Film to Digital: A journey

Been dying to write this post for a while! Now that I'm a proud owner of a DSLR, I surmised I should dedicate a post to all the cameras Iused since childhood. The cover picture is pretty much everything(plus the one that clicked it!). I used a total of 6 cameras before going PRO...ehh...budget pro anyway.


Back when a camera was a dream gadget(for me) clicking pictures on film, I stared awestruck at photographers clicking away on their filmSLRs and reloading their rolls like soldiers repleininshing their magazines. I had no idea what lenses were or how the whole photography stuff worked. I'd haggle my Dad to let me take one photo...just one photo pappa.... He even taught me unloading and reloading rolls that later helped me in my School trip a decade later!

The camera: Yashica P-500. A typical rangefinder of the early 80s era, the bold red color is typical of that age too. No autofocus, no motor rewinding... just frame the picture and click the shutter. Howewer there were a couple of dials for changing ISO and ASA which Dad had told
me were for "photographing fast objects". This Yashica has the honour of taking all my Childhood Photographs.

The year was 1999 and it was my uncle's wedding, I was gleefully eager to click away with my Dad's camera. The shocker came when my Dad handed it over to an elder cousin who I was sure hadn't used one her whole life. I was heartbroken....Mom came to the rescue and bought me a brand new Kodak KB10(second from left), an ultra basic point n shooter. I spent hours playing
with it photographing mostly my grandma and uncles. Their was no motor winding in this one either and Autofocus was unknown. On our Araku trip,when Amulya ma'am handed me her camera to take a shot, she instructed me to press the shutter button half way until the
light went green. I didnt know what she meant. I pressed the button all the way doen and got the shot, It'd long before I came to know thatshot must have come out blurry...

In 2006, when digital cameras were fast becomng the norm and Dad just wouldnt hear about it, I decided to get one myself and ordered one from Indiatimes shopping. Benq DC1500, a small 1.3 mp camera which looked more like an oversized webcam. What's funnier was that the
LCD screen at the back ws 0.80 inch in size, that's smaller than an optical viewfinder on some cameras! It turned out the CMOS sensor on the cam was too noisy for my taste and before long I was looking for replacement soon enough.


Next came Benq DC2300, this was a different beast altogether. A 2 megapixel CCD sensor and a decent screen at the back and an acceptable body shape made this a winner. The Autofocus was still missing but 3-way focus selector made things easier. All my Ooty tour pics were shot with this obsolete piece of hardware(at that time). Some were so good they'd easily be mistaken for pro-camera pictures.

My dream for a performance camera was fulfilled when I bought a Panasonic LZ8 in 2008. I know a decent photography enthusiast will probably die laughing reading the last line but the truth is... being financially very very constricted... I have always settled for budget stuff. LZ8
maybe basic but it's one those rare cameras that has P, A, S and M on the control dial. And that's what matters. And who gives a 60 second shutter on a basic camera? I took numerous abstract photos as well as landscapes which recieved good praise online.

All was going well when one day my cousin commented I should get a DSLR. I was bitten and there was no stopping me...but no matter where looked the cheapest kit cost atleast 20k. the now discontinued Nikon D40 itself came at a hefty 18k price tag. Bhaiya saved the day
again and recommended a Dubai classifieds website which I scoured like crazy for weeks until I hit the Jackpot. A Sony A200 at a throwaway price. Bhaiya sent a friend over to check if the deal was genuine and had it bought. It took a full month to reach me. I was entralled... a piece
of advanced hardware with a sensor larger than all my previous cameras combined! The great thing about this cameras is the backward compatibility with Minolta lenses of the 80s and 90s, manual or autofocus.

Guess what I'm hunting for now? Lenses, of course! The journey continues...

Product Photography @home

Been long since I set out on a photographic "assignment". After playing around during powercuts with my bulky A200 for the past coupla days, I came across this nice book by Scot Kelby on Photography techniques on Google Books. He happens to be a world renown photographer and his books have sold in millions. Though most of the techniques in the book require some elaborate equipment such as Softboxes and sturdy tripods, not to mention some ridiculously priced lens and Flash units, one article on lighting caught my attention and before long I was preparing my... eh... poor man's photo setup(see below).

First I set my AIWA Walkman on a piece of A4 paper with another one for the background, on an exam board. The walkman is important and I'll write about it in my next post. I used my gorillapod to mount the panasonic about a feet away and set it to Manual mode with ISO: 100, speed: 8 seconds and macro focussing.

Then I switched off the light and set the timer on the camera for 10 seconds. When the shutter released, I used the white LED flashlight on my SE camera and illuminated the player with small circular movements. Care was taken to ensure there was minimum shadow behind the player.

The results aren't very impressive but should work fine for ebay. I've seen worse there....

Points of light

Trying to sleep in 90% humidity and 40 degree temperature is no mean task. And I was sleeping on the floor, for &^% sake. When I looked up at the monitor for updates(I do that often), the chair with it's "Jaali" made a nice composition with the orange monitor wallpaper in the background. I got up and grabbed my camera. I bumped the ISO sensitivity to 800 and shot several pics some upto 6 seconds long.

Better than candy

Water games

Photography with fast shutterspeeds requires an elaborate arrangement of tripods, remotely triggered flashes and most importantly, a capable camera. I have none :-(

I used the manual mode of my Lumix to set the shutterspeed at 1/800 and activated the camera's timer mode, having no one to assist me with the ball. I waited for the red focus light to blink twice before dropping the ball into the glass. It was very frustrating as manually synchronising a shot is not easy at all. It took over half a dozen shots before I got one right.

I need a DSLR....

Back from Manuguru

I'm finally back from Manuguru. The low bandwidth internet there made it impossible to upload pics. Hell, even tweeting was a nightmare.

Here are some Colony photos I managed to get right.




















This is the first time I'm watermarking my images. I'm no pro to fear infringement but recently a guy at an internet cafe shamelessly copied my images. So just playing it safe...

ToothPix

Langford & Andrews' book on Starting Photography defines five priniciples:
Color Texture Pattern Line Contrast

The book urges us to find the above elements in daily life scenarios and capture them. I looked around for something to photograph and found these: Toothpicks!





I used ACDsee to convert the images to grayscale and tweaked the intensity values and the results are pleasing...

My Cameras

My fascination with cameras goes back to my childhood days. I used to haggle Dad to let me use his Yashica film camera. One day at a wedding he let my elder cousin use the camera and refused to let me take even a single shot. I was 12. Mom felt bad for me and within a coupla days bought me a new Kodak KB10 beginner camera. It cost around Rs1000 then. I was elated and spent hours playing with it. It had no features at all- no autofocus, no automatic rewinding, nothing at all. But I was more than content. All my memorable pictures from school upto inter are from this cam. I still keep it safe in my trunk as a sweet souvenir from childhood.

Then as time went on Digital cameras burst onto the scene. Sales surged in India only after 2004. Although I was aware of all the new cameras appearing in the market, I couldn't get my hands on one until late 2006! Dad just wouldn't hear about it. He was more than content with his old Yashica. I decided to get one myself and ordered a Benq DC1500, a discontinued camera from rediff shopping. A 1.3mp shooter with the smallest screen I'd ever seen, the photo quality was just about average and I used it for about a month before ordering Benq DC2300 a 2mp camera from the same online site. This camera proved to be a real gem. I already knew it had a CCD sensor(charge coupled device) instead of a CMOS sensor. The photo quality was top notch although quite a few people ridiculed it for the low MP count. The standard then was atleast 6mp. Most of photos on my orkut account are from this camera. Some even commented that it outdid cameras with much larger sensors.



Dad has caught on with the Digital wave now(at last!) and is now using dc2300 while I've moved on to a new camera- the Panasonic Lumix LZ8...

This is an old camera too. Launched in 2007 I think but is more than enough for me in terms of features. 8mp sensor, 5x optical zoom, full manual mode.


If I had the money what camera would I go for? Well, if I were rich I'd go for this: The best Point n shoot camera out there.