Archive for November 2006
Off to Rajasthan!
I’ll be in Rajasthan for the next 7 to 8 days 
Mostly for other work, but photography will not be neglected
Okay, finally…. got broadband!
Hahaha
Alright. I’ll stop. But almost 8 years of dialup use had made me thinking in 56k by now. Hopefully this means more frequent photo uploads!
Open RAW
The complete survey results are out, and hopefully Nikon will take note of this!!! Oh please oh please oh please!
Astrophotography
The gearlust is starting to set in really badly now. I have started feeling that I *need* a particular lens rather than just *wanting* it. Take for example yesterday night, I was photographing all night on the top of Shah hill (Salabat Khan’s Tomb) in cold wind… and could not get even one meteor!
Our team noted 37 meteors over 4 hours, but not even one made its way onto the frame. Main issue was that my usual lens gives f/3.3 aperture… that means that only one third of the actual light reaches the sensor. It covers a considerably wide area, but it cannot detect small light sources like the meteors. The next option was a borrowed lens – it went upto f/1.4 almost three fourths / 75% light reaches the sensor through this lens, but it does nto cover as much area as the other lens. Only a very narrow portion was photographed at any given instance. So well, the whole plan to photograph a meteor was a BIG failure yesterday.
BUT BUT BUT… I managed to get some fantastic photos of the night sky!
I’m in the process of uploading them now. Will post more about those photos soon
Walking In Almost-Heaven
The Panchgani-Mahableshwar trip was successful, and I came back with a few hundred photographs. Have sorted out the better ones already and am in the process of uploading a few photos every day on my flickr photostream.
The motorcycle ride was fun and slightly taxing on my back – my suspicion that the seat re-design had gone bad, was right. I’ll need to fix it before I leave for another long journey. We travelled about 650 kilometers, much less than the 1,000 that I was expecting (which included extensive local travel while at Mahableshwar) but it still was a wonderful experience.
I’m very happy that other than the seat’s issue, my two year old Yamaha Libero did not cause any trouble. With me and a friend Mr. Vitthal, the weight was already over 130kg and we were carrying another 20kg (or more) in luggage. Technically, the bike was overloaded
The weather was pretty cool, it even rained while we were there, however, the carpets of grass were now brownish and most of the exotic flowers had disappeared. I really should had made the trip in September or earlier. *sigh* Now I have to wait till next year.
One thing I learnt from this one – when I know that a particular season is good for photographing a particular area, I’m not going to let any other work disturb me.
PS. I bought a 160GB hard drive to accommodate the ever-growing collection of photographs. I’m expecting it to hold at least a year’s worth of photos – till the end of the year, lets see if we have some extra cash to set up a Storage Area Network (SAN) system 
Its an overkill right now, but in a few more years, it will become my need!
Hmm… it’s 3:34 in the morning, time to go to sleep.
Good Night World!
