Posts filed under 'Photography'
If you like to tinker around with your camera but are not “into” photography to really figure out what all those manual settings affect, then this one’s for you. Have you always wondered what those weird fractions like f/2.8, f/5.6 meant (they are the aperture values or f-stops), or what that ISO 200 showing up on your camera viewfinder was all about. And how do those shutter speeds matter anyway - 1/125, 1/60 and so on.
So if you shoot on the automatic mode, then believe it or not, all these play together to create the right photo for you, and your camera sensor does all the hard work behind the scenes. But when you really want to create a photograph that is “hatke” - for eg. that dreamy portrait of your loved one with a fuzzy background, or a freeze frame photo of water splashing, well then you’ll need to get your hands dirty with these numbers. So here’s a really effective way to learn those nuances - the SimCam. This virtual camera will programmatically reproduce the effects of those camera settings on a pre-set image. You can compare how two different settings will change the final output. Its a surprisingly good learning tool as you see the results side by side. Check it out and be a pro with those nifty controls!
July 7th, 2008
Hey everyone. Just saw this gem of an idea on making a very cheap monopod (Thanks labnol.org for bringing it to notice). Well not really a monopod, but a camera stabilizing “jugaad” nevertheless. Check the video
Not sure how effective this is.. will have to try this out! But without a doubt, this poor man’s monopod could save the day when you don’t have one.
January 30th, 2008
December 16, 2007 at Qutub Minar, Meharauli - Click here for details. No better time than a sunny (hope so) winter afternoon for a stroll around this area :)
December 12th, 2007
with a camera ofcourse. 2nd Dec is the date and 7:00 AM early morning is the time, which has been under severe deliberation on the mailing list. Sundays and early mornings don’t go down well with most people :). For more details head to the photowalking blog.
November 27th, 2007
We’re trying a different time of the day this time. The last two photowalks were in somewhat harsh (too bright) lighting conditions with the afternoon sun. This one is planned to kick off at 5:00 PM righto at PVR Priya :) The sun goes down at around 6 these days, so I’m guessing we’ll have plenty of motion blur to add to the mood. Head to the photowalking blog for details and comments.
November 6th, 2007
28th October is the date.. check out the new photowalking home at www.photowalking.info for details.
The weather looks great this time, so this should be a blast. And this announcement is well in advance now.. so looking forward to seeing some new faces there :)
October 17th, 2007
Just thought we’ll spread the word about this - if your camera needs some tuning, make sure you dont miss this free chance. My 350d has been long due for a sensor cleaning so I’m definitely going :)
Dates:
For DSLR’s and lenses:
Gurgaon - 18th Oct ‘07 to 20th Oct ‘07
Mumbai - 26th Oct 2007 to 28th Oct 2007
For other cameras and camcorders:
Gurgaon - 22nd Oct 2007 to 24th Oct ‘07
Mumbai - 29th Oct ‘07 to 31st Oct ‘07
Click here for more details
October 17th, 2007
One of our users - Abhishek Baxi from New Delhi has done the groundwork to initiate Photowalking in India. Now if most of you are wondering what that is.. here’s quoting from Wikipedia -
“Photowalking is the act of walking with a camera for the main purpose of taking pictures of things you may find interesting“.
Photowalking has been catching on in several countries as a fun way to discovering interesting sights, possibly even in your near vicinity, which otherwise went unnoticed in the rush of daily life. Its a great way to meeting new people, spending some quality time with your attention deprived camera (if you’re like me!) and sharing your tips and techniques, and hopefully learn a few nuances of this wonderful art :)
So this is a call to everyone interested to spread the word and join in this fun past time. The first Photowalk is this Sunday (16th September) and you can sign up on the mailing list at www.photowalking.info to get the updates. Its great to see that Abhishek took the time to get things moving. I’ll try my best to make it Abhishek, hope to see you then.
Update: Check out Trevor’s article on Photowalking. Trevor has a great blog on photowalking at http://photowalking.org
September 13th, 2007
Hey! We bring you the first ever review of the top cameras and camera phones on itasveer.com.
While 65% of our traffic is from India, much of the remaining is from the Indian diaspora, thus this is probably one of the first statistical analyses on camera usage from an India centric perspective.
So, without further ado, here’s what we found.
For those who want a quick summary: Sony and Canon are the top camera brands with more than 50% of itasveer members using them. The top Point & Shoot model is the Sony Cyber-shot DSC W5, the top DSLR is the Canon EOS 350D and the top camera phone is the Sony Ericsson K750i. About 10% of users uploaded images clicked from a camera phone on to itasveer.com
For those who love graphs and charts and more data, here are the details. [Warning: This is a long post, but with lots of tasty graphs and charts.]
The Top Brands
Canon and Sony are the most widely used brands on itasveer.com with as much as 50% of our members using them. Noteworthy is that a surprising 10% of our users use cameraphones and Nokia and Sony Ericsson figure in the top 10 brands.
The Top Camera Models
The Sony DSC W5 is the most widely used camera on itasveer.com. Interestingly, the Sony Ericsson K750i figures in the top three! Canon EOS 350D is the most used DSLR camera. Animesh, the photography aficionado among us also owns the 350D and swears by it (which, by the way, did not lead to any skewness in the data :)).
The Top Cameras by brand
We also thought it would be useful to list the top 3 cameras, both Point & Shoot and DSLRs for our top camera brands. These are the Sony Cyber-Shot DSC W5, Canon Powershot S2 IS and the Nikon E4600 in the case of Point & Shoot and Canon 350D and Nikon D50 in the case of DSLRs. For your reference, we have also added the camera’s rank within its brand on flickr.com in brackets next to the camera model. (Click to enlarge)
The Top Cameraphones
Finally, the top camera phones in general, and also by brand on itasveer.com. After the Sony Ericsson K750i which figures in the top across all kinds of cameras, it’s Nokia all the way with the N70 being the most popular cameraphone from the Nokia stable.
Methodology
The data used for the analysis is actual data from itasveer.com for the period April 2006 to August 2007. The top cameras have been evaluated based on the number of users using a camera model. The model is automatically detected from the photo’s EXIF data, however, this is not possible for about 10% of the images uploaded on itasveer.com which haven’t been included in the analysis.
So let us know what you guys think! Which are your favorite cameras?
September 5th, 2007
