that pay off was the reduction in prices over the past few months that I had been petiently waiting. Also, getting a camera in fall means wasting a whole summer. And of course my baby daughter is growing fast! I wanted to take lots of pics of her in this first year. I just didn't see any point in waiting for next dSLR from Canon.

And frankly, after doing enough research, you reach a point where you just want to commit and move on to the real stuff... Taking a lot of pictures that is. That's what Photography is all about!

As this blog is about "sharing experiences" related to digital photography, I thought documenting my product decisions was an important part of it. I hope all my blabber above would help someone trying to enter the dSLR world in making the right choice for themselves. If you are a Nikon lover, wait for 1 month as they will announce a new dSLR by this month end. If you are a Canon lover, go get a 350D or 20D. Don't waste a summer!

Winners announced for 2005 Pulitzer Prize

2005-04-06T00:48:00.000-07:00

Been too occupied lately with other pending stuff (April 15th is coming closer, so it's tax time) ... so didn't get chance to finish the second part - "Why I chose Canon EOS 20D" - yet.

But here is something that I think every amateur and pro photographer should take a look at for inspiration. Winners for the prestigious Pulitzer Prize for year 2005 were announced on 4/4/05 for multiple categories. Two of them relevant to photography are Feature Photography and Breaking News photography.

Feature Photography : Deanne Fitzmaurice (some graphic content) , San Francisco Chronicle

Breaking News Photography : Associated Press Staff (strong graphic content) , Associated Press

While going through these works, one thing that clearly stands out is that - the most important aspect of the image is a strong and clear subject. A strong and clear subject leaves a lasting impression on the viewer regardless of the other technical qualities of the image !

Also check their archive galleries for previous years winners and their works.

Why I upgraded to a digital SLR

2005-03-30T23:05:00.000-08:00

Its a lot of stuff to capture in rational behind moving from G5 to 20D. I'll break it down into two posts.

1. Why I upgraded to digital SLR
2. Why I chose Canon EOS 20D

Here we go with the first part.

Why I upgraded to a digital SLR

I got G5 in November 2003. Had great time learning basics of photographic exposure with it. My primary goals was to learn basics of photography and G5 helped me solve that purpose.

But for all its features, G5 is still a prosumer camera with its limitations. Read on...

Limitations of Canon Powershot G5
It has been a few months since I had started feeling "the one year itch". I started feeling that I can not do more with G5 and started facing its limitations. No doubt its a great camera, but it can not scale with your skill for sure.

Focusing Difficulties
When I bought G5 I thought, "I am not going to take pictures of fast moving objects in low light that often". But when my new born daughter started moving, It was becoming more and more difficult to focus properly. Remember, with G5 you have to do focusing with LCD screen. And it is really not that efficient or reliable. This is applicable to any camera where you have to do focusing using LCD (read LCD - Looks Can be Deceiving). Also, autofous is slow, especially in low light. Due to day job, I found myself trying to take pictures of my daughter in the evening at home in low light, more then expected. And focusing difficulties was becoming the main issue.
Noise at Higher ISO speeds
G5 allows ISO sensitivities of 50, 100, 200 and 400. But higher ISO means more noise in the image. I could always use software like Neat Image. But nothing compares to an original picture with minimal noise.
Lot of motion blur
Due to bad noise levels above ISO100, I was forced to use lower ISO and hence slower shutter speed (need more light as the sensor is slow at capturing it). This caused motion blur in low light pictures.
Depth of Field Issues
Another thing I could do to get more light in was open the aperture to the maximum. In case of G5, that would be F2.0 (read The F Number - Demystified). This will help increasing the shutter speed to avoid motion blur, but then, you start losing Depth of Field because your aperture is wide open (read Depth of Field - the Third Dimension). Narrow depth of field causes parts of the subject to be blurred (e.g. eyes will be OK but hair or hand will be blurred). Such effect was not always desirable.

As you can see above, all of these problems were somehow related to Photography in low light coditions without using any flash. However that's not it.

Aperture limits
Smallest aperture for G5 is F 8.0. So if you want to take long exposures with wide depth of field, you can only go upto the point where your picture won't be over exposed at F8.0. Imagine that you are trying to take a picture of water falls and you want to expose it for long time to get really smooth water effect. Eventhough G5 allows upto 15 seconds max shutter speed, you will be limited to a second or so at ISO 50, because beyond that your picture will be overexposed. If aperture smaller then F 8.0 was available, you can set it to smaller size and go for longer exposure. On my 4th of July Fireworks pictures, I had to use Neutral Density filter on top of at F8.0 to get decent 15 second exposures even at night. Even then the grand finale shot came out overexposed !
Depth of field
If you want to choose a certain depth of field by setting proper aperture on G5, It is very difficult. You take a trial snap, get the picture on LCD, zoom in and verify that the depth of field covers all that you want. Problem is once you zoom in on LCD, you quickly lose perspective. The guide box on the corner tells you where you are on the picture but I always found it to be very inconvenient this way. A better way would be to be able to see depth of field optically (through viewfinder, not on LCD) and verify, and of course you can not see depth of field in a viewfinder in a non-SLR camera.
3:4 Aspect Ratio
The pictures generated by your G5 fit perfectly well on your TV. But if you get 4X6 print from a consumer lab, your picture will be trimmed from top and bottom. This may be a killer for your composition. This is because G5 images are with 3:4 aspect ratio, which fits perfect on your TV, but not in a 4X6 print. Workaround is to manually crop all the images to 4:6 aspect ratio before sending for print.
Filters
I also wanted to start trying out different filters (especially Circular Polarizer). But faced by other limitations, it was clear that I wanted an SLR, so I just didn't feel like doing any investment in buying good filters etc for G5. This was bothering me because I was delaying learning new techniques!
Scalability
Being a non-SLR camera, G5 does not have capability to change lenses. You are limited to the built in lens. There are two adapters available, one for wide angle and other for telephoto. But that is it. Contrast this with the SLR world where there is a plethora of choices depending on what is it that you want to shoot.

Faced with this Limitations I started looking for an SLR. I did not see a point in upgrading to G6 or Pro 1 from Canon or any prosumer camera for that matter. It would have been just like G5 with few more features and few more mega pixel.

So why did I think an SLR would fix many of these problems ?

SLR features

Interchangeable Lenses
This is the Defining Feature of an SLR camera. You can choose any lens that you want that is compatible with your camera's lens mount and just replace it. Your ability to zoom in, set very small apertures, shoot a very wide angle of the scene etc. are limited only by the lens that you mount. You can have one general purpose zoom lens or you can go for a different lens for every different type of picture. Want to take pictures in low light? Get a lens that can open aperture upto F1.4 ! Want to shoot very wide angle landscape photograph? Get a lens with small focal length like 10 mm to 22 mm. Want to get into wildlife photography ? Get a long focal length lens like 200+ mm.
Composing with a ViewFinder
In a point and shoot, you have some limited zoom and the view finder will have a mechanism which will show the same view. Still it is not through your camera's main lens. When you zoom in and out, the viewfinder also moves its small elements back and forth just like the main lens to mimic the same amount of zoom. This is OK as long as it shows correct zoom.

However in a camera with interchangeable lens, it is impossible to have a viewfinder with it's own independent lens. If you shoot extreme telephoto and the viewfinder does not show extreme telephoto view, how are you going to compose your picture ? It just doesn't make sense. For Point and shoot, this was OK because the lens is fixed and its capabilities are imitated by viewfinder also. But similar mechanism in a camera with interchangeable lens will be impossible.

That's why in camera's with interchangeable lens, optical mechanisms like penta prism and a mirror are implemented that show the view finder's view thorough the main lens. Due to this mechanism, they are called Single Lens Reflex Camera or SLR Camera! This is required because the lens is interchangeable. That is why I call the Interchangeable lens the Defining Feature for SLR. You will never have a separate lens for view finder in a cameras with interchangeable lens.

What are the advantages ? Well, when you are composing, you look through the view finder. You can very accurately verify if you have achieved proper focus as you are not limited by the resolution of an LCD.
Higher ISOs and lower Noise
dSLR offer better ISOs. 20D offer 100,200,400,800,1600, 3200. Higher ISO speeds allow you to take the picture faster. Also at similar ISOs the noise levels are way too low compared to a G5. Primary reason for this is a better sensor. A dSLR is usually a bigger and more expensive camera, it employs a larger sensor compared to a point and shoot with the same mega pixels. Larger Sensors have larger individual pixels which produce less Image noise.
Better control over Aperture and Shutter speed
An SLR supports very small aperture settings. These are limited to what lens you put on it of course. Also shutter speeds can vary from a few thousandth of a fraction to as long as you want(called bulb setting). With the combination of wider range of ISOs, shutter speeds and apertures, you can get the same exposure level in the way most suitable to your situation. Trying to avoid motion blur ? Trying to cover enough depth of field ? Trying to do both together but in low light ? No problem ! Your playing fields is a little bigger.
Depth of Field
Most SLR cameras come with this neat feature. Your composition is done with aperture wide open. But then after you have selected your desired aperture, you want to verify if it covers enough depth of field or not. Press a little button, and camera instructs the lens to give you a preview by setting the aperture to the desired level. You can verify everything from the viewfinder and change aperture if you wish.
Faster Camera
Prosumer cameras typically have a couple of second startup time for it to get initialized. It's an electronic device just like your DVD player. However, this delay can make you miss a very valuable photo moment if your camera was not on. dSLRs are built to professional quality where you can't afford to miss a moment. So typically they have startup time of a very small fraction of a second. They also capture multiple frames per second (for those shots of kids jumping in the pool or running in the garden). You don't need to be the luckiest guy to capture the exact moment. Shoot continuous whenever you want to captue fast action. Just make sure that you have enough room on your compact flash card.

"How many megapixels is it?"
I still get asked this as the first question. As you can see in the list above, higher megapixel was not the reason for upgrade at all . Beyond 5 MP, I dont think MPs are that relavent for point and shoot. May be in SLR world, it matter a bit because the expectation is that the images might be printed at anything larger then 4 x 6. Well, I've not done that yet. But MP was definately not a criteria. I had lots of other things to complain about before any lack of resolution. FYI, 20D is an 8.2 MP and I think it will provide more room to crop. But again, one needs to get better at composition and rely less and less on cropping.

Oh one more thing...

What happens to G5 ?
Nothing, G5 still stays as my second camera and I am sure I'll be using it for many occasions like..

Places where "professional photography" is not allowed (They typically think of anything SLR as professional).
When I don't want to carry a rather big camera with me. (Formal party)
Just as a backup if I spill my coffee on 20D (I hope not!).
Where an SLR camera might look overwhelming.

Enough said, the true measure of success of a decision is the results. And so far it looks good. I have not had that many chances to take pictures outdoors this last few days after I got my 20D, because sometimes California weather really Sucks. But I am looking forward to a great summer with the new toy.

My little Wonder

2005-03-20T01:35:00.000-08:00

-:- My little Wonder -:-

Here is one of my first shots with 20D. It has been reduced in size. What's unique about this shot is the conditions in which it was taken. I captured this when my baby daughter was playing in the bed, early in the morning on a cloudy day, in available light through the window! The only way this was possible is because I dialed up the ISO sensitivity to 1600 ! Even at 1600 ISO the images that come out are very useable with relatively low noise. I'd never be able to get this shot with my G5. Full exposure info is as below.

Aperture : F 5.6
Shutter : 1/30 sec
Focal Length : 35 mm (I was using the kit lense from my old film SLR Canon Rebel G)
ISO : 1600

Note: The original image has some noise in it, but I left it in it and sharpend with Picasa 2. For Black and White or Sepia images, when you sharpen with the noise, it starts looking like film or paper grain which I think looks good. I'd never do that to color images.

I was sooo... wrong

2005-03-20T01:27:00.000-08:00

... and I dont even feel bad about it! Few months ago in my post "Why I chose Canon Powershot G5", I concluded;

"I don't think I'll buy an SLR in near future."

Well, I have proven myself wrong. Last Friday, The UPS guy delivered a brand new Canon EOS 20D, my first digital SLR!

In summry, 20D is the best you can get in it's class. It is fast in focusing, startup, read-write speeds, and can capture 5 frames per second 8.2 Megapixel images. It has lot less image noise at ISOs upto 800 (oh yeah!) and it is very well built.

With this camera I am moving from the "prosumer" to "a serious amateur" category. So what made me buy a digital SLR camera so sooner then I had thought? Well, I am not going to post a full review of 20D. there are plenty of good reviews out there on the web and I don't think I can do better then those. But I'll surely try to document the thought process that might be able to help someone else make such a move. After all, it's a big step up, considering that this camera costs almost double compared to what I paid for G5 a little more than a year ago.

Stay Tuned...

Window on the Wing

2005-03-09T01:11:00.000-08:00

Window on the Wing
(c) All Rights Reserved

Holiday Lighting

2005-03-04T08:57:00.000-08:00

Holiday Lighting, Glendale, AZ

Meet The Princess

2005-02-21T12:13:00.000-08:00

Meet The Princess
(c) All Rights Reserved

I love this picture! Everyone who saw also loved it ! One colleague even suggested that I should try some professional Photography !

Hmm... Well may be not yet. Afterall, there is no guarantee that every picture I take will be as good as this one, because there is definitely an element of Luck involved. Not to say that this picture came out nice just by pur luck, but I just feel that the moment captured in the picture gave me more satisfaction then I had expected for my effort.

As this is a blog about "learning Photography" & "sharing experience", I thought I should put some details that can help someone else take a similar picture. Read on...

Title : "Meet The Princess"
Well, The title was a very obvious choice. The viewer is meeting my little 7 month old princess and my little princess is meeting her plastic princess doll.

Subject
At this age, babies really get very curious of the world around them. They want to grab everything they can reach (and cannot reach!). I wanted to capture this instinctive behavior in some way as a sweet memory of this phase of early development. So the real subject is the interaction - that hand stretched to grab the doll and the eyes locked on the doll.

Location
In a corner of our bedroom, a perfect place to provide a homely background. There was a stand up fan also over there which I did not remove. You can see the base of it behind the doll. I thought it looked nice behind the doll and with its gradual slope, it provided a nice venue for the plastic royalty to stand.

Lighting
All natural day light. No flash (I am really not fond of flash photography). The window provided the right amount of light to illuminate Baby's face. Also I had not noticed it at the time, but the gradual shadow on the wall nehind provides a really nice background for the relatively small secondary subject - the plastic princess - to stand out.

Composition
You can easily see that The Rule of Thirds is playing a clear role here. To achieve a good balance between the two subjects (Baby and the doll) The rule of thirds was natural. Also the real subject - the interaction - is right in the middle of the picture!

Trials
I must have tried at least three different angles and finally settled down on the one closest to the floor. Also, at F2.8 and ISO100, shutter was at 1/50s and many shots were wasted with motion blur due to Baby moving around. This one is not perfect either as you can see the her hands show little bit of motion blur. And with the Deceiving LCD, You can't tell if the picture you just clicked was the perfect one. So instead of leaviong things to luck, I take more pictures even at the same angle.

Editing
The original picture is in color.

At ISO100, I really did not like the noise. I filtered it using Free Version of Neat Image.
Rest of the changes were done in Picasa2 (Free from Google).
Straightened using door frame as reference.
Filled little more light.
Added Glow. I really like this effect.
Converted to Sepia. I also tried black and white. but I really liked the timelessness exerted by Sepia.
Did minor Contrast adjustments.

The only regret I have is, I wish I could have used a wider depth of field. at ISO100, I was really trying to limit the shutter speed to avoid motion blur from baby's movements. Only option was to increase th Aperture which narrowed the depth of field. I don't think the depth of field was that good, because not all of the blur in the picture is caused by motion. Oh well, that's the limitation I have to accept for a G5.

The Moonlight Rose

2005-02-18T21:50:00.000-08:00

The Moonlight Rose
(c) All Rights Reserved

Roses - a macro shot

2005-02-18T00:24:00.000-08:00

Roses
F4.9, 1/4 s, +2EV, Macro Focusing Mode

Above is a macro shot of the same roses from the post before. I don't have any special lighting equipment, so to washout the background, I took the shot with +2 Exposure Compensation in Aperture Priority. Also to avoid shaking the camera at shutter release, I used 10 sec timer release. Had to do minor color correction and sharpening using Picasa 2.

(c) All Rights Reserved

For My Valentine

2005-02-15T23:31:00.000-08:00

For My Valentine
(c) All Rights Reserved

San Luis Reservoir, Northern California

2005-02-15T09:05:00.000-08:00

San Luis Reservoir, Northern California
(c) All Rights Reserved

Morning in the Meadows

2005-02-13T12:35:00.000-08:00

Morning in the Meadows
(c) All Rights Reserved

Meadows along Highway 152, Northern California.

2005-02-12T14:13:00.000-08:00

Meadows along Highway 152, Northern California.

f4.5, 1/80s , ISO 50

Composed using Rule of Thirds.
Enhanced with Picasa 2.
- I'm Feeling Lucky
- Fill Light
- Glow
- Graduated Tint
- Sharpen
(c) All Rights Reserved

Understanding Metering

2004-11-30T21:30:00.000-08:00

Well, I'm back after a full 3 months. No I had not given up on Photography or G5! Let's just say moving and sattling into a new house and getting broadband to start working again can be very hectic. Anyways.

Here is some explation on metering and why you need to understand it.

What difference does knowing about metering make anyways ?
You mighthave noticed symbols like below on your camera's buttons or dial.

[(0)]

[ o ]

[ ]

They indicate various metering modes supported by your camera. Why is metering important? Well take a look at the two pictures below.

Evaluative Metering Mode

Spot Metering Mode

As you can see metering makes a whole lot of difference. If you want to stop doing Point and Shoot and stop taking pictures with built-in flash, you must understand metering modes to make sure that you don't end up with under exposed or over exposed pictures.

The Problem
Let's say you are doing Portrait Photography, the subject is still, you want to increase the Depth of Field and you don't really care for the shutter speed. So you will put your Camera in Aperture priority mode, so that you can playaround with DOF while Camera keeps sdjusting the shutter speed adjusting such that your subject looks well lit. Now, how does the camera know what is "well lit" or "well exposed" ?

The Solution
The simple thing that your camera trys to do is to achieve exposure level that is referred to as 18% Grey. What this means is, if the amount of light coming in through each spot in the frame was same (i.e. a simple plain frame) then the resulting picture should be a certain shade of grey marked as "18% grey" (let's not go into "why 18% ?"). Such an exposure would look like the pic below.

18% Grey

Fortunately, none of the scenes are boring like the grey screen above :-). Usually you get a mix of dark and light areas in any scene. The camera "mixes-up" all the brightness and comes up with a calculation for a shutter speed or aperture opening such that total exposure is equivalent to the 18% grey pic above, no matter what the scene is. This calculation is called the Metering. In aperture priority mode, it is used to select the shutter speed; and in Shutter priority mode, it is used to select the aperture.

Going back to smart stove analogy (see "Cooking and Photography"), metering is equivalent to deciding how much heat is required to cook any particular food. Different ways of doing this are referred to as different metering modes.

In metering process, Your camera "looks" at the scene, checks how much various areas of the frame are lit and decides how much total exposure (total light) is required to create the picture such that it is equivalent to 18% grey shade.

For example, G5 supports following three Meterting Modes

Evaluative Metering [(0)]
Camera divides the scene into several zones and does calculations to come up with the right exposure. In Other words, Camera gives equal importance to the entire scene to make sure that over all best exposure is achived in the entire scene.

Evaluative Metering Mode

Take a second look at the elephant image with Evaluative Metering above. You can see that as most of the background is bright, to achive 18% grey level, the camera reduces the exposure to such an extent that we lose the fine artwork details in the elephant body as they are underexposed.

Center Weighted Metering [ ]
This is similar to the Evaluative Metering, except for the fact that instead of giving equal impiortance to all areas, Camera gives higher importance to center of the image. In other words, Camera trys to make sure that the center is properly exposed and may make compromise (underexpose or overexpose) the rest of the image.

Below is the same scene with center weighted Metering.

Center Weighted Metering Mode

This time, the camera is giving higher importance to the middle of the scene i.e. makes sure they dont get underexposed. Even after giving less importance to surrounding areas (i.e. risk over exposure as they are brighter) We are getting the artwork details on the elephant a little bit underexposed.

Spot Metering [o]

In this mode, the camera only considers a very small area of the screen to decide exposure level. In G5 this area can be selected as a small part in the Center or a small area around the adjustable Auto Focus Point. The Camera makes sure that 18% grey exposure is achived in this spot area, and doesn't care for over/under exposure in rest of the frame.

Spot Metering Mode

Take a second look at the Elephant image with Spot Metering above. As the center spot was selected, which happens to be covering mainly the back and side of the elephant body, the camera tried to achive 18% grey exposure in this area. So all the artwork details have come out very well. But the camera completely disregarded the exposure level in rest of the frame. To achive the required exposure in spot area, which has a lot of black, Camera reduced the shutter speed so much that the rest of the frame is completely overexposed ! But hey, we did get our artwork details !

Important things to remember about Metering Modes

Metering is camera's way of deciding how much exposure is required.
Evaluative metering mode trys to make the whole picture properly exposed.
Center Weighted metering mode trys to make sure that objects towards the center are properly exposed, objects on the edges may be under or over exposed.
Spot metering mode trys to calculates exposure based only on what is in the selected spot area. Rest of the frame can be over or under exposed.
The only time you are NOT using Camera's metering is when you go in full "Manual" mode, when you have to select both aperture and shutter speed.This makes it very important that you understand metering modes properly.

[UPDATE : In all the other exposure modes like full auto, other programmed modes, or priority modes like aperture priority or shutter priority, the camera is selecting at least one parameter for you. So it has to use its metering algorithms based on the metering mode you have selected.

In manual mode, you are selecting everything, so you are not really using camera's metering capabilities inherently. However that does not mean it becomes unavailable. Modern digital cameras show some form of indicator regarding how you are doing based on your selected parameters, compared to cameras metering. i.e. It may show you, how many stops above or below you are with respect to cameras metering. You don't have to use it, but it's there for reference. ]
Pay attention to subjects in your scene and make sure that you are not losing details in the shadows. Play around with various metering modes and try to get the details right.

The Backlit Subject
Above the elephant is heavily backlit subject. And we played around with spot metering to get the details out correctly, but at the cost of washing out rest of the frame in white over exposure! Well, there is a better way to take this picture and get oth the background scene as well as the main subject (a mainly black body) without losing the fine details. We can achive this by illuminating the elephant... I am talking about firing the flash!

Evaluative metering with Fill in Flash

As we saw, we were either losing details in the elephant or in the background. But if we fire the flash, then due to the extra light, the artwork details come out and our background scene which is very bright also comes out nice! This technique is commonly referred to as "Fill in Flash" as the Flash is used to fill in the details. Compare this image with the Evaluative Metering image and you can see how the flash is filling inthe details.

This is a very simple but very effective techniques while taking pictures at Sunset or in other backlit conditions where you can't use spot metering.

Ganesh and Grandpa

2004-09-01T08:15:00.000-07:00

Here is another one of my favorite BW shot taken in Rural India. The young man in the back is "Ganesh" and the old gentleman in the foreground is his Grandpa.

Ganesh and Grandpa

Why Black and White

2004-08-19T22:26:00.000-07:00

Have you done any black and white photography yet? Or the idea of no-colors reminds you of nothing but your dad's old TV ?

Well believe me, it can be very interesting. In fact it can help you a lot on mastering the very basic skill of capturing lights and shadows. Recently there was some discussion at dslreports.com on black and white vs. color photography which made me think why should a beginner take interest in Black and White Photography? The world is so colorful and it's so wonderful to take some instant gratification about your photography simply by capturing colors with your new Digicam (see: "Colors with G5" ) . Why bother to go to Black and White ? Well, here is my take on Black and White clicking.

If we think of color photography as the generalization and black and white as a specialization of color photography where colors are toned down, then in general, the skill of photograpy has following elements

Identifying the subject
Composing the frame
Emphasizing the subject
Capturing the colors
Capturing lights, shadows, contrasts
Creating an overall pleasing (not disgusting) photograph

( I am considering technical skills like selecting proper Aperture, Shutter Speed, ISO, Depth of Field etc. as implicit to skills above )

With no offence to people who use filters to get the colors right, capturing colors is the easiest in the list for a digital photographer. In fact it is pretty much simplified to having a good camera and selecting proper white balance option on your Digicam.

The colors are there whether you take the picture or no. You are capturing them as it is, while the rest of the elements, you have to learn and master. Lights and shadows are also there even if you dont take the picture, but they may vary a lot by varying angle.

Also, Eventhough they are the easiest to capture, colors contributes a lot to the overall good feeling of a photograph according to human brain/eye. So a very simple picture of a flower may look so pleasing to a human brian/eye - simply because it is colorful - a very biological or genetic reason I guess.

Now, imagine if this easiest element is taken away from you ! Without color, a lot of emphasis will shift on lights and shadows, proper subject identification etc rest of the elements of the skill ! It will require you to be much better in rest of the elements of the skill to make a picture that can compete with a colorful pic!

I think B&W is a lot more demending in terms of photography skills and that is what attracts me. I believe every beginner should do some fun B&W photography to sharpen the rest of the skills. Without being 'distracted' by colors, you can focus a lot on lights and shadows, because that's all you've got!

I don't mean to say, a black and white picture is better or more artistic compared to color. The vibrant colors and their pleasing effect on our genetically hard coded brain can not be easily competed by a BW pic. But BW pic has to try very hard on rest of the elements of the picture to be able to compete with a colorful pic. Kinda like, if you are not the best dressed person in the party, then you better be very good at Tap Dancing or Singing or have a great sense of humour to be the center of attraction :-)

Some of my BW attempts below.

Three is company

Singapore Airport

Labor Transportation, INDIA

Profile of a Photography Enthusiast

2004-08-15T22:33:00.000-07:00

After posting "Get Out There", I was wondering, what do other photography enthusiasts do ? If not a full time photographer or art student, they must be having some other Day Job like I do. How do they maintain their hobby? Where and when do they take most of their pictures?

So I simply asked these questions to them... at Digital Imaging forum on www.DSLReports.com and got answers from about 50 different fellow hobbiests ! Take a look at this thread.

Looks like Digital Photography is making a lot of folks interested in Photography for more than simply Point and Shoot. Add your own comments too to this thread if you feel like.

Also, here is some very interesting reading on "How to be Creative", where one of the important advice given is "Keep your day Job!" :-)

Don't turn the knob...

2004-08-12T23:14:00.000-07:00

I took this picture while fooling around in the kitchen. This is another example of Macro capability of G5. Also note that the depth of field is very narrow (F2.0). Other thing I kept in mind was that the camera is not visible and the water-filter head is centered in the frame. No cropping required.

Don't turn the knob...
F2.0, 1/13 sec, ISO 50

A Candid Portrait

2004-08-11T23:10:00.000-07:00

The old and shy gentleman in the picture below is my grandpa's barber in a small town in western India. I just told him that I was about to take a picture of him and clicked! He did not get a chance to say Yes or No, and I think I captured a genuine moment of Surprize!

A Candid Portrait
F3.2, 1/50 sec, ISO Auto

I dropped my G5 !

2004-08-08T14:06:00.000-07:00

Guess What! Today, for the first time, I dropped my G5 on the ground, from waist height! No not on carpet, but on dirt road at a construction site. It slipped out of my camcorder bag - which was not closed properly - when I lifted the bag by its straps!

Well, all is well and it has survived the Crash! I even took some snaps right after the incident wihout a problem. Althought I am less concerned now, but the sight of a $500+ digital camera dropping and tumbling on a construction site was REALLY SCARRY!

Gotta be more careful now.

Get out there

2004-08-06T22:13:00.000-07:00

If you are a photohead with a lot of time to click around everyday, feel Good for yourself, because the rest of us are trapped in our cubicles at our day jobs. Here is an attempt to satisfy the photohead inside me during lunch hour today.

Get out there

Canon G5, Av Mode, F6.3, 1/40 sec, ISO 50

The F Number - Demystified

2004-07-31T19:09:00.000-07:00

In any camera that allows you to have control over aperture, the aperture setting is done using what is referred to as F stops. For example, in my Canon G5, the F stops are as follows.

2.0, 2.2, 2.5, 2.8, 3.2, 3.5, 4.0, 4.5, 5.0, 5.6, 6.3, 7.1, 8.0

What this means is, I can set the Aperture on my Canon G5 to any of these values. So what does it mean to set the aperture to F2.0 or F4.5 etc ? Every newbie, faces some confusions with these F numbers.

They don't seem to follow a linear series like 1, 2, 3, 4
Notation keeps varying like f/2.0 or F2.0.
The number is supposed to indicate a value of Aperture but there is no "A" in the notation!
Any time there is a discussion about increasing or decreasing aperture, people don't use these numbers. They talk about "stops", like move up 1 stop or move down half a stop etc.

So what's up with this numbers ? The concept behind these number is not that complicated, but the notations and varying terminology to describe the same thing leaves some room to explain.

Aperture is the size of the opening that lets light in to be exposed on your CCD or film. To control the amount of light that is exposed, you vary the size of the Aperture, i.e. the area of the opening. To reduce the amount of light entering by half, the aperture area can be reduced to half. When the aperture is reduced to half the size, than that is called one full stop reduction of aperture area. Similarly when the aperture i.e. the area of the opening is doubled, that is called one full stop increment of aperture area. Let's say the maximum opening of aperture is the zero stop and we keep reducing the aperture from there, each time reducing the area by half i.e. by one full stop. In the figure below, the circles on the left show what the area would look like from zero stop to 5 stops. On the right is a graph, showing how diameter changes as we reduce area by half with each stop.

If you are technical or if you remember your geometry class, you can figure out that, to reduce the area to half (divide by 2), the diameter of the circle must be divided by square-root of 2 = 1.41421356.

Now in any cameras, if we had to deal with measurements of the diameter to control the aperture, it would be impractical to operate. So instead of actual dimension, the diameter is noted as a fraction of focal length f of the lens of the camera. So let's say maximum diameter of aperture is equal to half of the focal length, then this diameter is noted as f/2.0.

Next, let's say we want to move to next stop, then
the diameter of aperture at next stop = f/2.0 *1/1.41421356 = f/2.82842.
Similarly as we continue to next stops, we see the diameter as indicated by following series.

stop 0 = f/2.00000
stop 1 = f/2.82842
stop 2 = f/4.00000
stop 3 = f/5.65685
stop 4 = f/8.00000
stop 5 = f/11.31370
stop 6 = f/16.00000
stop 7 = f/22.62741
stop 8 = f/32.00000

The F number that you see on your dial or on your LCD when you play around with Aperture is this divider. However, in any camera, having aperture values at full stop intervals only is not enough. One would definitely want to have finer level of control over aperture than just double the light coming in or reduce it by half. That's why most of the cameras provide aperture values at half stops or 1/3 stops. You can imagine intermediate values of diameter at 1/2 or 1/3 positions between various full stop positions on the STOPS graph above.

In case of half stops, between each consecutive full stop aperture values, there will be one more value which is derived by dividing the bigger diameter by fourth root of 2 = 1.1892071 . Another thing worth note over here is that each move to next F number reduces the amount of light to about 71% (70.71% to be precise) of previous setting. So moving twise reduces the light to 0.7071*0.7071 =0.5 = 50% = full stop as desired.

We are more interested in one third stops because that is what G5 has.

In case of one third stop intermediate aperture values, each time next diameter is derived by dividing previous diameter by sixth root of 2 = 1.1224620

With that formula, the series you'll get is...

f/2.00000 = stop 0
f/2.24492 = stop 0 + 1/3
f/2.51984 = stop 0 + 2/3
f/2.82842 = stop 1
f/3.17480 = stop 1 + 1/3
f/3.56359 = stop 1 + 2/3
f/4.00000 = stop 2
f/4.48984 = stop 2 + 1/3
f/5.03968 = stop 2 + 2/3
f/5.65685 = stop 3
f/6.34960 = stop 3 + 1/3
f/7.12718 = stop 3 + 2/3
f/8.00000 = stop 4

As you can see below, this is what canon G5 offers.

2.0, 2.2, 2.5, 2.8, 3.2, 3.5, 4.0, 4.5, 5.0, 5.6, 6.3, 7.1, 8.0

In this case, each time you move to next F number in aperture setting, the amount of light reduces to approximately 80% (79.37% to be precise) of the previous setting. This way after three moves, the amount of light reduces to 0.7937 * 0.7937 * 0.7937 = 0.5 = 50% or full stop as desired.

Things to remember about Aperture setting and F number

F number is an indicator of aperture of camera, it denotes the diameter of the aperture as a fraction of the focal length of the lens.
F2.0 or f/2.0 means the same thing, they are just different notations.
Smaller F number means larger aperture = more light.
Larger F number = smaller aperture = less light.
Moving one full stop to a higher F number reduces the light to half and moving one full F stop to lower number means doubling the amount of light.
If your camera provides 1/3 stops, then to move a full stop will require moving to the third number in the series. Similarly, if your camera provides 1/2 stops you will have to move two numbers in the series, to move a full stop.
For example, in G5 a move from F2.0 to F2.8 is a full stop and reduce the light by half. But a move from F2.2 to F3.2 or F2.5 to F3.5 is also a full stop and reduces the light by half.
1/2 stop movement reduces the light to 71%
1/3 stop movement reduces the light to 80%

"Hope and Confidence"

2004-07-31T01:55:00.000-07:00

Here are a couple of shots of a monument named "Hope and Conidence" in front of the hospital I visited this week.

Here is a different crop of the same subject.

Car Show !

2004-07-21T22:22:00.000-07:00

Today evening, I came across a local Car show just by chance. Lucky I had G5 with me. So I tried some photography in low light of the evening.

F2.0, 1/15 sec, ISO 50

The first one came out nice. I did not have a tripod with me. In aperture priority, I opened full aperture F2.0 for maximum light. I did not move ISO from 50. And just tried this shot 1/15 sec to see if I could handle it. Lucky, it came out nice.

I did not want to take chances again so settled the camera on a Fire Plug and shot this second one.

F2.8, 1/8 sec, ISO 50

The fire plug was a bit far, so I had to zoom in. But zoom reduces the limit on Maximum Aperture, so now I was limited at F2.8 instead of F2.0. To compensate for that I could have upped the ISO, but that invites the noise. Instead, with the stability of fire post, longer shutter time was not an issue, so I kept it in Aperture priority and shot is at 1/8 sec. Not bad ! :-)

For the rest of the pictures, I had no choice but to increase the ISO because people were all over and I could not waste time looking for a support or waiting for it to get clear. The Higher ISO brought in a lot of noise. I got rid of a lot of noise using free version of Neat Image. I have not dug deeper into its features but it works like a charm on the higher ISO noise. I still prefer to avoid the noise in the exposure.

Even at ISO 400 and F2.0, the shutter speed was slow at 1/30 or 1/40. This limited the number of pictures that came out unshaken :-( Even some of these you see below were shaken but don't look that blurred here due to loss of resolution.

Check "Lessons Learned" at the bottom.

F2.2, 1/40 sec, ISO 400

F2.0, 1/30 sec, ISO 400

F3.0, 1/30 sec, ISO 400

F2.0, 1/40 sec, ISO 400

F4.0 , 1/6 sec, ISO 200

Lessons Learned

Once again, I wish I had a tripod or monopod with me. It wouldn't hurt to keep an extra cheap tripod in the trunk of the car (I'm still amateur you see...)
In some of the shots I tried to stabilize the camera by pulling the camera away from me with the strap tightened around my neck. This did help in some cases but not always.
Couple of times I tried to stabilize the camera by pulling the camera away from me but towards the ground to get an angle closer to horizontal. This required the LCD to be flipped on the side and face upwards toward me. It was so inconvenient with the strap coming in the way, reminding me once again how much I dislike sideway flipout of G5. (See "What I like/don't like about Canon G5")

Depth of Field - the Third Dimension

2004-07-18T01:57:00.000-07:00

If you have done only Point and shoot photography so far, then most probably you are not familiar with the term Depth of Field. Why ? I guess for the same reason why you may not know much about Tax laws - you didn't have any control over it! :-)

Take a look at the picture below.

Everything from the face of the angel figure to the basket-ball net is captured with good to reasonable sharpness. This is because, everything in the frame is within a range of distance where camera can capture it with sharpness acceptable to human eye. The actual point of the focus of the camera is somewhere in-between this range. This range is called the "Depth of Field".

Depth of Field is a the range of distance from camera defined such that all the objects at a distance from camera within this range are captured with acceptable sharpness. Objects outside this zone appear blurred.

What is acceptable sharpness may depend on what is the desired magnification of the final media where the image will be reproduced. But there are no standard boundaries demarking the depth of field.

The reason why we see most of the things clearly captured in point and shoot camera is because their depth of field is very large - typically starting from 5ft and upto infinite distance. Moreover, this depth of field is fixed for point and shoot camera.

A Prosumer camera is different. It gives you power of changing the Depth of Field, you can move it closer or farther and you can also change its thickness. First let's take a look at the effect of manipulating the Depth of Field.

F8.0 , 1/13 sec

In the first picture, the angel is sharp, the background is out of focus yet objects are recognizable. Now compare it with the picture below.

F2.8 , 1/100 sec (rollover the image to see the difference)

In the second picture, the angel looks almost same but the background is completely blurred! In fact it makes the angel stand out a lot more than the picture before. Everything else is pretty much same.

In both the pictures, the point of focus is anchored at the same place - the angel - the subject, where it should be. What is different is the depth of field (DOF).

With proper framing you are deciding what you want to capture in terms of width and height of the field in front of you. But with Depth of Field you are deciding the range of distance from the camera that you want to capture clearly. In that sense, it's the Third Dimension of your Frame. Anything that is acceptably sharp is "in-frame" and anything that is blurred is "out-of-frame" in the sense of Third Dimension of Frame.

You play with this third dimension with two parameters to get the desired result. Aperture and Focus

Focus: The focus distance or point of focus is sort of an Anchor Point for the Depth of Field. Everything at this distance appears with crisp sharpness. Your Subject should be at this distance. Other objects closer than this point or farther than this point will appear with varying degree of sharpness depending on your chosen DOF. What are the boundary points of the depth of field is a highly debated topic because there are no hard boundaries. It all depends on what is acceptable in the final media.

Aperture: Once you have anchored the focus, you can manipulate the depth of field by changing the Aperture Value - the size of opening that lets in the light on your CCD. The Aperture is measured in F numbers. The main difference between the two pictures above is the Aperture. The first one is captured with an Aperture measured as F8.0 (smallest opening in G5) while the second is with F2.8 (largest opening allowed with full zoom in G5). It sounds a bit confusing that larger number represents smaller aperture, but more on that later.

If you choose a large Aperture (small F number), depth of Field will be very narrow. This causes most of the objects in front of the focus point and behind the focus point to be blurred out. This is very suitable for Portrait Photography, as it makes the subject stand out very well. In the drawing below, a darkness of shade represents sharpness at that distance. Darker the shade, more sharp the object will be at that distance.

Narrow depth of field

Another example of very narrow Depth of Field is the macro shots of a wine glass I posted earlier. You can see that even the front part of the base of the glass is blurred out as it is too close.

If you choose a small Aperture (large F number), depth of Field will be very wide. This is suitable for landscape photography on your site seeing vacation. Everything from the nearest tree to the farthest mountain will be sharp.

Wide depth of field

Below is another example of wide depth of field. As you can see everything from nearest flower to the farthest mountain is captured with acceptable sharpness.

F8.0, 1/200 sec

The easiest way to play with depth of field is to use your camera in Aperture Priority Mode. In this mode, as you modify the Aperture value, the camera will take care changing the shutter speed in such a way that your CCD gets right amount of exposure (Read Earlier Post : Cooking and Photography. Also, note the shutter speed in the examples in this post)

The side effects: So what else you have to do to make sure you don't mess up anything else in your picture?

If you are using large depth of field = low aperture = small opening = large F number, make sure that your picture gets enough light for proper exposure. If u are using Aperture Priority Mode, Camera take care of this. If you are using manual mode, you will have to decrease shutter speed or increase ISO sensitivity.
Similarly if you are using a narrow depth of field = large aperture = large opening = small F number, you have to worry about overexposure. In Manual Mode, increase Shutter Speed, or decrease ISO Sensitivity. Sometimes this may not be enough, e.g. If you are trying to take a picture of a white flower in bright sunlight with very narrow depth of Field. In that case, you will have to use an external Neutral Density Filter, to reduce the intensity of the light. I use G5's built-in ND filer feature.
If camera selected the shutter speed for you, you still need to take a note of it and decide if you will be able to hold the camera still for that long. Anything below 1/60 or 1/80 seconds should be shot with a tripod or other support.

So far, I have only played with the extremes of depth of field for portrait and landscape photography. However, in Macro photography, a proper selection of depth of field becomes more important as the distance differences between various objects are very small and with macro lenses and filters, the depth of field becomes very narrow.

A couple of Macro Shots

2004-07-17T11:44:00.000-07:00

I took this macro shots recently at a restaurant. Canon G5 has a macro mode that allows you to focus on objects as close as 2.0 inch. When in macro mode, autofocus looks for the nearest object to focus. Click on the image to see it in higher resolution.

I wish I had moved that menu out of the frame before taking the photo.

The Rule of Thirds

2004-07-15T21:46:00.000-07:00

In Photography, there is this very famous rule that is preached a lot to the beginners. It's called "The Rule of Thirds".

Hmm... What it is this rule about? Well, in California, The Rule of Thirds means

"Whatever Money you make every month, is divided into Three pieces

First piece is taken away by the Government
Second piece is taken away by your landlord or the mortgage company
And the remaining piece, is shared by you, your spouse and kids."

Just Kidding, :-)

Rule of third is actually about how to position your subject in the picture. Actually it's not even a rule, it's rather a guideline for making reasonably framed pictures.

As there is no "Official Text", here is my version.

"Whenever appropriate, place your subject at one third distance from the edges of your frame."

Take a look at the picture below.

In this picture, the subject - the bikes - is placed in the middle of the frame, little bit off the center. The picture looks OK. Now compare this with the picture below.

The bikes are placed in one corner, centered approximately at one third height from bottom and one third width from right. The picture looks framed better then the first one.

Here is another example.

Below is the same scene, framed again with The Rule of Thirds in consideration.

Main contrast between the two pictures is the fact that, the first picture puts all the emphasis on the surfer by putting him in the middle, while the second picture puts almost equal emphasis on the surfer as well as his surrounding. It also puts emphasis on the direction of his movement and makes it look like the surfer has just entered the frame from the left side.

Another thing worth note here is that the frame is divided horizontally in almost equal parts by water, land and the background of mountains, making it very symmetric.

It does not make sense to try to use The Rule of Thirds for every picture. However, so far I have found that, in any frame where in addition to the subject, you also want to capture an essential property of the surrounding, the rule of third can be used very naturally to create a balance between the subject and the surrounding. For example, the example above shows the beauty of the lake side as well as includes the surfer in harmony with it.

Here are a few more examples.

At the Pier, San Francisco, California

All Terrain Vehicle, Rural India

Waiting for the Spring, Mountain View, California

LCD - Looks Can-be Deceiving

2004-07-13T23:47:00.000-07:00

A great many amature digital photgraphers have been disappointed many times by the little screen on their digital camera called the LCD - Liquid Crystal Display. The inclusion of LCD brings a very important advantage of SLR - Single Lens Reflex Cemara to your Digital Camera. What you see in the LCD is exactly what will be exposed on the CCD. Just like in an SLR where what you see in view finder is what is exposed on the film through main lens. This is very important for accuracy of framing. It is different from a point and shoot film camera where what you see in viewfinder is from a separate lens. However, LCD has a big drawback. It's resolution.

Take a look at this shot I snapped in rural India. This is an approximation of what the Image would look like on the LCD Screen of Canon G5.

At first sight it looks fine and sharp. Now click on the image to open the full size picture. Surprize ! It is all blurred ! So what happend ?

Well, I was in aperture priority mode, I didn't want to use flash or higher sensitivity (higher ISO), there was not enough light, so camera suggested a shutter speed slower then 1/60, I did not use the tripod, and my hand shook while taking the picture. And that's not the worst thing. The worst matter is I did not realize this mistake until I got the picture downloaded on the PC. Deceived by LCD, You go home feeling great about your pics and when you open'em up they look blurred.

The LCD window has limited resolution and there is no easy way you can tell if the picture is shaken. On the other hand, a high resolution image will have captured even your slightest shake in high resolution!

Another problem that cannot be detected easily on LCD is those Out-oF-Focus pictures. OFFs happen especially in follwoing cases

Low Light : You used autofocus in low light.
Far Focused : Someone took a picture of yourself and a friend at a close distance but the focus was on something else at further distnace visible between the heads of you two.
Near Focused : You took a picture of objects behind a fence or a glass window. But you got the glass window or the fence in clear focus and everything else blurred.

All of these problems can be avoided by using Manual Focus mode (MF button in G5) Although MF allows you to select the focus distance, you still use the LCD for making sure that the subject is in proper focus. In G5, part of the LCD screen shows a magnified view to help with Manual focus.

Another way to avoid OFFs is use lower aperture (higher F value). This increases the depth of field - the range of distance from camera in which everything is captured in focus.

Lessons Learned - How to avoid taking blurry pictures with your Digital Camera ?

Don't trust your hands : You are human, not a robot. If you are going to take pictures at speed slower than 1/60, please make sure your camera is stable. Use a support level. Tripod is the best defence.
Don't trust the AutoFocus : Watch out for a fense or other near by objects that may grab the attention of AutoFocus. Make sure that your subject is focused properly. Use Manual Focus when in doubt.
Don't trust the LCD : That's right Looks Can-be Deceiving. Preview your image and Zoom in on the LCD if you can detect any shake or focus problem.
Take a second pic : Snap it again when in doubt. Be more careful in the next shot.
Use Focus Bracketing : If it is really tough to tell if you have got the subject in focus or not, then the best way to go is to use the Focus Bracketing mode of your camera if it provides one. In this mode, the camera takes more than one pictures with focus set at varying distance. G5 takes 3 pictures, one at selected focus point, one focused at a shorter distance and one focused little further. Chances are that you will get at least one of them right. This mode can't help you with Camera Shake though.
Find the right balance : You can increase the depth of field by reducing the Aperture, but that let's in low light, so you have to go for slow shutter speed for letting enough light in. But then you run into the risk of shaking it. Alternatively u can increase the ISO speed to capture more light in short time, but in digital cameras this lead to higher noise (grainy images). Obviously Noise is something that you don't want, but you may have no choise if you are taking pictures of fast moving objects in low light ... kids running around after dinner for example. Point is, for every shot in low light, you have to decide where u want to compromize and achive the right balance of Aperture/ShutterSpeed/ISO such that you capture what is the priority in the picture : Time, Depth of Field or crisp clear no-noise quality.

I'm waiting for anti-shake technology in consumer cameras like what Sony has in their camcorders. That'd definitely save a lot of disappointments.

"It definitely looked much better than this picture!"

2004-07-10T01:46:00.000-07:00

If you are in the process of learning photography like me, it is quite possible that in past, you have taken pictures of excellent locations and settings, but once in print or on screen, the scene does not look that gorgeous or amazing! So what goes wrong in-between? In my opinion most of the time it is simply poor composition.

Take a look at this picture of the buildings near Crooked Street, San Francisco.

Subject of the picture - the buildings on crooked street - stands out. The sibject immediately grabs the viewer's attention.
The picture is very symmetric. View is nicely divided between ground, building and the sky.
All the emphasis is on the buildings. The angle of the camera and the inclusion of the slope of the street emphasizes the height of the building and its unusual location. There are no other distractions.

Obviously, this is one of my favorite shots! A very big part of why this picture looks good is because the way it has been framed.

But I have not been this lucky always. Take a look at this shot taken just a few feet away pointing towards the Alcatraz.

This picture was taken standing in the middle of the road and obviously there was a sense of urgency while taking the picture. I was trying to capture the Cable Car in the background of the sky in this shot. But I ended up getting a lot of other distracting items around it.

Well, not to worry as I have taken the picture in "Large" + "SuperFine" format :-). I can just get rid of whatever I don't like by cropping, without making big compromises in size and quality of the picture. And that's what I did.

Now

The Cable Car stands out.
The picture is symmetric.
Only distraction now is the Alcatraz, but I guess there is no way around it now.

Hmm... I'm so glad I got a 5MP camera and not a 3MP as I had planned at first !

Capturing this world in the bounds of a frame does need some special care. From what I have learned so far, it's just a matter of practice, patience, attention to details and little bit of cropping :-). So take your time and frame your picture properly. And if you are not sure, just zoom out and take a large fine quality picture, you can alway crop it later.

July 4th Fireworks

2004-07-07T22:31:00.000-07:00

This July 4th, I tried some Digital Photography of Fireworks using my Canon G5 for the first time. It was definitely very good opportunity to learn how to take pictures of fireworks. First, here are some of my favorite shots.

Flowers on the Fence F8.0, 8.0 sec, ISO 50
The Blue Eye F8.0, 4.0 sec, ISO 50	Red, White and Blue F8.0, 3.2 sec, ISO 50
Honeybees F8.0, 15.0 sec, ISO 50	Lilies F8.0, 15.0 sec, ISO 50
Rose Bouquet F8.0, 15.0 sec, ISO 50	Diamonds and Roses F8.0, 15.0 sec, ISO 50
Trees on The Beach F8.0, 4.0 sec, ISO 50

It was overall a very satisfactory experience. Myself and a couple of other friends were all set with our cameras and tripods 1/2 an hour before the show started. The show lasted for about 40 minutes. We played around with various shutter speeds and apertures to get the best shot without letting it to shine too much. I took total 68 pictures and the 8 pasted above are the best of the bunch. They've beat all my expectations. So what did we learn ?... Here we go .

Lessons Learned - tips on how to take photographs of fireworks

Location, Location, Location. The location we had chosen was about a mile and half from the fireworks site. The level was excellent, with minimal obstacles in between. And the best part was, Wind was at an angle going in opposite direction. If the smoke is flowing in your direction, your pics would look like "smokeworks". Also, we hardly had to change the angle of the tripod once set. Another important thing to remember is that, make sure there are minimum other light sources in your field of view (unless it's a spectacular city skyline that would look gorgeous in the background of your fireworks !! )
Tripod is a MUST. With long exposures (2 to 15 sec!) to capture the spectacle, Tripod is a MUST. Most of us cannot hold the camera steady for more then 1/60 second.
Go all Manual. That's right. The best way to learn is try it out. Automated modes don't teach you anything. Here are the things I set up manually.
Focus: Manual Focus set to infinite.
Control Mode: Set to Manual "M" (on my Canon G5). This allows full control over Aperture and Shutter Speed. In other words, you control how much light will be applied and for how long. Camera's Metering is completely ignored.
Aperture: Set to minimum. i.e. Maximum F number, in Canon G5 F8.0
Shutter Speed: I tried various speeds between 2 seconds and 15 seconds. Longer exposures yield very interesting results as you can already see above.
I even turned on ND Filter, a built in feature in Canon G5 that create a Filter effect that you'd typically use to decrease depth of field by widening aperture in bright sunny days without letting too much of light in. I just tried it because, I wanted to expose even less light, in order to make the pictures look finer, capture the colors better. But it helped in other unexpected way, it filtered out a lot of smoke!
Composing the Picture I'd say don't worry too much about this. Take it for granted that you are going to have to crop the image once you download it. You can't predict where a shell is going to explode. Also if you zoom in too much, you may loose part of the explosion. Best is, zoom out to reasonable field, use maximum file size and resolution, do your framing offline by cropping. You'll have this luxury only if you have large flash memories and you are at a reasonable distance from the site.
Releasing the Shutter You want to release the shutter without shaking the camera. Best way is to use the remote. That's what I did. But I missed couple of good opportunities while trying to point the remote correctly. So after that I started releasing the shutter by hand. This still didn't cause any problem, because the camera was firmly set in the tripod. Another reason why tripod is a must.
Timing the Release. Lot of the otherwise excellent shots were ruined by falling debris. Although, this can create interesting effects, best pics have minimal of such debris. That's why the best time to release the shutter is right after the sky is clear and you see new shells shooting upwards. Oh and important thing, keep your finger on the release button, but your eyes on the show, not LCD . As you won't be worrying about framing, no need to look at the LCD anyway.
"Do you have a flashlight ?" You will be asking someone else if you don't have one. And chances are that you will definitely need one if you have selected a good - dark - location, to set or check some controls of your camera. Keep a small and handy penlight with you.
Try different shutter speeds Don't stick to a 2 or 3 second exposure, try various exposures of different lengths, you are not going to overexpose the picture anyway if u have selected a dark location, a small aperture and multiple explosions don't happen at the same spot. In Canon G5, once you select Manual mode "M", you can set both shutter and aperture with a single jog dial button!
Don't try to get the "Finale" in a single long exposure It definitely will look like overexposed mess... Not pretty ! Instead, I could have taken it in multiple 1 second or smaller exposures.
Take as many shots as you can Keep a lot of flash memory loaded and take a lot of pictures, you will find some very interesting shots in it.

I guess this is it. Hopefully New Year Eve fireworks session will be even better !

UPDATE : 8/6/2004 7:00 PM

Updated Exposure information in the images posted. Also below is a size adjusted version of "Flowers on the Fence" to give a persepctive of distance. Thanks for the suggestion "J".

-Saanga

Cooking and Photography

2004-07-06T21:07:00.000-07:00

What does cooking have to do with Photography? At first thought you'd think there is not much. How about explaining the most important concept of photography using an analogy with cooking!

In any hot dish, you put the pan on the stove or in the oven, set the temperatue and heat it for some period. At the end of it, you may get the food that is cooked right and ready to eat. Or ... if you are not so good in your judgement or not that experienced, you will end up with food that is half cooked and raw or overcooked and burned.

The most important concept in photography is getting the right exposure in your picture. Exposure is basically the amount of light that you are allowing to reach your film. Getting the exposure right is very much like cooking. You allow too much of light and most of the picture will be overexposed just like food will be burned with too much of heat. On the other hand if you don't allow enough light, your picture will be underexposed just like not applying enough heat to your dish will leave it half cooked.

Now I am not a cook, but I can tell you there are so many ways to burn your food :-)

Set the temperature to higher then necessary
Leave the pan on the stove for long time
It also depends on what is that you are cooking, rice will burn faster then a lot of other foods

Any of these setting would result in more total heat applied to the food then necessary.

In Photography, there are analogous settings that if not set right, would result in an over exposed image.

Aperture : The size of the hole that opens up in your camera's main lens, that will allow the light to be exposed on the film. Just like the temperature knob on the stove would allow more or less heat, the aperture setting would let more or less light come in. If you leave it fully open you may over expose your film.
Shutter Speed : The amount of time you leave the shutter open to let the light be exposed on your film. If you leave the shutter open for time longer then necessary, it will overexpose your film, just like leaving the food on stove for long will burn it.
Film Speed : The sensitivity of the film that you are using. More sensitive film capture more light in less time compared to a less sensitive film. This is similar to using a very thin Pan that passes most of the heat to the food. It may burn your food if you are not careful.

The same things are applicable in a digital camera, except that the light will be exposed on a CCD (an electronic component that mimics the film).

Check this picture, a birthday cake, overexposed.

Now oevrexposure in the above picture may not look that obvious to newbies. But when you see the same picture in negative, you will see a burned cake ;-) !

If I can use "burned" to mean "overexposed", in the above picture, you can see that major part of top of the cake looks completely burned, you can not see any details of the surface. The sides of the cake although do show detailed texture as it is properly exposed.

[ When u look at the image in negative, it becomes so intuitive to think of overexposing an image as burning it, isn't it ? :-) ]

So start thining like a cook. Be careful not to burn your pictures! And with a good Digital Camera, you have plenty of help at hand. Let's see what I mean by that.

Cooking with a "Smart Stove"
That's right, a digital camera is like a "Smart Stove"! Imagine a stove that would not let you burn your food! Once you place your pn on the stove, it somehow figures out how much of total heat will be needed to cook it. Then it let's you select one of the two items, temperature or time.

You want your food to be ready in 5 minutes, and stove will automatically set the temperature for you.
You just turn the knob to some temperature and the stove will automatically turn off once the food is ready.

In either case, you decide one value and the stove decides the other. Now instead of rice if you put spaghetty, it may decide for a different total heat and accordingly decide different time or temperature for you. But basic idea remains the same.
So how does digital camera help in "cooking pictures without burning" ? Here is how ...

Metering: Metering is the technique used by your camera to come up with the right amount of light to allow. The camera analyzes the content of the scene (various colors and their brightness etc) and then comes up with an Exposure Value - a value that indicates total amount of light that is required for proper exposure.
Aperture Priority Mode: In this mode you select the aperture and the camera selects the shutter speed such that total light allowed is equal to the exposure value. Typically this mode is indicated in your camera's settings with a "Av" for "Aperture Value".
Shutter Priority Mode: In this mode you select the shutter speed and the camera selects the aperture such that total light allowed is equal to the exposure value. Typically this mode is indicated in your camera's settings with a "Tv" for "Time Value".

Below is a picture of the Canon G5's Control dial, showing "Av" and "Tv" modes.

Hmm... I'm wondering if there were really a product like "Smart Stove!", it'd definately save a lot of meals from buring.

Colors with G5

2004-07-05T19:08:00.000-07:00

Here are some of my favorite colorful shots with G5. Click on the Image to see full size.

Shopping for Sarees in India

Colorful Clothes hanging in Patio

"Laughing Buddha" Figure on our Dining-Table

What I like / don't like about Canon G5

2004-07-05T11:35:00.000-07:00

OK, so after a long justification for why I bought Canon G5 in the previous post, I feel I should review how that decision turned out.

What I like about Canon G5

Battery Life : I have been very happy so far. I have been able to take so many pictures in parties and site seeing without worrying about the battery. I don't even have a backup battery. But I have been lucky so far. One thing I'd caution though, If you run into the low battery signal, you will not have long time after that. So turn off the LCD and start using that viewfinder after that.
Color and Detail Reproduction : I still feel this is the strongest positive of Canon. No Complaints.
Great LCD : I had not paid much attention to this when I purchased but looks like this one has one of the finest LCDs. I keep hearing "your LCD is much better then mine" :-) !
5MP : I've many times heard "You don't need 5MP, 3MP is enough!" Well, I think that is right unless you want to be serious about photography. With Large Image Size and Super fine quality, you can get a lot out of a poorly framed picture by cropping out all the less interesting stuff. You will be amazed at how much difference proper framing can make. But you can't do framing by cropping if your picture itself is small. Can you :-) ?

Now, here are few things that I have learned to dislike after using this camera for the last few months and I think these things will play a good role in how I evaluate a camera for purchase next time.

What I don't like about Canon G5

Sideways LCD Flip-out with Strap next to it : This is my Number 1 Complaint. The sideways LCD flip-out can get tangled with the strap. Yes, you can turn the LCD 180 degrees and put it back in the camera body, facing the LCD your side and the strap won't be a problem. Still I think a vertical flip like Olympus C5060 is a much better design.
Function settings are different for each mode : Function settings, i.e. the things that you set using the FUNC button, like Image Size, Image Quality, Effects, ISO Speed etc. are stored separately for each mode. Why is this a problem ? Let's say you are taking pictures in Aperture Priority Mode and you set the size to Large "L" and quality to Super Fine "S". Then if you decide to take a picture in Shutter priority, Your Image settings have to be set again to L and S. Otherwise you will end up taking pictures with size and quality you had used in Shutter Priority mode last time. There is no "Global Setting".
Slow Autofocus in low light : I did not have this complaint until I saw a friend's olympus. In low light, the lens motor keeps moving looking for proper focus and it can easily take 2 to 5 seconds to set the autofocus. I wish it were faster like the Olympus.

Why I chose Canon Powershot G5

2004-07-04T19:10:00.000-07:00

Buying a Digital Camera can be quite overwhelming, there are so many good brands, models and so many features to evaluate. I bought my first digital Camera in November 2003 before I leave for a long trip in December. After a lot of research and reviews I zeroed in on Canon G5. And I have no regrets.

Here is why I chose Canon Powershot G5.

I wanted to stick to $300, 3 MP, compact body. The Choices were,

Canon A70
Nikon Coolpix 3100
Sony DCP72/92

I chose canon for the colors. On reading reviews and images, I liked canon's color reproduction better. Then A Friend introduced me to E18 problem in Canon. (Many of Canon A70 models were having this problem, where the LCD will simply display "E18" error code in red and the camera will not work.)

I was almost going to get it anyways but searched one more time for existing users experience (not reviews on Amazon) in user forums... Found detailed threads on E18 :-( So dropped the plan for canon A70 entirely and started considering Nikon/Sony. Could not decide for a while, so had think what I really really want.

The reason for staying at $300 was not necessarily because I think spending more money in camera was waste, but because I didn't want to spend more until I get something that gives me more control like an SLR (which are expensive right now). I've always been interested in photography for more then point and shoot, bought an SLR too, but found it hard to learn, was not willing to waste/justify a lot of "trial and experiment" film. So I was thinking lets get whatever I can for now and when prices go down I'll go higher model.

Another important thing to me was color reproduction. This is very subjective and may differ person to person like taste of tongue. I liked canon. Knowing that made it very difficult to switch brand. I
think their DiG!c processor really makes difference. So I decided I just want to go for Canon, if not A70, I'll higher my budget and see what else is next.

Next was Canon S45 (4MP)
and then was Canon S50 (5MP)

Although these cameras are good, they are kind of in the middle. They are compact like point and shoot but not as feature rich as SLR.

So I ended up looking one more step up to see what additional feature are available at higher levels, which brings me to G series.

There was Powershot G3 (4MP, discontinued now but widely installed user base) and Powershot G5 (5MP introduced in summer 2003).

What I realized I was looking at a point and shoot like camera with SLR type capabilities. So I had to reconsider, why I wanted to go for SLR. Well, obviously to learn photography by learning control over light (Aperture/Exposure/ShutterSpeed). On comparing G5 with my Film SLR, I found that almost all the controls were included in G5 for which I wanted to buy an SLR.

This new category is called Prosumer Cameras. Basically it is top end Non-SLR cameras.

I had decided for Canon earlier, and I was already looking at Prosumer cameras. The questions was their prices will come down too ... Why spend more now? After looking at the G5 features, I think
It looked like I will have enough learning for this guy itself. And if I am going on a long vacation, might as well spend money now then later for a good camera.

Then again that Canon G5/Sony V1/Nikon 5400 confusion started. These are all 4x, 5MP cameras. DPReview has "highly recommended" the other two while G5 is only "recommended". So I again had to consider the brands. I simply went to dpreview.com and read all the three detailed reviews one by one. Also read almost all the definitions of what those specs meant.

Here are the main points I considered. There are other differences that were not important to me.

Sony V1

Very low noise .. for any ISO setting.
Small and sleek compared to the other two
The famous Carl Zies lens (but not as wide aperture as Canon .. wider aperture = more light)
Worst battery life of the three (almost half of Canon G5).
Uses Memory sticks which are relatively expensive.
Price lower then G5 by $100. Lighter in weight compared to the others.
USB 2.0 connectivity
No flip out LCD
Fast in media access

Nikon 5400

Relatively lower noise at higher ISO compared to G5 but higher then Sony.
Better zoom. More steps.
Wide angle (28mm) compared to the other too (35mm).
Battery life not as good as G5 but better then Sony.
lens specs about same as Sony. Battery life also between Canon and Sony.
Best performance in chromatic scenes, i.e. pictures where there are bright sharp lights or a lot of stainless steel like stuff.
USB 1.1 connectivity.
Flipout LCD

Canon G5

Again, best color reproduction.
Finest details in picture.
Best battery life, way ahead of the other too.
Very wide aperture lens (F2.0 at wide angle).
High noise at higher ISOs, High purple fringing at wider aperture.
Heavy and bulky compared to other two..
Oh and of course the wireless remote control for playback or timer shot shutter release.
USB 1.1 connectivity.
Flipout LCD.
You can see lens barrel in viewfinder !(I couldn't believe it at first!)

As you can see there was a no perfect camera here. And in any direction, there were compromises to make. So again I got back to what is important to me. Color reproduction, Fine details. But then,
I end up with a bulky camera. Also the concern about noise at higher ISOs.

Here is what I finally filtered out for me.

Sony V1
Reasons to buy : Very slick, very compact, very low noise.
Reasons Not to buy : Very low battery life, media is relatively expensive, No flipout LCD

Nikon 5400
Reasons to buy : best overall balance of all the features, wider angle
Reasons not to buy : low battery life, slowest in media access

Canon G5
Reasons to Buy : best colors and details, really good battery life
Reasons not to buy : purple fringing, noise, can see lens barrel in viewfinder

(As you can see, I did not pay much importance to the preset modes etc. There are other things too that were not important to me.)

Here are the counter points.

Well, I had to drop the compactness criteria in favor of colors, which is what the camera is for. It was not a consumer camera anyway, it was the next category where I guess being bigger is normal. Sony is always great at miniaturization, but that is not the norm. Also I read some people complaining about small size not being good for grip (5MP magnifies your shakes also ... got to be even more stable).
Regarding noise, well, I am not going to take all my pics at higher ISOs. For those late night pics, you can always decrease the shutter aperture. Also, on further reading I realized that there are ways
around it using photoshop etc if you really really want to do it and have time.
Next issue was the purple fringing. You will see purple area around very bright lights. The workaround is reduce the aperture and decrease the shutter speed. The only time this will not work is if you want to take a picture of a fast moving object at low lights no flash... well, how often do we do that anyways.. in those cases, you have to live with some purple fringing. It will bother purists more then anyone else, so I think I am OK with that as an amateur.
Last one, the lens barrel, I thought I'll have to use viewfinder to take picture only when running very low on battery. But again Canon has the best battery life of all.

So, finally I decided for G5 :-). I don't think I'll buy an SLR in near future.

New Blogger

2004-07-04T18:34:00.000-07:00

Hmm... so being a new blogger, I was wondering what should I start blogging about. Well, I'v been using a new Digital Camera - Canon G5 - for over 7 months now and have been taking a lot of pictures. So thought may be that would be fun to write about! So here we go ... !