The first two pics are of a folk musician from Rajasthan and his lovely daughter, Manju! I did a bad job with the background in the 1st pic, by using Av mode f/4, since the girl was standing under a tree and in front of a wall, which is creating that distracting background. But, the man was a li'l taller and I didnt have problem with the tree / wall behind them. f/4 was gud enuf :-)

For the third pic, which is an indoor shot, the lighting was meagre and background was too bright. So, I turned to manual mode, with f/5 and 1/6s, using a tripod. Finally, I guess the pic came out a li'l blurry coz of the higher exposure time and bad focusing.

Fourth pic is another Av mode f/3.5 handheld shot, but with ISO-800 to bring the exposure time down to 1/30s. Raj Kumar ji is a gr8 fan of old Hindi films and or music and detests the newer one :-) Doesnt it show in his style? :-)

This is a huge spider web, completely covering couple of shrubs,  spotted near Maddur. All pics are taken against the sun, in Av mode @ f/20 using the 18-55mm EF-S lens. I was using partial metering and coz of the differences in the frame, camera returned different exposure times, 1/1600s for the 1st one, 1/4000s for the 2nd and 1/400s for the 3rd.

These are some pictures from the beautiful Kuruva Island in Wayanad, Kerala.

The first pic is taken with  the 18-55mm EF-S lens mounted on a tripod. Lens was fitted with two 3-stop ND filters (to achieve a longer exposure) and a 2-stop Graduated ND filter (to correct the extra brightness in the top part of the pic). The filters allowed an exposure time of 1.3s @ f/32 in Av mode.

The second pic - the tree branch and its reflection - is using the 180mm EF-L lens @ Av mode f/3.5 for this. The third pic of the bamboos is again using the 18-55 EF-S @ f/4.5 Av mode, with a +1.3step exposure compensation and 1/40s.

These are some picures taken en route Pakshipathalam in the Brahmagiri ranges. All are hand held pics in bright day light, taken in Av mode.

The 1st pic is of the far away hill ranges (I guess the ones around Chembra in Wayanad ranges) taken using the 18-55mm EF-S lens, fitted with a 0.6 Graduated ND filter @ 34mm, f/4.5 and 1/800s.

The remaining pics are taken around Pakshipathalam, all @ f/5 and Av mode, using the 180mm EF-L lens. 

Btw ... the two parallel lines in the last pic is the Kerala - Karnataka border. The tree is in Kerala :-) Grass is burnt between the lines, which I assume is also to control forest fire.

Some macro pics, from a trek to Pakshipathalam in Brahmagiri ranges, taken with the 180 macro EF-L lens.

The first pic is of an insect which has this unique talent of walking in the water! Am not sure what its really called, but let me call it a floater! The pic is taken @ Av mode f/3.5, the widest I can have. In hindsight, I didnt get the whole creature focused and a thinner aperture may have made sense. On the other side, 1/50s with that heavy lens is already bordering on a shaky picture :(

For the second pic, I actually wanted the edge of the leaves to go blurry and f/3.5 was an obvious choice, though I had enough light to play with. For the 3rd and 4th pics, I chose f/8 and still had decent light for 1/100s and 1/500s each.

In the first pic, the vase is kept on the entrance to a dark room, with bright sunlight outside. The pic is taken from inside, facing the light. Since, there is a huge difference between the outside light and the light falling on the vase, the background looks completely white. Needed manual mode (f/3.5 and 1/125) to give the correct exposure to the vase.

I thought of trying this out after seeing a pic from Sathya, which is quite a master piece :-) Did try taking a few pics with pure white back ground including my own :-) A tip for more complicated subjects is that you can always use a white cloth to cover up other objects near you - like say a chair you are sitting on! The cloth will not show up! I am not posting my own pic here, instead I'll repeat the session with a more interesting subject :-)

The 2nd pic is quite the opposite, taken from outside with a dark room as background! This time, Av mode was enough with 1/80s and f/3.5.

Few more portraits - the first one is taken with a dark room as backdrop to get the black background. Uncle had just done an eye operation and that explains the sun glasses!

The second one is taken when we were waiting for our turn to take the boat ride @ Ranganathittu bird sanctuary. I could not ignore the way he was looking in to the lake with the kid in his hands. A moment later, the kid turned towards us and that makes the 3rd pic :-)

Posting some pics taken @ the Ranganathittu bird sanctuary, near Mysuru.

This was the first time I actually had a lens which resembles a tele photo! Though, the new acquisition, EF-L 180mm, is mainly a macro lens, I was looking forward to use it as a tele photo as well. With a focus limiting switch (from 1.5m - infinity) its a decent lens for tele photo and birds. Atleast the best compromise I could have till there is enough green bills to acquire a proper tele photo (lets say, the EF 400mm f/5.6L USM!).

So, here I am chasing pigeons with this lens, first at the roof top of a building and later near the high court. Well, the experiences at the high court premises were not that good. First of all, I still have a lot to learn in chasing moving subjects and 180mm is ofcourse not good enough to get close enough to the birds. To top all this, the watchman shouted at us for getting in to the lawn :( and we had to leave!

Dont think the parameters were any important. I used the max aperture width (f/3.5) and Av mode for all three pics. For the pic of the flying birds, may be a shorter exposure could have made sense. But then, I was already @ the maximum shutter width of f/3.5. Yes, a higher ISO would have played the trick.

 Some pics to welcome Year 2008 and also the new acquisition - Canon EF-L 180mm life size macro lens!

The digits are made of golden colored toffee wrappers, thanks to a certain skilled hands :-) For the record, the pics are in Av mode, f/5.6 (a touch wider after reviewing the pics in the comp full size), during night. @ ISO-100 I needed a tripod and exposures of 8s and 1.6s each.