Tech Info: Single exposure using Nikon D300s with 50 mm prime reverse mounted, ISO 200, f/5.6 for 1/125 sec. YN467 placed camera right and fired with 1/8 of its full power
 
Last week I was busy with office work and starting this weekend, I’m stuck with moving. Right now I”m going through the pain of packing and unpacking. Even with this hectic schedule, somehow I’m able to squeeze some time for my hobby, thus making this “move” to the new house a smooth sail.
Continue reading “A Rusty Screw” →

Yes thats right! I’m saying bye bye to blogger. Its been some years that I’ve been using blogger and the experience was getting worse (more recently). It was time I did something about it.  Either I had to get into learning CSS to tweak the template to my liking or change the platform. Learning CSS would have been a nice thing to do, but I’ve found out (again) that trying to force myself to learn something which I don’t like have no interest in, is very very difficult.

So I’ve moved the site to wordpress with a theme which I actually like; its plain, simple and has lots of options in the vanilla flavor. I didn’t have to write a single line of code to get any of them working. Its really that good. I had given this a shot sometime back, but never used to like the fact that wordpress displays a preview of any hyperlinks . It used to annoy me. Seems like they don’t do it anymore. So that was enough to get me moved over here.

The default options (read as free) from wordpress is pretty good. Here are some of the main ones:

• The site is mobile friendly
• A lot of widgets and are pretty easy to configure
• The theme doesn’t alter the formatting of posts (at least this one)
• Easy integration with google apps (technically I got to wait another 36hrs before I say this, but I don’t expect any problems)

Couple of things which I wish were different:

• The site displays ads. I wanted to keep this site add-free and in order to do it over here, they charge $$. So I’ve no choice at the moment for it, unless I decide to pay to make it add-free.
• To add a custom domain to the blog, I got to pay $$ for it. Since a lot of my readers are used to my domain name, I’m keeping it.

Hopefully this should stay for some time.

Let me know how you guys feel about it.

Flickr has a tool called as camera finder which aids a lot of people in research for buying cameras. The page also displays some interesting shots taken from the camera model you have selected. Guess what, one of my night shots appear on that page 🙂 I got to know about this from a friend who was using that page for his research on Nikon D300s.

To view, go to Flickr: Camera Finder: Nikon : D300s and select “Night” from the drop-down list box for Now Showing and you should see my pic 🙂

…yeah, I know…was in a bragging mode today and a little bit of that is ok for general health 🙂

View On Black

I’m all excited about the upcoming trip to yellowstone. This is the second time I’m going out there. The first time was in 2008 and in peak summer. This time the weather is just turning into winter and I’ll get to see a different view of the park.

I wanted to try something different, so rented a 105mm macro lens from http://www.borrowlenses.com. I had to test the lens to make sure I get an idea on how the pictures would turn out from it. So a quick test was attempted.

Placed a champagne glass under the faucet and kept filling with water. Out of the 5 shots I attempted, this one turned out ok. The test was more to check the aperture settings that would go with this glass. I had read that macro lenses will not have the same DOF (Dept-of-field) as prime or telephoto lenses. So a test at home is better than coming back with pictures having shallow DOF 🙂

The conditions weren’t ideal for a macro shoot, but I was too eager to see how the pictures turn out. So far I’m not disappointed with it. So if my yellowstone pictures turn out bad, then I can’t blame the lens 🙂

This shot was taken the night we landed at the camp site. After pitching the tents and everybody off to sleep, I sat next to our tent with my camera setup for this. The first image has “8/8/2009 01:27:16” for its date and time and the last one was taken at “8/8/2009 02:25:36”

The final image was made from:

• Nikkor 50mm
• Aperture at F2.8
• ISO at 200
• 95 exposures, each at 30s
• Image quality was JPEG fine

This entire set was stacked using StarTrails. After the end of my shoot, I quickly flipped through the 95 images and felt that it might come out, but hadn’t expected to get it so clear.

With some success on that night, I went for it again on the second night. This time I wanted to get more open space and shoot little early to avoid the bright light from the moon…and it turned out like this

Right next to our tent was was the valley where the lake had dried up. So I took my chair and was more keen on pointing the camera towards north so that the final image would show the trails around the pole star. With my next to nothing star gazing skills (sorry Gooba, missed you there) and with the help of a compass that came with the tripod, I just pointed towards the northern direction. Similar to the first shot, this one is made up of:

• Nikkor 50mm
• Aperture at F1.8
• ISO at 200
• 175 exposures, each at 30s
• Image quality was JPEG fine

The small break in the trail was when I came back running to the tent to drink water and head back towards my spot in the valley. If only I had carried a water bottle…duh!

The major mistake I made was in assuming that I had set the focus of the lens to infinity and focal length of 18mm. In fact the lens was focused at 50mm which leaves no room for any other elements to be in the frame. Next time I need to make sure that I don’t repeat this. But this mistake hasn’t cost me much…lucky me 🙂

Though these two images doesn’t show anything in composition, it does tell me that I’m on the right track for getting the trails (technically speaking). On my next outing I need to work on putting other elements to the frame. Till then I’m just happy that I got the trails 😉

Golden Gate in B&W, originally uploaded by kaddisudhi.

Its really interesting how my mood responds to my own pictures. Since I’m at a very early stage of learning, I’m very critical of all my photos as there are way too many things that would have gone wrong, but at the time of making the shot, it would have never crossed my mind. I’m a slow learner and every picture I take gives me something to learn about it. I try to use that in the next shot I take and thats my progress. It would not be a obvious change that you’ll notice, but I’m getting there at a snail’s pace.

This photo was an exception to my usual feeling and it really turned out to be a pleasant surprise.I had totally messed up my camera settings and just hadn’t reset them back…why…I just forgot about it. I didn’t realize it until I saw this picture on the computer. The moment I looked at the photo, it just looked so …aged! and that’s what I tried to do. Just converted it to B&W with a crop and this is what I got.

What do you do when you screw up your camera settings … give it a vintage look … doesn’t work always though :-p

The bridge is about 30 miles from where I live and of course I was like ‘wow’ when I first saw the bridge. My wife was so keen to see it and for some reason or the other, I just hadn’t taken her out there. One fine day (after nearly 2 years) we decided and to make a visit and she also gave the ‘wow’ thing after seeing it.

This is one of those places which has been shot to death…of course I mean in terms of photography. Yet you’ll find many taking a shot at it. So I joined that group too…about 2 weeks back, which later turned out to be a a total disaster

Initially I was going to join some friends to a trip of the city, but finally it was just me heading out to the bridge. Seeing this pathetic state of me venturing alone at night, my wife and a family friend decided to give me company along with my 2+ year old daughter.

As I was heading near the bridge, my sheer excitement turned into disappointment after seeing the thick fog over the bridge. For a moment I thought of just heading back, but still continued towards the bridge with just one thing “There will always be something that I’ll learn from making an attempt”.

The point that could give the view I wanted is well known as Fort Baker. From its military post bunkers you can get a good view of the bridge. After parking the car all I had to do was just open the door to get another dose of disappointment; gusty winds…It was so windy that I had to put some strength to shut the car door. Seeing this wind, my wife and co decided to stay put in the car (really a wise idea) and I dared to head towards the point.

As I was walking, my mind kept telling me one thing “just hang onto the ground and don’t die!” Seriously I had never ever imagined that the winds would be so strong out there. I could barely walk and kinda crawled to the place. After reaching the point, I took my gear out, got the angle and elements I want in the composition and pretty soon realized that a cheap $20 tripod, can’t stand a chance against the winds. Though it had a hook where I can suspend some weight (used the backpack), still didn’t suffice to keep the camera steady. Add to this that I can’t keep the camera in a stable position to get my horizon right. Imagine getting a long exposure shot and soon you realize that there was a camera shake in that shot and the horizon is not straight….:(

I took quite a few shots and every single one of them had the dreaded camera shake in them. By the time I had reached home, I had made up my mind that I’m going to now buy a decent stable tripod. If there were any stores opened at that time, then I would have certainly bought it at that very moment. But now I’m more than convinced that I need one. Explaining my wife as to why I’m paying so much for a 3 legged stand would be very easy…show her these pictures 🙂

Here are two of the shots which has got the least amount of camera shake in them. Its more like the better of the worse set.

Golden Gate, originally uploaded by kaddisudhi.

…and the complete north tower of the bridge…

Golden Gate, originally uploaded by kaddisudhi.

You’ll find so many highly skilled athletes all over the world, but this short clip is really unbelievable. I picked the link from a friend’s page on facebook, but this is just too good to be true. Enjoy!

Here is a quick post to let you know the changes done to the site. As quite of you have noticed, its now called as http://www.kaddisudhi.com. Kaddi actually is a Kannada word which literally means Stick in English. This was what my friends used to call me. While registering for a domain, nothing else came to my mind other than this word and it was available too 🙂

Of course now since I’ve put on some pounds and no longer look like a Kaddi, I still turn my head if somebody calls me with that name 🙂

Here are couple of shots that I took during the weekend. I like the light reflected off buildings at sunset 🙂

Another one…