Photographing The Moon

#photography

The human eye is incredible because it can discern ranges in exposure that are beyond the capability of today's cameras. You look at the moon and at once, you can see the details within the moon (the rabbit on the moon) and the glow around it. Cameras fare miserably at this. At normal exposure, all you get is a washed out moon with a little glow around it. Underexpose it and you get great details within the moon, but all the glow around it is lost. Overexpose it and the glow is radiant, but there are no details at all. A simple image search will show you what i am talking about.

Yesterday, apart from being a blue moon, the moon was also at its biggest and brightest for the year. I wanted to photograph it as close as possible to how the human eye sees it. Knowing this was impossible with one shot, i set up my tripod and captured multiple shots of the moon at different exposures. My assumption was that once i was done, i could simply use a HDR creation software (like qtpfsgui), combine the images and get the perfect exposure. It was only after i got the images on the computer that a fairly obvious thing struck me. The earth moves. And fast. All the images had the moon at slightly different positions; these differed by mere pixels, but that was sufficient to completely confuse the software.

To save me time and accommodate for my lack of patience, I settled in on two images. One was made at -5EV exposure and the other at +4EV, with all other settings the same. The first image got the details within the moon and the second one got the glow fairly well. I used GIMP to create two separate layers with these images and lined them one on top of the other. Finally, i adjusted the exposure of this composite image the best i could, in aperture.

Here it is:

Next stop, photographing the moon with the stars!

4 Comments

The iDream

#technology

This isn't a post reviewing the iPad. Quite frankly, all i have seen are screenshots of the device. This isn't a post ridiculing the obnoxious name or lamenting the non-existence of multitasking, a camera or two, support of flash or your favorite proprietary protocol. It isn't about how pretty it is, the plethora of applications or the upcoming ebook store and its comparison to the Kindle. This isn't about its comparison with netbooks or other handheld computing devices. This isn't about the price and this isn't about how you cannot use it on an airplane (really. see 'environmental requirements').

This is about the iPad dream.

Imagine a computer where you don't have to navigate deep into a file structure hierarchy to find something you want. You don't have to worry about creating a folder (and a folder inside a folder) and then think about how to best name it so that you can find it again. You don't have to care about creating shortcuts just to reach somewhere faster. Hell, you don't even have to search for something you want to find on your own computer. Imagine a computer where you don't have to care about installing anti-virus software and firewalls, a computer where getting rid of something does not mean launching an uninstaller or going to 'Add or Remove Programs'. Imagine having just the one place to go to find exactly the software you were looking for instead of scouring the entire internet for it and then filling out a million forms just to try it. Imagine a computer for which software is built and hence, doesn't expect you to upgrade your hardware.

Imagine a computer where you are not scared of losing data because everything gets backed up without you having to think about it.  Imagine not having to bother about drives and partitions, formatting and defragmentation, mounting drives and choosing boot sequences, configuring IP settings and installing drivers. Imagine a computer without clutter, without an unintelligible registry and without having to assign virtual memory from your hard drive. Imagine not having to think about whether to single click, double click or right click at something, not having to learn the differences among hibernate, sleep, shutdown and lock and not having to remember to clear the recycle bin. 

Imagine a computer that does everything you want it to do and nothing that you don't. Imagine a computer that doesn't scare your mother. Imagine a computer that starts at the press of a button and just works.

Imagine a computer for the rest of us.

The iPad isn't just an overgrown iPhone (though, i see nothing wrong with that). It is a prototype for what computing will mean for the majority of the world in the coming years. The personal computer, though revolutionary, still placed computers in the hands of geeks and continues to be built for them. The iPad (and undoubtedly similar devices that come along) brings the power and joy of technology to the other 95%. In that regard, the idea of the iPad will create a bigger sociological impact in our world than anything else that we have seen.

Of course, it doesn't hurt that it's pretty.

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Up Above The World So High

#fringe_interests

Let me get it out of the way - this is a terrible photo of the night sky. The aperture setting was disastrous and resulted in far fewer stars than were visible to the naked eye in the beautiful jungle sky.

This is also a very interesting photograph. Star gazing is fascinating but the human eye only sees stars in white. The long exposure of a camera not only captures star trails that show the revolution of earth, but also shows the colors of the various stars. In the scientific community, this was a pretty recent discovery since the equipment earlier was never good enough to capture color. 

The colors of the stars, as we now all know, provide a gauge to measure relative temperatures. The sun, as seen from space, is white in color. Any stars cooler than the sun are towards the red spectrum and stars hotter than the sun are towards the violet spectrum. Some of the hottest stars are over a million times hotter than the sun. Also, interestingly (albeit mere co-incidently) the hottest stars are generally the biggest ones. This classification of stars based on their spectral type is one of the most widely used types of classifications.

When i shot this, the Orion constellation was directly overhead. So, the blue star trail at the bottom right of the image could very well be Bellatrix, which is about 5 times as hot as the sun.

A much better image is what i am hoping for the next time around. However, star gazing is completely worthwhile even without images from a camera.

1 Comment

BR Hills

#photography
The first time i had gone to BR Hills (sometime in April 2007, i think), here's what i had written:

Trees of various hues, swaying to the summer songs of the birds, stand in a guard of honour as you enter. Turn your gaze upwards and little streaks of joyous colour whiz past, linger long enough to earn your gasp and become a blur of vividness yet again. Heaven? maybe not, but it certainly comes close. 

Take a walk in the woods and the sea of green is punctuated with the effulgent colours of the elusive butterflies that captivate you the moment you set your eyes on them. Trek to the top of the hill in the early morning and witness the halo of mist around the other hills, which descends as rapidly as the sun rises in the sky. In the night, the innumerable stars beaming down on you like diamonds carelessly strewn on a velvet carpet will take your breath away.You feel so insignificant when you are in the company of such unbearable beauty. 

Trek through the jungle. If you are lucky, you will notice the fleeting glimpse of the spotted deer or the glaring stare of the extremely curious sambar deer. If you are not, you will hear only the hoofbeats or perhaps encounter the great indian gaur boring down on you. Any short trip will be incomplete without a glimpse of the several exotic birds - from the scary crested hawk-eagle to the incredibly attractive black headed oriole, from the magnificent racket-tailed drongo to the innocent looking brown hawk owl. 

My advice to everyone planning a weekend trip - Don't come here. Its an addiction which will leave you with severe withdrawal symptoms when you quit.

This is still every bit true. A few photos from my trip this week:
           
I promise to get over my black & white mania soon.

3 Comments

Butterflies In Monochrome

#photography
Shooting butterflies is always fun. Shooting butterflies in black and white is even more fun. You get the opportunity to explore the shape of the perch, the texture of the wings, the contrasts and the camouflage. When you don't have the crutch of the mesmerizing colors of the creature, it forces you to be a little more creative. The shape of the butterfly becomes more noticeable and the the body patterns jump at you. You realize that nature is glorious even if you strip it of all its colors.

                         

5 Comments

At The End Of The Next Decade

#whimsical

The earth mover sputters to a halt just short of the tree under which the last remaining tiger is meditating in a bid to attain salvation, because it runs out of the final drop of diesel on the planet. The irony makes some people smile, some weep gently while the rest of us continue to honk in the piling traffic jam.

Technology, the Beacon of Hope, the Ultimate Savior, the Guide to the New World, quivered because of a lack of blankets in a refugee camp in southern Botswana. Yesterday's hero is laughed at today because molestation has recently taken over as the largest social networking medium leaving Facebook far behind. More people died of electric shock by placing their tongue on a usb drive last year than the population of Australia. The final straw was when Nadal, completely frustrated with a foot fault caught by hawkeye, decided to not chase down every single ball that came his way. And still won.

Science, of course, had discreetly stolen Technology's blankets. And its toothpaste. Science was confined to no man's land after the religious fanatics used Heisenberg's uncertainty principle to prove that Science cannot find a person's soul. The last few staunch scientists decided to disprove the uncertainty principle and ran to Einstein for help - only to find him playing dice with God. All was finally lost when Science failed to answer the most fundamental question in all of life: do i look fat in this?

Religion, even though it won its little battles with Science, lost the war when God was shot dead by a evolutionist last Sunday during His midday siesta. At least that's what the Times reported. Much regret ensued. The fakir decided to finally shave his beard much to the relief of his wife. The joy was short-lived, however, when she realized that she had married the wrong man. The pontiff decided to get rid of his mitre but soon found out that there were six more of decreasing sizes one inside the other. Nobody has been able to figure out why. The religious fanatics, having no cause to fight over, took over the hip-hop scene. They even shot dead Kanye West when he interrupted one of their performances. It was a rare period of collective joy in the world.

The driver blows into the diesel tank of the earth mover, gives it a shake, tilts it a little bit and finally manages to start it. Then, the earth mover takes down the tree.

0 Comments

Negative Scale

#fringe_interests
Sometimes it is a lot of fun to do something you have no idea how to do. Last night, i tried mixing music using GarageBand. I just created a cocktail on sounds and was delighted with the possibilities. Here are a couple of songs (they are more cheap ringtones than songs, but allow me to bask for a while).

Night Dancing by Anirudh  

Duel On Camelback by Anirudh  

3 Comments

iPhone Photography

#photography
Blurry images. Candid shots. Subpar lens. Convenient ubiquity. Unsatisfactory quality. Great in-phone applications. Listening to an old husband's tale. Letting sleeping dogs lie. Experimenting with light. Playing with emotions. Half an hour of fun. A day filled with joy. iPhone photography.

                         

9 Comments

Anyone Can Cook

#fringe_interests
From Ratatouille:
Gusteau: What do I always say? Anyone can cook.
Remy: Yeah. Anyone can, that doesn't mean that anyone should.
Gusteau: Well, that is not stopping him. See?

               

2 Comments

My Next Browser Is An App

#technology

A non-trivial proportion of my life is online. My means of communication, information gathering and learning is on the internet. And a non-trivial proportion of the time i spend online is increasingly with my mobile phone. I use my phone to catch up on everything online during my increasingly extending commute to and from work. And lately i have begun to notice that a non-trivial amount of time that i spend on the internet is done with almost no help from the browser. I rarely, if ever, in the last few weeks, have started the browser on my phone.

Pardon the abused phrase, but there is an application for anything you might want to do on the internet and more often than not, the application is better than the ubiquitous browser. A mail client helps me read and send email - with a better editor, offline capability and a faster response time than the browser does. With the plethora of twitter applications, i can't remember the last time i actually visited the twitter website, let alone use my browser. My feed reader lets me catch up on all the blogs and the latest news. And it lets me sync this on to my phone and allows me to catch up with them even if i have a flaky connection. More specifically, my phone has fantastic applications for social networking such as the Facebook app and for news such as the NY Times and Time Magazine ones. The Wikipedia app on my phone lets me favorite articles and lets me search them quickly because of its caching abilities. And this is just the beginning. You can browse photos in a jiffy with the Flickr photo application, watch full screen videos with the YouTube app and even listen to internet radio with, well, a dozen different apps. Don't even get me started on how much better the maps application on the phone is as compared to the one in the browser. Frankly, i think my browser is the most underused function on my phone.

Applications specialized for the content they render have an edge over the browser. They know the content they are supposed to render and can optimize. So, the YouTube app on the phone is so much better at finding and rendering videos than the browser is. Even on the desktop, applications such as Miro and Boxee are much better for watching videos than your browser is. Take a look below: The first image is NY Times on the browser and the second one is from an app dedicated to NY Times. News is so much easier to discern with the dedicated app.

 

Dedicated applications also have other advantages. The biggest ones are offline caching and ad-free content. Look at the below image of viewing a video on YouTube on my phone. (Of course, i can just tap to hide the controls)


No spammy comments, no ridiculous advertisements, no 'featured' videos. Plainly and simply the video i want. Of course, you could have advertisements in the applications, but you always have the option of paying for the app and getting an ad-free version; an option that doesn't exist on most websites today.

I think that the ubiquitous browser is ill-suited for the future, ironically because almost all the content is moving online now. Which is also why i am specially skeptical about netbooks and about the browser being the operating system of the future. I believe the future is personalized applications for specialized purposes. The future doesn't have room for a generalist that does a mediocre job at everything.

No browser was used in the creation of this blog post.

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