Krishnan Photography

Low tide again in the morning but Rakesh and I went to Airoli in any case. As luck would have it the waders were pretty far away. But I managed a coupla Redshank pics at eyelevel by climbing down on to a beached boat. The Black Capped Kingfisher flew past but perched on the mangroves on the far side, too far for any photography.

This time I took a reading from the camera meter and then set the histogram. The incident meter was giving me 1/4000 th of a second at F4.5 whereas , the camera meter metering a midtone gave me 1/1250th of a second at F4.8. The histo was to the right and the highlights held as well. I went by the camera meter and histogram this time.

As the waders moved away I clicked a boats and a rope

I saw a few crabs coming out of the mud and here is what I got

Moral of the story today, Get to eye level and set the exposure after reading the histogram

Today, after a long gap, I pulled out some old transparencies for scanning.

The 1994 Original Roadies

We had done a Pune-Cochin bike trip way back in April 1994 . Four guys ( Sandeep, Salil Shailesh and myself) on three bikes, a Rajdoot, a Yezdi and an Enfield Fury [ a Zundapp Kardan Sport 175 ( KS175) actually], on the Konkan coastal roads for eleven heavenly days. The trip was planned to coincide with the “Trichur Pooram“, the traditional mega Kerala Temple Festival which has a more than a few number of caparisoned elephants and only a few, hundred thousand people to watch the show

I still remember the bike silhouette pic. I shot that twisting back while riding pillion, helmet and all with the camera focussed at infinity. I had the “Pentax - ME Super” back then. A wonderful camera for sure.

Keeping with the theme of Kerala, I also scanned in a few slides of a temple that I do really like, the Ernakulam Shiva Temple. I happened to click a few frames duting the Temple festival in Dec 1999 enroute to my Diving holiday to Lakshadweep Islands.

During the temple festival the Deity of the Temple is brought home on an elephant and an offering is made to the God right at the house gates. Thats the two pics here. On the pic on the right is my maternal uncle making the offering with the temple elephant right outside my maternal home.

I also pulled a few landscapes shot whilst in the Andamans in 2004.

I use RAW exclusively.

1. Set view to 100% then,  turn OFF Sharpening in the Base Adjustment.

2. Base Adjustment> Camera Adjustments> Sharpening set to NONE.

3. Base Adjustment> Detail Adjustments> Noise Reduction > Intensity & Sharpness set to “0″

Noise Reduction - NR ( Works pretty good for High ISO NR as well )

4. Add New Step> Select Adjustment> Noise Reduction > Intensity - As desired [usually under 5] , Sharpness Set to “0″ , Method Set to Better Quality.

Note: If you want to Paint IN” NR then, dont click OK but, move the window to a side and apply “+” Brush. After you finish Painting in NR, now Click OK. If you would like to Wipe off the NR, Click OK and then use the “-” Brush.

5. Opacity > Blend Mode Normal > adjust opacity as desired.

6. Sharpening: ( Works Great for High ISO especially)

7. Add New Step> Select Adjustment> Focus> High Pass. Use a low value where only the outlines just begins to show.

8. Opacity > Blend Mode set to Overlay then, Luminance & Chrominance > adjust opacity of Luminance & Chrominance as desired. Usually only Luminance Opacity start from 50% and increase till desired. Chrominance set to 100% Opacity.

Official Nikon Capture NX —Tech Tips

http://nikonimaging.com/global/products/software/capturenx/nxsp/techtips.htm

Hope this helps some of you looking for Nikon Capture NX help

Who said one needs to travel long distances for birding ? I got lucky again this morning and was happy to bird from the cosy environs of my home with a hot cuppa coffee in one hand and the camera in another ! Couldn’t have hoped for a better start to the sunday !!!

I live in an apartment on the fourth floor. Right outside my window is this yellow flowering tree which attracts a lot of birds. Those wanting to pitch in a new tree, guys dunno what this tree is but it sure does attract a lot of birds all year round. You may have read an earlier post wherein an Amazon Green Parrot had been calling from the same tree. Today the tree was host to a few local Rose Ringed Parakeets that I see flying around in the area. The light was perfect and I managed time to grab my 300mm and try a few shots from in between the grills, of my window. I Grrrr…I hate grills) but, I did manage a few decent ones. More pics in the Birds Gallery.

The the local Black Kite came in and sat on the coconut palm tree which is right next to the tree that hosted the parakeets.

Looking around I noticed the Black Kite perhaps building a nest on the Coconut tree. I could view it from another window on the East side. Looks like them birds are beginning to use plastics as well. No way I could avoid the white plastic band in the pic. Geez …what an eyesore. Not a great pic or anything like that but, I wanted to document the usage of plastic by urban birds. Pretty hip eh ? !! Here is the pic in discussion..

Hardly any post processing on all these pics. So shoot it perfect in camera, and save computer time

Today was supposed to be a birding on a boat at Airoli mangroves. My good friend Kishore Bhargava was along as well and it was fun shooting with him. But, low tide it was and that was the end of the planned boat trip. The boat yard near the bridge did have a lot of waders (mostly Lesser Sand Plovers) and we spent the morning birding right at the boatyard itself. On the far side of the creek we spotted flamingos and a host of other birds but, way too far to id.

Got a beauty sighting of a Black Capped kingfisher right on early. Just too far to fill more of the frame I could have used a 1500mm lens and still find it short !

All shots D2X , HSC mode, 300mm 2.8 VR + TC 17EII on a tripod. VR OFF. Manual Exposure Mode.

Of course got the regular static stint shots

Then I tried to get a few fight shots of the stints trying to protect their feeding territories.

A Few landings

All in all a serious fun morning and it sure was great to be shooting again

I used the Sekonic 308s lightmeter exclusively today for all these shots. Under these conditions ( very bright sunlight, these pics were under by 1.5 ~ 1.8 stops. This surprised me a bit even though I am aware from my previous experience that the lightmeter exposure does tend to be a shade underexposed for my taste. I prefer the shots right shifted cause the files then tend to have minimum noise. Lesson learnt, use histogram on the camera . I do plan to do a little investigation on this the next time I am out shooting .