Yet another effort to capture the ghost trails ... this time in inner ring road, Bengaluru:

Atleast this time I realized that, rather than using a very low 'f' value like f/32 to ensure better focus, it may be better to use something like f/6.3 and get clean red lines in a shorter time (about 10seconds). When the exposure was abt 2minutes, as I did last time, the trails get smudged and dirty. This time, with a lower exposure time, it was cleaner and clearer thick lines. Guess ... I need more experiments .. sigh!!!

I have had a pic before, trying to do the same. I guess, a stronger light (full headlight minus high beam), less bumpy road and a better camera/lens, had made the beam kinda straight. I used f/8 for this pic, about 12-13 seconds to expose the Versa staying still and a total of 18 seconds, including the motion capture. Earlier, I had tried f/6.3 and the beam looked a bit too strong.

A cute dog found in Cubbon Park, Bengaluru:

I had attempted to take the ghost trails of vehicles numerous times ... and has not got it to my satisfaction till date.

Here is the results of one more experiment ... this time from the top of Airport Road flyover, Bengaluru. The first pic is the view towards the Airport from the top of the flyover with a 30 second exposure @ f/32. There was a lamp post, coming right in the middle of the pic and spoiling it ... so I had to crop it :-(

The second one is from the ramp while coming from inner ring road and looking towards Indiranagar. f/32 again with a 154 seconds exposure. What I liked in this pic is the light coming from the lamp post with that elongated spokes looking like stars. The ghost trails itself is a little over exposed and could have been better off from somewhere a little higher and away from those high beams. I did try to cover up the lens whenever a high beam shows up in the horizon but there were too many of them to effectively do this!

Here are two more pics taken @ Honey Valley, near Thadiyandamol:

These pictures are essentially straight forward. Keep both the subjects as close as possible to the camera, leave a bit of distance between the two subjects so that one of them will be out of focus and the other one in focus, open the lens as much as possible, focus on one of the subjects and click. Thats all!

The difference in focus between the two subjects increases almost exponentially with their relative distances from the camera.

These are some macro shots taken during a Thadiyandamol Trek:

Earlier, I've hardly used any ISO value other than the minimal one offered by the camera. In S2IS, it was ISO-50 and with EOS 400D it is ISO-100. Infact, I felt that EOS 400D should also have had an ISO-50. If not for higher clarity, it should have helped me to get longer exposures / wider shutter in some cases.

Well ... I did try out the higher ISO settings in EOS400D and the results were more than satisfactory. Even at ISO-1600, during indoor low light conditions, the camera gave me decent pictures, like the one here. Ofcourse, when u zoom into the picture on ur monitor, one can make out the unwanted grains. But, how does it matter when all u plan to do is resize the picture (to say 900 x 600) and send it over to friends by email? Higher ISO in some conditions make some on-existent photography conditions possible, like say, taking people's picture, inside the house, after 6. Especially, if u r the kind who doesnt like to use the popup flash, bumping up the ISO settings is not really a bad idea.

These pics are taken when Adarsh and I decided on a weekend evening to take a look at the Halasuru (Ulsoor) Lake. The first pic comes from near the Park, looking at the street light reflections (f/8 and 30second exposure) and the second one is the reflection of the Philips building onto the lake (f/4, 3.2seconds).

Just thought this mite be a rather interesting pic with a very low of Depth of Focus.

The first pic is a good example of how a normal looking frame can be spoiled by wrong metering. With a bright afternoon sky in the background, the camera will always report a lower exposure thereby giving a dark image of the palace. It is there by necessary to either go to partial metering mode or to increase the exposure manually to make sure that the subject is not under-exposed. In this pic, I had used 1/200s, 4 times more than what was suggested by the camera.

With Dasara around the corner, the palace was expected to come up with bright lighting around it. This particular pic was taken with just the initial lighting with a high exposure (f/16, 10s). I was expecting the lower shutter width will give me a good enough DOF to cover the entire range and also to compensate any mistakes of focusing in the dark.

Once the lights were on at 7PM, I frantically tried a lot of pics in different angles and distances but was found wanting with my 18-55mm EF-S lens unable to give me a full view of the palace. Finally after I packed up the tripod and was walking back, I realized that the whole palace can be covered if I tried from an angle! And here it is ... this pic was actually taken in a hurry @ 18mm, f/22, 6second exposure.

Canon has a very useful mode of operation called A-Dep, where the camera will choose the 'f' value small enough to make sure all the nine AF points are in focus (and subsequently an exposure time suitable for this 'f'). This mode can give a fair idea of Depth of Focus when u r in doubt.

It may be desirable to try different values around the camera suggested 'f' value to get the optimal results. But, A-Dep gives a way to quickly approximate the required 'f' value.

One thing to remember here is that, if any of the AF points fall out of the subject (lets say to a far away object), the calculation can go really wrong. If this happens, most of the times, camera will end up with something like f/32 or flash saying, it could not find any proper 'f' value. Result may be a pic with a lot of distractions and / or blurring due to higher exposure value.

All three pics were taken with A-Dep or in Av using an 'f' value close to the one suggested. First flower pic had f/5.6, the 'yogini' pic had f/7.1 and the aster and bee pic had f/18.