Friday, November 04, 2005

and now it's a camera...

I just bought a camera, and now I have to share my photos. Photos, like any art, is depressing when unexposed (not sure if I intended the pun). Especially when your camera is expensive.

Well, I haven't really started taking photos with it. It has so far been confined to the many walls of my apartment. Nevertheless it did have a chance to train its lens on those walls. But before I lead you to those photos, or even to the prelude of apologies for the not so great photographic quality, just wanted to say that things at home are not as depressing as the photos might suggest. Yes, I stay alone in a large house, and cook and eat alone. But these photos -- the yellowish ones with the flash turned off -- seem to suggest an exaggerated tint of pathos. I like them for that, as they seem to give some artistic value to my mediocre attempts: especially this one with the empty chairs and a larger than life projection of the lamp-shade (or see the large sepia version).

Now the mandatory apologies: I'm a complete newbie. This is my first digital camera and first SLR (and my second camera, if you were wondering). I did little or no post-processing on these photos (except to shrink them to a web-like size, with the good side effect of making some of the chromatic noise less apparent (especially in those flash-free photos, taken at ISO-800). I got a tripod too, but often I was too lazy to tighten the screws and such, with the result that a good number of photos in low-light suffered from shakes as I pressed the button, and were discarded. There are a whole lot more confessions to make, but since I don't understand a lot of the stuff, I will hold off, and simply give you the link to the photos from my dinner yesterday.

And while at it, here is a photo of a screen-saver featuring a scanned photo from my old (film) camera.



5 comments:

Cibu C J (സിബു) said...

ശരിക്കും D50 വാങ്ങിയോ? അടിപൊളി! ഏതൊക്കെയാണ്‌ ലെന്‍സുകള്‍? വാങ്ങിയിട്ടില്ലെങ്കില്‍ ഒരെക്സ്റ്റ്രാ ഫ്ലാഷ്‌ കൂടി വാങ്ങിക്കോ.. ആളുകളുടെ പടം എടുക്കുന്നെങ്കില്‍ അത്‌ നിര്‍ബന്ധമാണ്‌.

Manoj Prabhakaran said...

hi cibu,

i settled for the D50 kit with 18-55mm lens. for now i'll live with it. i'm thinking mostly of outdoor photography, so won't go for the extra flash yet. do you happen to have a DSLR?

Cibu C J (സിബു) said...

Manoj, I don't have a DSLR. I have an Film SLR though. I just looked up the specs for your 18-55mm lens. It is 35mm equivalent to 27-82mm F3.5-5.6 lens. Using this lens you won't be able to take any better pictures than a common point&shoot camera.

The focal range 27-82mm is close to human eye perspective (53mm). Things get interesting when we move away from that. On the wideside you need 24mm or less. On the long end 85mm to 135mm is the most productive range. I am sure you can live with 82mm. But then the maximum aperture size of 5.6 is too limiting. You should have around F2.5 apperture size to isolate objects from the background and to have nice bouquet effects of the background. One idea would be to by Nikon's old slr prime lens 50mm F1.8. When you put in your D50, it will become 80mm F1.8. This lens would cost around $70 only. Onething I am not sure is whether the perspective is 80mm or image is getting cropped to get 80mm viewfield.

I don't have a zoom lens. I have 3 prime lenses: 50mm F1.8, 24mm F2.8, 85mm F1.8. Amoung these, 85mm is most commonly used one for me.

Personally, I started by taking nature and building photos. But soon, I moved to people photos and close-ups; partially because, for me it was much easier to get good photos in these categories than in the earlier ones. Still it is my dream to start an after-hours portrait studio after going back to Kerala :)

Riot said...

I thought the sepia version of eating was pretty good. I am a newbie too. Welcome to the world of DSLR. It is a lot of fun.

I have been eyeing a D70 for a long time now. Will have to save up before I can afford one.

Anonymous said...

6 years ago when I came to this country I wanted an SLR camera, to be precise Nikon EOS rebel along with a BMW. Now I have to think hard EOS is nikons or Cannons. Takes a snaps once in a while in a digital automatic (2000 model ) camera. Was crazy about photography, now haven't bought an album in 2 years. But still thinks which color BMW am I going to buy. Don't want to let go of some things