Saturday, July 18, 2009

Rebooting with W80

Whoa! When was it that i scribbled something on this blog? Seems ages. Lets simply blame my laziness and brush it under the carpet.

My tryst with Digital Photography began around a year back in December. My first Camera was - well, "was" because it no longer exists with me.

So my First Camera was a nice Ultra Compact Sony Cybershot DSC W80 - a 7.2MP, 3X zoom. I am sure more serious enthusiasts would wish I was more precise in the Focal range than simply saying 3X. The fact is, I never knew about it when I had the digicam or about its use. The focal range and aperture range etched on the lens barrel never aroused much interest since the camera was a completly automatic. I remember visiting help sites like http://www.dpreview.com for information on DOF, aperture, shutter speed, metering etc but since I never could put many of them to use in the W80 camera, they simply became jargon.

The camera functioned industriously calculating and metering successfully the scene and giving me comfortable ShutterSpeed-aperture value settings. I simply played with the ISO, to some extent the focal range like 1m,3m,5m and infinity and meter choice ie. matrix, centre and spot.

My knowledge about general rules in photography was limited to Rule of thirds and composition and a few others. Still, some pics came exceptionally well. Lets just say, the camera, light conditions and luck came together nicely. Macro was my favourite and I had a serious fetish for insect macro photography. Some of my macros suffered from highlight blown up and over exposure but some came exceptionally well.

The W80 suffered the usual common minimal defects like purple fringing in bright edges/corners, little barreling but not much to create trouble. The pictures were always sharp (almost) in normal light scenes. The image stabiliser was exceptionally effective and the flash did wonders. Under dim light, the situations were never easy. I found it exceptionally troublesome to extract good average pictures in National auditorium under pitch darkness during the annual College festival. Being on the last row, with occasional on-stage light made things worse. Long Focal length, pitch darkness and no tripod meant the pics were dismal. However the camera excelled under the Sun giving nice pics.

Unfortunately, the Golden run ended soon as the camera got stolen. Only the pics were left with me. The W80 didnt make me realise the av-tv-dof things but left a deep unsatisfied passion for photography.

These are my favourites from the W80.


This was taken in Goa during the BE Final year class unofficial trip to Goa.


Goan Flamingoes in actionWell this is luck and prompt clicking which gave this shot. However the expressions are something one has no control in. It comes naturally.

Triprayar Temple at left river bank

This was clicked in Kerala on my previous visit. My aim was to capture the flowing river diagonally to the maximum I can with the temple on its bank. The boat was unexpected but adds to the beauty.

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