My Thoughts! - by Prakash G.R.

During the Valparai trip, if someone really enjoyed the trip to the core, it would be my daughter. Let the pictures speak:

From Priceless Expressions - 9

From Priceless Expressions - 9

From Priceless Expressions - 9

From Priceless Expressions - 9

From Priceless Expressions - 9

From Priceless Expressions - 9

From Priceless Expressions - 9

The entire set is here and direct link for slideshow.

written by Prakash G.R.

At Fiorano, with 10 hrs/day of official work timings and 6 days per week schedule, its easy to get addicted to work. For a break, guys planned for a 5 day trip to Goa last weekend, but then that got shortened to 3 days. I would have joined them, if not for the trip that I’ve planned with my family. I haven’t gone for any trips in the past few months, so I really needed an outing.

I decided it will not be a sight-seeing trip and its only meant for lazing around. Valparai sounded like a perfect place. There are lot of tea estates and many bungalows owned by them for their owners/managers guest house. It will be occupied only for few weeks in an year, so the rest of the time it will be rented out. I’ve booked a room in the Indraprastha Bungalow, a property of Waterfalls Estate.

Its around 100 kms from my house and once I go above the Aliyar Dam, the road becomes so scenic. Its been raining & drizzling. With greenish everywhere and with the mist, the travel was so good.

We couldn’t enjoy all the way till Valparai, as the Bungalow is actually 10kms before the town. The bungalow is built by the English when the ruled. There is a 100 year old pine tree which spells the age of the place.

But don’t underestimate the luxuries of the place. Its posh and well maintained. A small garden with a big lawn is the one my daughter loved the most.

Whenever it didn’t rain/drizzle, we went out for a walk inside the Tea Gardens. We even visited the Tea Factory in the evening and saw how tea is made from those leaves.

It doesn’t come cheap compared to hotels, but not as costly as a resort as well. The owners of this place are very clear that hospitality is not their business. Its both their strength and their weakness. If you want a menu card with variety of dishes or a swimming pool, perhaps its not a place for you. But for a person like me, good food (the care taker Mr Perumal is an excellent cook), nice ambiance, add with the fact that no cellphone network could reach you there, its a perfect weekend getaway to laze around.

If you want to see the entire set of pictures, its here.

written by Prakash G.R.

I saw this article from Gilli on Macro photography by reversing the lens in an SLR. I tried it yesterday. After a lots and lots of trail & errors, I got some good shots. Check this image:

This is taken with a 50mm lens in normal way. Look at the all flowers. The lens cap should give you an idea about the size of those flowers. Now in macro mode, the same flowers:

If you have enough bandwidth, here is the high resolution full screen slide show (The pictures look much better in high resolution).

A brief guide on Reverse lens macro photography:

• First things first - the object. First I tried with some plain flowers and the results were not reflecting in the efforts. It was just like a normal photograph. So select an object which will have lot of details when zoomed in
• Take off your lens, reverse it and hold it to the mount. Keep the other end of the lens some 10-20 cms away from the object and try to move your lens+camera together towards the object. At some point you will find the object focussed. From there you can adjust the focus from your lens
• Remember, the lens is out of its mount. You don’t have any control over any of the lens functions. The aperture is wide open and no auto focus
• You retain full control of your sensor. So Whitebalance/ISO are adjustable. Also the shutter speed. Change these settings with the fully open aperture in mind.
• The DOF is too good. The focusable area is hardly one or two millimeters
• Any small movement (either camera/object) will cause dramatic effects in the picture. You would have seen in the above shots itself
• Try to get hold of a tripod and/or a reverse adapter. Believe me. Its a pain in your back to shoot without them
• Patience. You need a lot of patience. But the results will be worthy of the time you spent experimenting.

written by Prakash G.R.

Yesterday when I came out of Bangalore Airport, I saw a big advertisement for a residential apartment. It said about a free gift with every purchase and a jackpot prize for one person.  What’s surprising in that - you ask. Well the free gift is a brand new BMW Car and the jackpot prize is a personal jet or a private island! I was about to fall down and then read the whole advertisement. The ad was by Damac and property is in Dubai. Hmmm, Ok. Bangaloer is real estate prices are under controlor is it that Bangalore people decided that the prices here are too high and started investing in “cheaper” ones like these?

I had my camera with me and took few snaps in the return journey. While my flight was waiting to enter the runway, another flight was landing. With the evening sun in the backdrop it came out as a nice snap. Check it out

written by Prakash G.R.

A snap that I took two weeks back in Chennai. It got me quite a lot of good comments. One of my friend pinged me and said that he had this as his desktop wallpaper, so thought its worthy enough to post it here

written by Prakash G.R.

I love B&W photos. Combined with a nice expression, the photos are simply superb. Here is the next set:

    

written by Prakash G.R.

Working from home has one good thing - no commuting. No traffic jam, no bumpy roads and no dusty rides. However, I’ve other type of commuting - not daily, but twice a month and sometimes every week, from Coimbatore to Bangalore. What I hate about the travel is that I’ve to wake up at 4 AM to catch the morning flight, that too on a monday morning. What I love about the travel is the return journey. The scheduled time is at 6 PM, but mostly the flight takes off at 6.30 PM. Once it goes up above the clouds, its heaven. Clear blue sky above the golden colored clouds, it a wonderful view. Every time I wish I had a camera. This time, I had. Few snaps:

written by Prakash G.R.

Digicam is fun. Don’t have to think about the aperture/speed combinations, don’t have to worry about lighting and don’t have to worry about whether the snap was find or to reshoot. Just keep taking pics. I tried in B&W mode in my D350 and the results are good. These pics are not taking in Color and converted to B & W using software. I think, if I have done so, the results won’t be this good. Will dig about this and blog later, till then the pics (with few other color photos):

written by Prakash G.R.

Yesterday I got hold of my 350D and was experimenting it. Dinesh also bought a 350D. Along with the kit lens, he also bought a 50mm Macro lens and 75-300 mm lens, lens cleaner, tripod, a nice bag. With all the gear, he looks like a very professional photographer. As he says, now only thing left is to learn photography properly

First thing we experimented was to play with the different lenses. Fixed the camera on a Tripod and tried to shoot with different zoom levels:

50 mm(the standard view):

18mm:

25mm:

34mm:

75mm:

100mm:

200mm:

300 mm:

Note how the magnification occurs. We also tried some snaps in the beach after 7 PM. The first one is with a 10 second exposure and the other two are 30 second exposures. I didn’t know how to do the rear curtain sync in the second one, so Ravi’s image is little blurred.

Coming back, uploaded the photos to Mac and tried out little post production. Without powerful software like Photoshop/Gimp and just few corrections in iPhoto can bring out some amazing effects. Checkout the photo that was taken in Muttukadu boat house - before and after changes.

Now that there is no wait time for the completion of a roll & then developing, scanning to a CD etc, hope to post more photos

written by Prakash G.R.

When I purchased my Canon K2, I got 28-90mm lens as the kit lens. One of my friend asked me what is the zoom factor, I said its 3x, he proudly claimed that he has a very normal digicam with 30x zoom, that gives 10 times magnification of my SLR. I didn’t want to spoil his enthusiasm so said “wow!” and stopped. Here is the truth about zoom and magnification.

There are two types of zooms - optical and digital. Digital zoom is very much like the zoom in your favourite photo viewing software. You can keep on zooming it, but more the zoom, less the clarity. But optical zoom is different. No matter how much zoom you do, it should have the same clarity. If your camera says 30x or even 100x zoom, beware. The optical zoom would be only 5x and the digital zoom factor will be 6x or 20x. The zoom of your digital camera is usually calculated as optical zoom * digital zoom.

Optical zoom factor of a camera/lens is the ratio between its longest and shortest focal lengths. My kit lens is 28-90 mm , makes a zoom factor of 3x. On the other hand, the newly introduced PowerShot a710 has 5.8-34.8mm, making it 6x zoom. Does that means it can magnify twice than my lens? No! If you are thinking that zoom factor defines the magnification, think again. Because the magnification has nothing to do with the zoom factor. Interestingly, 5x optical zoom in one camera may give thrice the magnification as the 5x optical zoom of some other camera!

Normal view of our eyes is equivalent to 48mm (roughly 50 mm). So if a lens says 100mm, that means it can magnify twice than your eyes can see, 200 mm is 4 times and so on. So the magnification factor of my lens would be ~2x and for the a710 it would be less than 1x. Forget magnification, it doesn’t provide you even the normal view, its a wide angle lens!

If you are going to purchase a camera don’t fall for the “100x zoom”or the “10x optical zoom” factor, look for the magnification factor. It would be less than 2x magnification. Decide wisely

written by Prakash G.R.