Journey Through Nature | Shivakumar L Narayan

“art of protection“

Over the last weekend, i got a chance to play around with one more of the latest mirrorless camera formats and this time around it was the V1 from the Nikon arsenal. My friends over at BookMyLens were generous enough to loan me the camera for few days and i spent quite some time shooting with ( only ) it at the Vintage car rally organised by Karnataka Vintage and Classic Car Club at Taj Westend and also over at the Melukote temple near Mandya. Had a really fun time getting to understand and play around with tiny little machine. Its a very small formfactor system both in size and also the specifications but the ability to mount the Nikon F mount lenses using the dedicated mount provided by Nikon makes it a really good warrior on the field. I would be detailing some goods and bads about this system as what i saw it and from totally my perspective in the coming weeks. But until then enjoy couple of images made from it, including a panoramic view of the Mandya region as seen from Melukote yoga narasimha temple. All the images in this post are shot on the Nikon V1. If any of you are interested in laying your hands on this camera, head down to BML site and book one for yourself right away. Don’t treat this as a complete replacement for a DSLR system, but the form factor and also the versatility is what makes this one a really good camera to have as B or C camera when your main lenses are mounted on your DSLRs. Feel free to drop in your questions if you have any in comments below or through mail about this camera and i shall try to see if i can address them for you.

Day in and day out we get to see newer technologies and these technologies getting implemented in newer cameras. 24fps and 25fps what was earlier thought of as must have and more than enough on a consumer and pro cameras have now shifted its atttention to higher fps shooting leading to high definition slow motion footages which was once limited to cameras like Phantom Gold etc. The intermediate cine cameras ( as i generally call it ) which sits between high end HD DSLRs and high end cine cameras like Arri, Red, Panasonic etc are the ones which are making huge waves since a few years. Late last year Red with the annoucement of its Scarlet X and also Canon with the annoucement of C300 redefined accessibility to high end features at “relatively” affordable price tag. Though on paper the Scarlet is a diff beast all-together compared to C300 or a Sony F100 or a Panasonic equivalents but still lies around in the same base price range of <10000 $. Anyways the relative specs and the end price are very debatable and who is it for is always a big question.

Few days back Sony created a huge storm by announcing a fancy new camera called FS700 which fits/sits between their flagship FS100 and F3 models. The 3 main specialites of this camera is the 4k futureproofing – which means that its 4k capture ready which will be a upgrade in the form of a firmware in coming months and secondly its capable of shooting at 240fps at full high definition giving the end result of a ultra slow motion effect in a 1080p video which was not possible other than the Red series of cameras and finally the built in ND filters which is a huge thing in cineworld. And its very attractively priced at around $9000 or less ( to be confirmed at NAB2012 ). From what i see this camera gonna be a game changer in many ways – firstly based up on its specs which boldly says that its 4k ready and secondly the price tag which will now make the other cameras very affordable and competitive.

Some blessed mortals were lucky enough to have got a chance to shoot with this beauty using a pre-production model and they have their views/concerns expressed to Sony which seems to have got addressed over the last 6 months or so. Below is a very lovely video released by Sony which shows the current capabilities of FS700 and what the people behind the cameras who got to use it have to say about it.

Click here if you cant view the video above > http://vimeo.com/39839187

Read some initial impressions of the camera here

DSLRNewsShooter

Stress testing the Sony FS700

First hand review of Sony FS700

***UPDATE***

One of the many videos that was shot by Den Lennie using the Sony FS 700

Click here if you cant view the video above > http://vimeo.com/39405035

Just about a week back I had a chance of having the Fuji X-Pro 1 mirrorless system along with all the 3 lenses for a weekend and during this time i managed to squeeze in a quick trip to a very lovely place bordering Karnataka and Andhrapradesh called Lepakshi and gave the camera and its 3 lenses a test run to see how well it performs with the mindset of travel photography. Having regularly shot with Canon DSLR system with bulky lenses all through the years, holding this tiny beauty and walking around the temple and around was a strange feeling indeed. As a follow up to this test, i also wanted to check the high ISO performance of this system which has got quite a lot of good acclaims worldwidee from all the people who have been testing the pre-production models since last few weeks/months. I did even share some High Iso Samples in my blog last week for people to download and see it for yourself how well it holds up to the reputation. Personally i dont want to throw in the images at 100% crop showing the centre and corner sharpness and pin pointing where the chromatic abberation is and how bad is the distortion, but to show you how well the camera performs in real world scenarios and how well it lives up to its expectation. At the end of this post i have my own list of likes and dislikes about this camera but to begin with I want to share the following set of images shot using Fuji X-Pro1 and combination of 18mm, 35mm and 60mm lenses it comes along with.

PS: None of the images are processed either in Photoshop or in any image editing software, but the JPEG out of the camera are resized and presented for your viewing pleasure. May be a bit of exposure adjustment in LR4 but minimal. Unfortunately am still waiting for the patch from Adobe for Lightroom 4 to support Fuji raw files, but until then i feel i will rather be happy playing with JPEG than using Silkypix.

The field of view on the 18mm lens makes it a good contender for Landscape Photography

Took just not more than 3-5 seconds to grab this one

Sunburst rendering not as good as DSLR lenses but not bad either

Superclean High ISO performance of Fuji XPro1

1:1 crop feature of Fuji XPro 1

Out of focus rendering of Fuji XPro1

Mom trying to show of pensive mood to suit the B&W image

Likes : 

Size to Performance ratio – for a system of this compact size it outperforms lot of competitions in the market.

Sharpness –  X-Trans sensor delivers outstanding sharpness from edge to edge – especially when clubbed with those 3 incredibly sharp lenses.

Dynamic range – It pulls out quite a bit of information from both Shadow & Highlight region.

High ISO – This got to be the best bet of the camera – have a gut feeling it outperforms some best DSLRs with high ISO performance.

Autofocus – Having tried out few cameras in this category this one for sure has very decent AF performance.

Picture profiles in form of Provia and Velvia are really awesome to use. In camera B&W forms a really nice starting point.

Incamera built in crops like 1:1, 16:9, etc are really handy to visualise how the framing looks like on the camera.

Have heard about compatibility with Leica and Nikon lenses through dedicated mount – though have not used it, but it would be awesome to use some fantastic glasses from these companies.

Dislikes : 

(Some of these might be as a result of the pre-production firmware which am sure will be addressed in the final model)

Very poor writing speed – when shooting raw + jpeg the writing speed is noticeably slow.

The framing guidelines in the viewfinder not really accurate.

Close focusing distance not really that great.

Badly miss the histogram feature on the LCD preview of images.

Cost !!! At $2700 for body + 35f1.4 lens its not cheap (currently Canon 5D Mark ii retails for around $2999)

Lack of availability of raw converter and the filmsy Silkypix pro is so awful to use.

Video recording just has one single frame rate selection.

Manual Focus Override – the focus ring keeps on rotating without the much needed grip for the precise manual over-ride which i prefer to use.

I did face certain issue during which the camera literally hung without responding when the Fn button on top was assigned to Video and i deactivated it to continue taking photos and this was repeatable. But from my knowledge this can be corrected in firmware and should not be a serious issue.

Thats it from my end for now to say all good and bad about this system, i have one more post scheduled for sometime later this week or next week about how a similar low light situation gets rendered by XPro1 at different ISO and how well it fares between 200 and 6400 ISO. If any of you are interested in viewing or playing around with the high resolution files corresponding to the images i have posted above, feel free to drop me a comment below or get in touch with me through the contact form in this site for further conversation.

At first i thought i will not write about this because there is already zillions of websites which are talking sense and giving a detailed explanation of new features of Photoshop Creative Suite CS6, comparison with CS5, what is suited for whom etc since yesterday morning. But considering that i have already downloaded and giving it a test spin, i thought i will just point you to a small list of features and UI changes which i definitely thought would be helpful for photographer point of view. From what i have seen till now, the improvements in CS6 gonna be welcomed by graphic artists and simillar much better than a travel/nature photographer like me. But the performance improvements does deserve a huge round of applause from my end. Below is a list of noticeable changes that i found helpful and worthwhile of of mention here.

The UI change is one of the most noticeable thing in the Photoshop CS6, the way in which the pannels are laid out on the right hand side also has underwent a change.

If you were bored about the old light gray background of the earlier version of Photoshop, the new CS6 will allow you to select 4 different varriations of gray ranging from the lightest ( the older one ) to the darkest gray.

Photoshop CS6 now supports doing basic edits in Video editing on a new Timeline feature and this is a worthwhile new feature considering that most of the photographers are now jumping into the HD-DSLR bandwagon.

The preference menu in the Photoshop CS6 now shows an additional new resizing algorithm called “Bicubic Algorithm” – am yet to get to know what exactly it does and when and where it finds more apt, but will explore more about it in coming days.

The most remarkable change in Photoshop CS6 is the “Background save” which can be activated in the preferences menu. This enables you to continue to work on your files whilst the images are undergoing save operation in background.

My most favorite change so far has been the changes to the Crop tool which had not seen any updates since ages. The crop tool now allows you to retain the cropped portion of the image in the master image, which enables you to go back at a later date if you want to do minor tweaks to the image. There is also a view option which enables you to select different overlay option. I am a huge fan of creative compositional crops and the overlay option gets a 5* from my end as it definitely makes my life more easy

A lot has been said and has been expressed about the “Content aware move tool”, am yet to explore this option too since the time i downloaded. But from a nature photographers perspective am not too supportive of this feature – i know its debatable and each one will have his/her own say about this but i would refrain from speaking further because of the negative use of such tools by nature photographers to make their images more “technically perfect or beautiful”.

Anyways thats it for now, hope you all go ahead and download the beta version and have fun exploring the new tool in the market. Having said that, you can never make a imperfect image out of a camera to a perfect masterpiece using this tool – so better get your basics right and try and get good images from the field.

Photoshop CS6 Beta download at Adobe Labs

One of my favorite resource on the web for learning > NAPP has come up with a Photoshop CS6 microsite where you can learn a lot about the new features and much more > http://www.photoshopuser.com/cs6

All thanks to some really good friends out there in my photography circle and www which brings all of us together – i was lucky enough to get a chance to play around with this beautiful little camera called “Fuji X Pro 1″ since the last couple of days. Though predominantly the images i have shot since last morning have been with regard to street photography or travel photography point of view, i spent just a small while today night to try and test its high ISO capabilities – i really gotta admit this little kid just kicks the back of every camera out there in the market in the same league. Am def not comparing this with a Pro DSLRs but for a camera of this formfactor and price tag, it really stays up to its expectation. Right at the end of this blog post i have provided download links to the high resolution files of the above collage in JPEG format for you to check it out in your computers at 100%. All the images have been shot with HIGH ISO NOISE REDUCTION = OFF and LONG EXPOSURE NOISE REDUCTION = OFF. If any of you really need to check with the raw files, do drop me a mail or put a note in the comment below and i shall make arrangements for you to download that as well. But be warned that as of today neither LR3 nor LR4 or Aperture have support for the Fuji propritary raw format.

Download the High Resolution Files here

The folks over at Craft & Vision have just launched a new addition to their fantastic ebook compilations in the form of “Forget Mugshots – 10 steps to better portraits” authored by David Duchemin. This book offers very handy insights into capturing the best travel portraits with some very easy and intutive tips. Everything from waiting for the right moment before tripping the trigger, to using the available light to the best possible extent or even the significance of eye contact. David goes on to point out some really key things which can make or break an image or make it look like a typical mugshot. When David gives the examples, he speaks words which are backed by his numerous years of experience working and shooting portraits for various organisations and clients. The ebook spanning across 35 pages and 10 chapters not only talks about the gear headed stuff but also points you to some creative exercises which can help grasp the concept faster and help the photographer in long run.

Personally i was never a people/portrait photographer especially with regard to travel photography arena, but over the year and more my liking for the portraits to document the people whom i can associate with the place which i visited has got me addicted to this genre of photography. What i have learnt and also what has been very boldly emphasized in the ebook is the apsect of photographer-subject relation before going for such an image. What is the kind of image you end up making and also how the image ends up eventually on your memory card mainly relies on how good is the aspect of photographer-subject relation and intimacy.

I highly recommend this book from Craft & Vision not for the fact that its very affordable or smaller run size – but for the sheer quality of the content which is so well packed in those 10 chapters which makes you understand the concept very easily.

Click here to view more details

Special Offer on PDFs
For the first five days only, if you use the promotional code MUGSHOTS4 when you checkout, then you can have the PDF version of Forget Mugshots: 10 Steps to Better Portraits for only $4 OR you can use the code MUGSHOTS20 to get 20% off when you buy 5+ PDF eBooks from the Craft & Vision collection. These codes expire at 11:59pm (PST) March 17, 2012.

PS: The link to the ebook purchase above and in the special offer text  are affiliate links, request you to use them in case you are planning to purchase this or any other books from Craft & Vision store.

Some more images after the jump …

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Wishing you all JTN viewers a very happy and a colorful holi celebration and a very happy women’s day

The above portrait of a fisherman from Andaman islands was shot near a place called Chidiyatapu. Whats so different or special about the image is that I didnt ask the guy to pose for me nor did i take a candid image of his. The technique what i used here ( which obviously is not so great or new ) is the one which my buddy Ashwin thought me during a shoot sometime last year. Basically when we are out shooting travel stuff in villages or architectural areas etc we often try to go for the candid or staged approach. But very often we have few people who keep stalking the photographers and when the photographer is busy chimping the images then they come forward to ask “sir – take my photo also”. Unlike the staged photos the photos what you get from such characters are what will make the subject look very natural and relaxed. The person doesnt show any sort of consciousness and shyness or anything in front of the camera – and these are the type of people who make you get some keeper casual images from the shoot. All that i asked him to do in this situation was to ask him to stand in a shade of the tea stall and make the bright afternoon light hitting on the rocks outside get reflected on his face for that slight glow. For the processing bit of the image i tried to experiment on the high-pass-filter sharpening technique instead of the smart sharpening which i generally use on top of the image which i had converted to B&W using Nik Silver Efex Pro. Hope you liked the image, and next time you are around in a place shooting something and a localite comes and asks you to take their photo go ahead and capitalize on the opportunity. But be warned that at some places people intentionally come and ask you to take their photos so that they can earn a penny or two from you for allowing you to take their photos – i have seen such things in religious places – so be wary of them.

The SPEED meets QUALITY and the legend is re-incarnated and get christened as “Canon 5D Mark III”

Yes, just when the world was drooling at one end and at the other end ranting over the 36MP Nikon’s D800 launch just few days back (with my own version too), and all the speculations about delay in shipping of Nikon D4 and Canon 1DX – Canon has re-incarnated the legendary 5D series with host of new features and showed it the light after weeks of speculation of wild sightings of a camera which people thought would be merger of 5D and 7D line. Though Canon “for now/in this launch” has not went ahead with showcasing a higher megapixel sensor to compete with the Nikon D800, but this for sure has all that and more to raise the eye brows and show where Canon really sits in this market segment and how keen they are for the end quality and performance.

A very brief overview of the main features which are def worth a mention are ..

Unsurpassed Image Quality
22.3 Megapixel Full Frame CMOS sensor
DiG!C 5+ Image Processor
ISO 100-25600 (expandable to L:50 H1:51200, H2: 102400
Full HD Movie (ISO 100-12800 (H:25600)

High Performance Operation
61-point high-density reticular AF (up to 41 crosstype points)
6.0 fps for high continuous shooting
Intelligent viewfinder with approx. 100% coverage
3.2-type, approx.1.04m dot (3:2 wide) Clear View LCD II
iFCL metering with 63-zone dual-layer sensor
Shutter durability of 150,000 cycles

High end features
Silent & low vibration modes
Dual card slots (CF & SD)
High Dynamic Range (HDR) Mode
Multiple Exposures
Comparative Playback function
Improved durability & water and dust resistance

General Specifications
Available Colours – Black
Megapixels – 22MP
Sensor Size – 36 x 24mm
ISO/Sensitivity – 100 – 25600
Autofocus Points – 61 points
Lens Mount – Canon
LCD Size – 3.2?
Liveview – Yes
Viewfinder – Optical TTL
Min Shutter Speed – 30 sec
Max Shutter Speed – 1/8000 sec
Continuous Shooting Speed – 6 fps
Self Timer – 10 sec, 2 sec
Metering – Centre-weighted, Spot, Evaluative, Partial
Video Resolution – Full HD 1080
Memory Type – Compact Flash
Connectivity – USB 2, HDMI, Mic Input, Wireless (optional)
Battery – LP-E6
Battery Type – Lithium-ion
Charger – Includes Li-Ion Charger
File Formats – AVI, RAW, H.264, MOV, MPEG-4
Dimensions – 152 x 116 x 76mm

Whats worthwhile here to note is the retaining of the 22MP sensor capacity and not to bombard the sensor with more megapixels. But the autofocus and the fps improvements are what makes this a huge leap from the handicapped version we had in past. The camera also features the new Digi 5+ processor which is the brain behind all the activities that this small beast is capable of doing. Dual card slot is a thing which is most welcome but why not the same card format instead of one SD and one CF is my question ! Finally Canon brings in Multiple Exposure and in camera HDR through this camera. The 2 stops improvements in the ISO def comes as ahuge plus to the people who fancy shooting in low light and people doing astro timelapse and night photography. Along with the Canon 5D Mark3, Canon also clubbed along the release of the new BG-E11 battery grip and also the upgrade high end flash in form of Canon 600EX.

At a stated launch price of $3500 this is not a easy candy to grab, but sure the street price of the camera will drop once its fully inside the market and people have spoken enough of good and bad about it. Though at 1/3rd the cost, this is no where a lower end Canon C300, but for sure it has capacity and if landed in the right hands with right techniques can surpass the IQ of what higher end cameras in the market can produce.

So its just matter of time when we will start seeing all the photogs and cinematographers churn out gigabytes of images and footages using Canon 5D Mark III and Nikon D800 – and those will stand a testimony for what we have in store for the next few years for sure.

If all that above tempts you B&H seems to have opened the pre-order already > Canon 5D Mark III @ B&H

Until next time – Happy clicking & dont forget – “the best cam is still the one with you”.

*What the world says*

Vincent Laforet on the Canon 5D Mark III

Hands on with the Canon 5D Mark III by Planet 5D – specs outside the press release

Comparison of 5D Mark II, 5D Mark III and Nikon D800 by Planet 5D

This is how it sounds, the Canon 5D Mark III shutter at 6fps

Engadget’s coverage if Canon 5D Mark III

PDN Pulse have their hands at the Canon 5D Mark III too

Canon 5D Mark III Sample videos and images at Canon Professional Network

On other hand – Looks like Nikon PR guys are getting into some trouble with the usage of Terje Sorgjerd‘ 5D Mark II video clips to promote their Nikon D00

-SK

Over this past week, I came across 2 new ventures of different kind coming to light and both directly/indirectly related to photography and proud to say that I have some close friends in both these ventures and for these are going to be big names in future for sure. Saevus & Conservation India are the two that am talking about.

Firstly Saevus (http://www.saevus.in), its a print magazine mainly connected with Photography and Natural history from India. For a country which was saturated and dominated by magazines who had less respect for photographer’s work and defined what underpaidwork is all about, this comes in as a very good change and also considering the quality consciousness the magazine editors have set a bench mark as. Their mission statement says it all – “to create a magazine and web portal which will feature exclusive wildlife photography and natural history reportage. With unique content by photographers and naturalists from India and abroad, the magazine aspires to set a benchmark in this space“. The magazine has one of the best photography related backbones in the form of Dhritiman Mukherjee & Ganesh H Shankar – both of them need no separate introduction. Saevus was launched officially this last weekend at LRK, Gujrat and has got some really good response from the people already. They are now officially open for subscription with the first issue hitting the stands by first week or march and you can get in subscribe the magazine using their facebook page > https://www.facebook.com/SaevusNature. They are also accepting images and stories under various categories which can be found here > http://saevus.in/Saevus_contribute.php

Saevus Twitter > http://twitter.com/Saevus_Wildlife

Saevus Facebook > https://www.facebook.com/SaevusNature

Secondly, Conservation India (http://www.conservationindia.org) – a beautifully crafted platform for all the conservation initiatives in the field of Nature and Wildlife in India. As they say – “CI is a non-profit, non-commercial portal that aims to facilitate wildlife and nature conservation by providing reliable information and the tools needed to campaign effectively.” they have a content and contacts to look out for. Started off by Ramki Sreenivasan and Shekar Dattari – CI will head out to be a good one stop platform to report and read about the various Conservation issues concerning our country. As a conservation biologist or a field expert one can contribute articles, essays etc or if you are a photographer you can contribute images which require conservation attention. You can get in touch with them through their mail > info<at>conservationindia<dot>org

CI Twitter > http://twitter.com/conserve_ind

CI Facebook > https://www.facebook.com/Conservation-India

JTN wishes both of them a very good luck.

Allright, now that you have read the title of this post and seen the image, I want you to quickly grab your wallet and pull out the Rs. 20/- note from it and flip it and look at the photo on the back side of the note. Shocked ? Surprised ? atleast i was when i visited Andaman islands late last year when i saw this first. During the first couple of days of local travel within and around the main Portblair city, my guide/driver took me to this place to show the exact frame which is behind the Rs. 20 note. This exact scene can be witnessed when you are on your way to Mt Harriot and there is one small opening which gives the exact view. The island what you see on the far end is the North Bay Island / Coral Island which is a very well know tourist place in Andaman island especially for the ease at which you can see the corals and carry out a round of snorkeling. I personally have no reference or pointers to how exactly the person who designed the note decided to include this frame behind the note, but nevertheless once you relate such things which you see in your day2day transactions and relate it to something within nature – it really brings out a nice smile.

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