tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-48945519814968589942012-01-23T02:20:02.112-06:00Welcome to ShutterShocks!! A place where I share my experiences in exploring the most interesting laws of physics to capture a visual treat for myself & others.Aakash Vakilhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09747850831871435286noreply@blogger.comBlogger201100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4894551981496858994.post-47086751182726295942011-12-14T21:00:00.001-06:002011-12-14T21:00:49.419-06:00

Lately, there have been so many people out there buying DSLR cameras. Some are trading up from a point and shoot and some are first time buyers of proper camera. Overall, I like that and consider it to be a good trend for the hobby photographer community. What I don't like is that many people hold their expensive cameras like they are holding a small compact point and shoot. That needs

Aakash Vakilhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09747850831871435286noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4894551981496858994.post-18169304534988875802011-04-23T11:25:00.000-05:002011-04-23T11:25:21.471-05:00

Have you ever experienced that when you see your pictures on your laptop they look good but they don't quite look the same on your friends laptops. Some of them are too bright with blowout details while some are just too dark. When we process our pictures on our laptop screen, it's angle affects the color hue, saturation (to some extent), and mainly brightness of an image. You adjust the

Aakash Vakilhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09747850831871435286noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4894551981496858994.post-68469062661721722212011-01-17T19:55:00.000-06:002011-01-17T19:55:02.052-06:00

Houston, we have a problem: I had to download some 300 odd videos from a particular channel in YouTube in MP4 so that they can be loaded on my iPod One option was to install a Firefox add on that downloads videos - but that's one video at a time. Pretty painful when you have 300 recipes to download (no matter how tasty the final product may be). While searching for a better solution, I found

Aakash Vakilhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09747850831871435286noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4894551981496858994.post-71678510139943742052009-07-08T09:32:00.005-05:002009-07-08T09:44:57.519-05:00

I finally bought an external HDD - Seagate Free Agent GO 320 GB. Its a classy little device - fits nicely in my bag. I got it for INR3400/- from Plug n Play, Lamington Road, Mumbai. It came with a 2 year warranty and a auto sync software.It got detected on my office machine which is a Dell D630 which runs Microsoft Vista. Now since I have Ubuntu Linux at my home, I could not use this out of box.

Aakash Vakilhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09747850831871435286noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4894551981496858994.post-80441620138572954272009-03-24T12:27:00.007-05:002009-03-24T12:53:12.392-05:00

Have you seen those mobile phone pictures in magazines and newspapers? Like these two here:http://www.techgadgets.in/images/sony-ericsson-mobile-phones.jpghttp://www.thelatestone.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/sony-ericsson-c903-cybershot.jpgAs you can see, both these picture display the phone's shape very clearly and also the illumination in the screen and keypad. There are two illuminated areas

Aakash Vakilhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09747850831871435286noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4894551981496858994.post-64218492083996144132009-02-01T11:56:00.009-06:002009-02-02T02:38:45.199-06:00

br /><!--[if gte mso 9]> Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 <![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]> <![endif]--> <!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:Verdana; panose-1:2 11 6 4 3 5 4 4 2 4; mso-font-alt:" Arial"; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:swiss; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:

Aakash Vakilhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09747850831871435286noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4894551981496858994.post-16956401787849810612008-10-31T10:32:00.011-05:002008-10-31T11:17:33.949-05:00

I shoot a lot of staged shots so the number of clicks is always like 5 or less.On my home machine, I have Ubuntu Linux 8.04LTS which recognizes my camera and lets me copy paste RAW images without any fuss what so ever. No driver no proprietary software. Just the default F-spot image manager works like a charm.So when number of shots were less and Ubuntu recognized the camera, I pretty much used

Aakash Vakilhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09747850831871435286noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4894551981496858994.post-60886450301295593652008-09-26T11:34:00.021-05:002008-09-26T12:23:15.352-05:00

My cousin recently came back from Kashmir and Simla annual vacation. Needless to say, armed with the latest digital camera, she came back with tons of pictures and was excited to show them to us.I had seen pictures of Kashmir in magazines and television with it's snow capped mountain peaks, beautiful landscapes covered with snow, children playing in white fluffy snow, and pristine crystal clear

Aakash Vakilhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09747850831871435286noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4894551981496858994.post-68638220362333708822008-07-08T07:35:00.008-05:002008-07-09T02:36:10.043-05:00

Okay, it's not a loop hole technically from Flickr side, but from a photographer's point of view, it's a breach of trust. Let me give you a background information on why such harsh words for such a nice website which I love so much.Flickr exposes it's API (Application Programming Interface) which is quite simply a set of computer methods which allows a programmer to write applications that pull

Aakash Vakilhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09747850831871435286noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4894551981496858994.post-79697233780027356432008-06-29T08:21:00.009-05:002008-06-29T09:34:21.074-05:00

It's monsoon season and my picture clicking is a bit slow as I don't want to take my beloved 350D out in rains. So spending a lot of time thinking about my post process work flows, thinking about the changes I want to make, and a lot of reading about how other photographers are working.I am pretty amused at how many photographers have started using alternatives to commercial softwares - mainly to

Aakash Vakilhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09747850831871435286noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4894551981496858994.post-20099724332238595712008-05-02T05:37:00.012-05:002008-05-02T07:16:05.608-05:00

After working in IT & consulting firms in Mumbai for last 8 years or so, I have realized a few things about the psyche of the folks working here:<?xml:namespace prefix = o />We believe that:- Parties / Outings = Going to a pub or five star hotel and boozing through out the weekend- Adventure = Watching Cricket- Extreme Adventure = Playing CricketToday’s metro based professional white collar

Aakash Vakilhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09747850831871435286noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4894551981496858994.post-64732462011138670382008-03-23T08:57:00.007-05:002008-03-29T01:41:42.338-05:00

I recently visited a museum and learnt about a new technique know as the “Diorama” technique. Simply put, it is about creating illusion!! Sounds interesting? Okay, but before we go further, have a look at the pictures below and try to identify what is common in them. Yes, you are correct…..they all show the monuments, trees and other objects shot

Aakash Vakilhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09747850831871435286noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4894551981496858994.post-83095855620708625362008-01-13T23:33:00.001-06:002008-03-23T09:01:24.667-05:00

This article assumes that the reader is familiar with: - Concept of White Balance (WB) - Concept of how camera reads color temperature. - Usage of cameras built in white balance settings This entry describes my experiments with in-built white balance settings and custom white balance setting. So here we go… I have read in various articles that a photographer should always select white balance

Aakash Vakilhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09747850831871435286noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4894551981496858994.post-45728179167760970812008-01-01T01:49:00.000-06:002008-01-02T08:15:01.486-06:00

The 50mm prime lens is one of the best prime lens available today and most of the lens manufacturers have this on offering. Canon provides three flavors for the 50mm:50mm f/1.0 50mm f/1.4 50mm f/1.8I have the 50mm f/1.8 which in terms of the price is the cheapest. However, it is no cheap performer. The results are quite impressive and professional.The major difference in all the three variants is

Aakash Vakilhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09747850831871435286noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4894551981496858994.post-33381284357301347982007-11-14T09:24:00.000-06:002007-11-15T05:29:13.952-06:00

In the last week of October this year, we went for a weekend outing to a silent and lazy beach town of "Bordi" around 100 KMs off Mumbai in Gujarat on the "Gujarat-Maharastra Border". We reached Bordi from Mumbai in 2.5 - 3 hours by taking a train from Borivali up to Dahanu and then covered the 15KMs stretch of Dahanu - Bordi in auto-rickshaw. We reached Bordi MTDC Beach Resort at 8.30 AM and

Aakash Vakilhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09747850831871435286noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4894551981496858994.post-70935267231473536502007-11-12T23:13:00.000-06:002007-11-15T10:23:57.153-06:00

The latest and greatest feature that all camera manufacturers are up selling is the "Face Detection" technology. It's available in most of the new compacts and must say - it is impressive.One of my friends recently bought "Canon 950 IXUS" which comes with the "Face Detection" technology. We tested it and it works very well. We were pretty amazed and being IT people, started asking ourselves - "

Aakash Vakilhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09747850831871435286noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4894551981496858994.post-91588278993650861082007-11-05T23:05:00.000-06:002007-11-12T03:48:14.472-06:00

You are on a beach with your latest camera (of course !!) and taking lots of pictures of the beach, your friends, sunset and trees...You have been following all the instructions your dealer gave you - "switch on, point to subject and shoot" and the results have been quite nice for all the pictures you have taken.You followed all the above steps today too, but to your astonishment, the pictures

Aakash Vakilhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09747850831871435286noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4894551981496858994.post-8105471237569319792007-10-06T00:13:00.000-05:002007-10-11T05:54:52.324-05:00

How many times have we tried to take picture of that beautiful monument dazzling with lights and shining in the moon light at night only to find the results quite mediocre; often blurred images which are either under exposed or blown out.Photography at night is a very interesting and special form of photography that needs some understanding of (1) your photo gear and (2) some simple laws of

Aakash Vakilhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09747850831871435286noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4894551981496858994.post-81026147019335213942007-10-02T00:54:00.000-05:002007-10-11T05:54:28.507-05:00

How many times have we taken indoor available light shots of small objects and found that some part of object is correctly exposed, but some part has been covered by shadows? This normally happens if you are shooting in existing light coming from one side - possibly a window.Using a reflector is the best way to make sure that the object is illuminated by direct light as well as shadows are

Aakash Vakilhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09747850831871435286noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4894551981496858994.post-13479899186457049392007-09-28T06:27:00.000-05:002007-10-11T05:53:59.806-05:00

I used a Olympus D560 Point & Shoot until I got a Canon 350D / Rebel XT a month ago. The 350D is a very nice camera and has some awesome features. I have been able to take pictures that I could never ever think of capturing using my Olympus D560 Zoom.I have experimented with low light subjects, used super slow shutter speeds and controlled the depth of field using manual controls. I could have

Aakash Vakilhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09747850831871435286noreply@blogger.com0