i candy

The craze that is Apple iphone

and Introducing Samsung's latest attempt at dethroning the above reigning champion:

Samsung Galaxy SII

Notice any striking similarities? The silver bevel? The four all too familiar icons? The sole home button?

All photographs shot with Sony A200 dSLR with 50mm prime lens. DIY Thermocol whitebox used.

Purge

The first comment on youtube says it all:

" It's like arriving on a new planet "

Presenting Deuxentun by Recue

Happy Monday!

There was a great treat at the cafeteria too where our newbie team arranged for a delicious chocolate cake!

One Big Thank you to all my new friends at work!

Especially(in alphabetic order) Nadia, Pankhuri, Raghu, Sonal, Shreeja and Tejasvi!

V meet again!

Last year on June 25, I posted a single article on my blog and it wasn't very cheery. It is my pleasure to announce.. it was very different this year.

A friend suggested I make my blogs shorter and easy to read... so this is an attempt at an all new type of blog post: using more pictures and less text.

After a hiatus of about an year or so Atir, Juber, Praveen and I met yesterday and what fun it was. Below are a few pics with little subtitles which should give a brief outline of the whole story!

Note: Pics may be bandwidth heavy.

Brand new (b)day

Tears in rain

Roy Batty's last words in Blade Runner will remain one of my favorite movie quotes forever. I was browsing through my old images when I came across this photo: Drops of rain frozen in motion... the soft rectangular streaks and the hazy bokeh are a beautiful sight. Just what I had in mind for a poster with the quote:

Being social

My stomach churned when I saw that picture.
An image of a half dismembered body sandwiched between the wheels of a truck...
blood spewed all over...the face a mutilated mess. I almost threw up.

Some demented soul thought it wise to share it on his fb profile and push the final nail in denying the dead man some dignity. I'm sometimes confronted with imagery so lewd, I dash for that power button, lest someone see it from behind my shoulder. My current fb account has fortunately been spared from stuff like this but another account I created just for my college "friends" has seen it's fair share of garbage.

I came across one yesterday and promptly reported it. The procedure's quite easy and there's no risk of retaliation at all. Helps get scum off Facebook.


SomeDude answered a question about you. click here to find out.
SomeGirl thinks you're cool. Click here to find out.

I hate facebook apps like the plague. Save for a handful of good apps(which I still never use) every application out there violates privacy by either invading my walls, my friend lists or worse asking my friends some pretty embarrassing stuff!!

And don't get me started on *beep*ville requests.
Rules of etiquette apply everywhere. Social media is a big thing now...and it helps to learn a rule or two about interacting online.

Now since this is not a "better living" site... I'll try and list a few things which I think count as etiquette...things I stick to:


- I don't stalk profiles and pounce on them in fb IM everytime they're online.Just like in real life... I speak only when spoken to.

- I wish people on their birthdays.. and no, my upcoming birthday has nothing to do with it.

- and I reply with a thank you when wished. My ego is not so up in the stratosphere to acknowledge wishes with a mere shrug.

- I hate chatting on IM, but when it does come down to chatting... I try to keep it brief. And when I have to leave suddenly I make it a point to ask for permission, write a couple more lines before signing out.

- I don't tag people in images of tiny little hamsters, zoozoos or colors. I don't tag people to get their attention to my images(explains the low comment count btw).

- I don't send friend requests to people who I haven't met personally. Goes without saying, I don't accept friend requests either. Profiles are aplenty of girls looking their cute best and gullible fools fall head over heals sending add requests. They fail to see the little watermark on the girl's profile picture that says goto bollywoodwallpapers.com for more

- how do you keep a good relationship going? You keep in touch. I have about a hundred contacts on my list who never comment, who're never online and worse...never respond to messages.


This is just my two cents on what I think will take a book or two to document.

Bokeh Test

I have 4 new(old is the right word) Minolta lenses and I've used them in various situations- indoors, outdoors, landscapes and such. But I never really tested the bokeh.

Wikipedia defines bokeh as "the way the lens renders out-of-focus points of light "

Normal folk call like us call them "those soft beautiful things in the background!"

It's a given that only the best lenses in the business can make good bokeh(read Zeiss). I took my lenses for a spin today under a dark but windy sky shooting a set of decoration lights on the adjacent building. A tree squarely in the middle ruined it for me and I ended up getting very little light for photographs. The results are ok though.

Camera settings:

ISO 400
Aperture priority mode 2.8-5.6
Auto white balance



I started with the primes and then to telephoto.

The 50mm prime, as expected gives the best bokeh -usually called "creamy" by critics. There is no halo or dark ring and the colors look great. The images are unedited with no adjustments made to levels or color balance. I like the second image the most.

The 28mm prime fare well too with not too apparent halos around edges. My only gripe here is the lack of light. If only I'd moved to a nearby building...

This is a great lens but bokeh is not one of it's strong points. The dark rings are apparent and noise is an issue too

It's the same case with the 28-100mm too. The rings are annoying and the noise too much. Have to admit though..... all the images look great at thumbnail size :-p