FIRST SNOW

Thanksgiving was basically the first real snowfall for me. And I'm realizing that Turkey Day is a better holiday then Christmas. Its like Christmas-Lite. No worries about gift giving, stocking stuffing, decorating the tree or ho ho ho ho-ing. Its just gettin' the family together and eating. What more could you want?

PROBLEM WITH EVENING LIGHT AND WHITE BALANCE

It is common understanding that the best time for photography is when the sun is near the horizon - morning or evening. It pretty much worked fine for me until a few days ago when I came home with some bird images taken in the warm evening light. The trouble is - the white balance of the image had gone completely out of place and the true color of the image was not seen. I did try to do some salvaging by resetting the white balance in the RAW image and more. But it still did not gain the true colors. I guess even if someone would be able to get the perfect colors, it is likely to be hard work. This particular image hardly has any neutral shades which makes it even hard to fix the image by fixing the neutrals. Here is an example of image of a parrot taken that day. The real color of the bird is in the next image which was taken at a different place and time(early in the morning).

Parrot taken in evening light


Picture taken in day light. As we can see the true color of the parrot

POLLUTION AND DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY

So there is news going around that digital photography is helping to reduce pollution. This is basically due to the fact that there are many chemicals involved in processing the film or as part of the film, which will no longer be needed in digital photography.

While this may be a valid argument, it is still difficult to say that going digital helps improve the environment to some extent. The factor that I see here is that a digital camera eventually ends up as a e-waste which is not biodegradable and needs to be disposed with care. Yes, film cameras also end up as waste, but then comes the question of how often do you decide to throw away a camera. It is most likely that people will have to upgrade their digital cameras frequently just like they upgrade computers, which means that older cameras get junk status very quickly. Take for example, you would have bought a Canon EOS 300D only 2 years back, but today you would definitely feeling that it is an old camera and would be thinking of upgrading. Film camera bodies last much longer that way. In addition to generating e-waste, a digital camera includes far many components that are likely to have a not-so-environment-friendly manufacturing process.

Despite all this, it is still possible that digital cameras are better than film cameras, but it is a fact that is best asserted only with a more involving research.

BEAUTIFUL FLOWER

An image made using the 100-400L. Levels adjusted and slightly sharpened to highlight the water droplets.

MY FIRST TEST 100-400L IMAGE

Had not got a chance to go out with my newly acquired 100-400L yet, but obviously I could not resist the temptation to try shooting something indoors. What took me by surprise is the quality of the IS in the lens. Below is the image of my kitten taken in a poorly lit room. What is amazing is that it is taken handheld, at a shutter speed of 1/6 sec at ISO 1600 and there is no hint of any camera shake in the image. My hats off to people who have designed the image stabilization system.

HOW MANY MEGAPIXELS IS TOO MUCH?

When I was thinking of moving from film to digital photography a few months ago, I was loaded with greed for megapixels. Then digital SLRs were just inching up their standards from 6 megapixel to 8mp with Canon launching EOS 350D/Rebel XT. But technology in DSLRs is moving fast and more and more megapixels were getting squeezed into those few inches. Canon is slowly moving towards full frame sensors and at the same time increasing the resolution beyond 10mps. But how much do we really need?

I was pondering about it yesterday and was wondering if it won't take too long for my 8mp camera to go obsolete and 12mp become the norm. At the same time, I thought about problems that would be coming with it. The 8mp raw image converted to tiff format comes up to as big as 46MB. And it is common knowledge that big prints can be taken comfortably with the resolution offered. On the downside, my computer which can be said as "normal configuration" with 512MB RAM and 80G hard disk starts crawling real slow when I load my imaging softwares - Canon Digital Photo Professional(DPP) and Photoshop. Upgrading to 10 or 12mp would definitely require me to upgrade to a more powerful computer and more investment.

Another factor is the lenses: ask Michael Reichmann(of luminous landscape) and he will tell you about it. When he bought his EOS 1D, his existing 100-400L was no longer good enough for the camera and he had to upgrade to a sharper prime. The problem is that bigger resolution shows all the flaws that it can, and you can no longer shoot with your good old lens which you thought gives you ultra sharp images.

I am sure soon we will discover that we will require upgrading to new and robust softwares as we move up the megapixel ladder. Many more such things may soon be needed. That would only make us gear junkies and we will end up spending more time acquiring latest stuff, researching and working on the images at home than spend time taking pictures. At the same time, when the whole world would be moving up the value chain, you may no longer feel secure and comfortable staying behind and watching, holding your old 8mp camera.

DAVE MATTHEWS POSTER

Poster, Union Square, New York