Cormorant

 

Flowerpecker

 

Barbets

 

Sri Ganesh

मुदाकरात्तमोदकं सदा विमुक्तिसाधकं 

कलाधरावतंसकं विलासिलोकरक्षकम् । 

अनायकैकनायकं विनाशितेभदैत्यकं 

नताशुभाशुनाशकं नमामि तं विनायकम् ॥१॥

Moon

In Memoriam: Summer 2017

Grey Catbird

New to my yard, as far as I can remember. I believe it is a grey catbird.

Photography: DSLR versus smartphone

As someone upgrading from Canon's 5D2 DSLR to its latest and greatest 5D4, it behooves me to think about whether I'm spending my money wisely.

The truth is that smartphone cameras are indeed very good. Arstechnica has a good recent shootout.  Their conclusion:

Ultimately, the winner here is the smartphone, not the DSLR. The DSLR triumphs technically, and it will produce better images under almost any circumstance, but it’s just hella hard to stack it against the iPhone’s portability and "good enough"-ness.

Is the smartphone better? No. The DSLR and its lenses, even in my unskilled hands, produce higher-quality images, period. They’re higher resolution, and they contain more detail. It’s impossible for the iPhone’s little 8.5mm-ish sensor to grab as many photons as the DSLR’s big 35mm full-frame sensor. The DSLR wins every time, and the iPhone’s output, while good, isn’t as good.

But that’s the thing: the smartphone may not produce the same massive, high-detail 22MP images as the full-frame DSLR, but the smartphone does manage to be good enough.

Remember also that it matters on what medium you are going to display your photographs.  The difference in quality between DSLR and smartphone cameras is less perceptible in typical web-sized photograph or on a tiny screen,  but will be visible on a large screen or in a large print.

From my perspective, it is not an "either-or" situation, the smartphone camera and DSLR are two different tools and my purposes are best met by having both.  There are pictures a DSLR will never take because it wasn't possible to carry it to the scene; and there are pictures a smartphone is simply incapable of taking.

Fall

Photographers?

This was too funny to forget:
Man with DSLR turns out to be a real photographer, IT industry shocked

Begins:

Bangalore. In a shockingly bizarre incident, a man with a DSLR, multiple lenses, and some very expensive camera gear was found to be an actual photographer, and not some IT engineer.

It should be noted that usually people with high end DSLR cameras are thoroughly bored-with-job engineers, desperately trying to find an alternate career in wildlife photography by capturing bored expressions of the wild animals and birds in a local zoo. They also use this passion to indulge in blatant voyeurism by clicking bikini clad women at beaches and passing them off as “candid portraits” on Facebook in hopes of a million “likes”.

Which is why the league of bored IT engineers were alarmed when a real photographer without any connection to the IT industry was found.

Magnolia

This magnolia is at the edge of my lot; the backdrop is my neighbors'.  My lawn is nowhere as green.  The yellow bush in the background is Forsythia.  It grows rapidly and requires frequent pruning and so I don't have any.  It, like the magnolia, flowers for a couple of weeks in the spring.

Daffodils

Unlike last year when the weather (I think) confused them, the daffodils are much better this year.

Spring is here!

If the crocuses are blooming, spring must be here - even if it doesn't feel that way with the cold weather.

These are from a couple of days ago:

At the bird feeder

This morning!

March snow.

Canon 5D3 watch

(May 1 - update)
(April 20 - update)
(April 4 - update)
(April 3 - update)
(March 29 - updates and update)
The last 17K+ photographs in my Lightroom library have this distribution of ISOs—more than 50% of them are at greater than ISO 800.



Therefore the Canon 5d3, which takes usable ISOs into the stratosphere is of interest to me. Not that I'm buying it any time soon, but since I'm watching it, might as well gather useful information here.

Shri Dakshinamurti

@Arsha Vidya Gurukulam, Saylorburg, PA.

Sky at 600mm

300mm + x2

I think this is Jupiter.

Sneak Peek at Adobe's Image Deblurring

Rajan Parrikar sent this my way:
http://tv.adobe.com/watch/max-2011-sneak-peeks/max-2011-sneak-peek-image-deblurring/

The danger of wildlife in my backyard

The danger of having wildlife around mainly comes from humans. I will explain this in a few easy steps.

1. The wildlife - there's deer of course, and now turkeys