What are the black spots on my pictures ?

Well, if you happen to have a Digital SLR camera you ought to come across this problem once in a while. It’s one of the curses of having Digital SLR’s.

I recently had a wonderful road trip to Smoky Mountains in Tennessee, I was all excited to get the sunrise and the breathtaking mountain landscape pictures of Smoky mountains. So there I was early in the morning to get the early sunlight, I merrily took pictures of mountains and valleys only to discover that they has 3-4 evident dark spots on

Them. This really pissed me off as I am damn peculiar about sharpness and clarity of my pictures, and hate to retouch them using software. I might as well stay on the field and take few extra shots than to sit behind the computer screen retouching it.

The Problem: It appears that when I took pictures with greater f-stops generally f/22 the two dark spots were evident. At lower f-stops they were not that evident.

Cause: The culprit was dust. Before going to the road trip I had opened up the camera and cleaned the lens during that period the dust might have found its way into the camera body and on my CCD sensor. I freaked out and started looking on the internet to find something to clean the CCD sensor, as you might have guessed nothing cheaper showed up ! I found some instructions which described how to get rid of dust spots using a simple camera brush blower and that helped me, hope it helps you too.

What you need: A brush blower and a clean room.

Procedure: Latch your camera or put it in a cleaning mode ( you might want to refer to the camera manual to know how this is done )

Slowly remove the lens, you should be able to see the CCD sensor as the mirror is lifted up. Tilt the camera body downwards so that the dust does not settle down on the CCD sensor. Then slowly blow the air using the brush blower ( the brush can be detached from blower which makes it more effective). Make sure you do not touch the sensor. Try to cover as much area as you can. After cleaning put the lens back on the camera and take test shots to see whether it worked or not.

How to test ?

It’s simple to reproduce the annoying dust dots. Focus your lens on any plain white surface, try to make f-stop as larger as possible, I kept it f/22. Put everything out of focus so that it is easy to spot the dust particles. Shake the camera deliberately to get rid of any pattern. You should be able to spot the evil dust after you develop the picture.

In the deep dark woods I shall go,

to find the river that I know.

And free myself of all ill deeds,

and wash myself crystal clean.

As pure as newborn’s twinkling eyes,

as fresh as new dawn’s light in sky.

To find a place my friend I shall leave,

to seek for comfort, peace and freewill .

On my way I shall see, crooked trees and shallow seas,

deserts burning human skin, mountains pristine snow clad peaks.

I do not know when I will be back,

To neon lights and concrete skies.

Find me in the starry skies on a cold winter night

In the wilderness of open space, I will be falling from the grace.

-srm

Musing

Time flies, there are good times and there are bad times. What really distinguishes between good time and bad time ? nothing much, its just your brain and the way it interprets the tiny electrical signals produced by certain chemicals generated by our physical body as a response to our emotional behavior. Please stay with me reader ! Lately I discovered an interesting thing about myself, I discovered I was being too materialistic.

Due to some unfortunate reason I had to pack my bags and move all over the place like a nomad, which ate up all my savings and my energy. I was stripped ! what I experienced was truly amazing. I experienced freedom, now that I am at the bottom I have no where to go but to go up. I felt like I got everything, I got my personal time. Even though I was unemployed with uncertain future, I had my own time to ponder and think, to think about the night sky, to think about different notes in music, to think about random things like why airplanes fly and debate about which equation fits better to air planes, the Bernoulli's or the Newton's. Man, I was one happy man.

I realized one thing; life is not about planning, I used to plan a lot. I had my entire life mapped in front of me, but then one day everything came down crashing. All my sand castles came down and what remained were ruins of my desire. I had nothing, then I realized I was so drenched in my ego and blinded by my own idiosyncrasies. Oh life you never stop surprising me and I love you for that. I realized, theory and practice are same in theory but different in practice, interesting thought to ponder. There is no use looking back and engage ourselves in the past, its well said, yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery but today is a gift ... and that is why it is called 'the present'.

/srm

Technology Slave

It makes me uncomfortable when I think about the future, future of my species, future of my children ! and I am not worried about the aliens from the future or the terminators, I am worried about the future that we are creating now. Right now we depend on technology pioneered by great visionaries decades ago, take an example in computers, all of them run on Von Neumann architecture conceptualized in 1944-45. If we ask ourselves what are we doing now, is there any breakthrough which we could be proud of in the computer industry ? Yes, chips are getting smarter, hardware is getting cheaper and efficient but the basic principle is the same - Moores law. No new architecture has been proposed of even though of. Companies are rolling out new software which is more buggy and error prone, and the worst part is; it keeps on getting worst year by year. Its like an endless race of designing the worst software.

By the time you catch up with a new technology it would have been already scrapped. I was happy in 2000 when people used to say world has become a global village, information was available on the finger tips. It was a whole new era of global awareness. It all was developing so rapidly, now definition of information has changed. information is all you can convey in 140 letters. Is that all we are about - 'Twitter' ! Life is caught up between the limits of 140 letters. Friends are now just Facebook status updates. How many chat discussion end with a good bye statement ? we just get bored and stop responding till either of us logs out of the chat.

I am scared, I am really scared about the future. Commercialization has eaten up all the research dollars, everyone want to land up with Google or Microsoft. Harvard, Berkley have become machines to produce slaves for these companies. I do not go to a big school nor do I do any ground breaking research, I am a common man who is scared about the uncertain future. Maybe, I am just scared that one day technology will outgrow me.

Its easier said than done, we are so caught up in our daily activities that we are neglecting our future. Instant gratification is all we need, we do not want to wait for the new technology to be tested, we just want to lay our hands on them. I am one of them, unfortunately all I can do is think. But at-least I am happy I started thinking.

A trekker fan within me ....

Gregorian Calendar Date May 27, 2009 AD.

I was dying to watch the movie Star Trek (2009). Being an ardent

Star Trek fan you can expect that from me. My close friends

would make fun of my anxious behavior and even

call me 'Anxious Spock'. Fascinating, as vulcans do not show

humans emotions like anxiety, I neglected them.

I must say, I was disappointed by the new Star Trek movie.

There were so many things which were not coherent with the

original series and yet people call it the remake of original series,

heck its not ! The movie itself breaks the prime directive of USS

federation, not to interfere with the planet's ecosystem.

It shows the planet Vulcan destroyed ! I hardly remember

any episode of Star Trek in which a planet was destroyed,

the series was supposed to convey a message of peace not terror.

And what's the deal with the new instruments ? what happened to the old communicator,

the tricorder ? I do not see them anymore, all I see it some stupid new gadgets.

The phasors were shown good though. Screenplay sucked big time.

For the love of god not Ahura and Spock ! Spock already was emotionally attached

with one of the nurses under McCoy. Ahura and Scotty had the spark, and now in the new

movie captain Kirk likes Ahura who likes Spock. For the first time I have seen the aura of

Kirk failing on women. Normally women cannot escape that look from Kirk !

I was also let down by Scotty, he is the chief engineer onboard enterprise and responsible

for her smooth sailing. He is the one who gives warp speed using Di-Lithium crystals,

he's the one responsible for the killer photon torpedoes and ships defense shields.

Why was his role in the movie negligible ?. Sulu, one of the helmsmen was given greater

importance. No doubt he is good in sword battle, but he is supposed to drive the ship and

not go out and fight !

I haven't seen the captain send a decent landing party to handle the crisis in this movie.

Normally the landing party consists of Captain Kirk, ship's surgeon McCoy, Chief Scientific

Officer Spock and a random bodyguard ! There were lots and lots of flashbacks, it was like

the story was running in recursion. The good thing was that we got to see Leonard Nimoy,

the original Spock ! I so wish they should have shown William Shatner.

The enemy was Romulan, thats good as we were tired of seeing Klingons attacking with

their 'Bird of Prey' ships (I personally love those ships). Be it as it may,

I am happy at-least they made a movie and rejuvenated Star Trek.

But somewhere along, I think J. J. Abrams forgot the principle that kick started the

original series, the principle of hope, a better life and future to mankind.

Gene Roddenberry had that principle in mind. After he died in 1991 Star Trek died too,

at-least in its principle. There were only wars on earth and the battle to save human civilization.

Enterprise had become a killing machine. Yet they used the same old science to drive the ship,

it still ran on impulse engines, it still used matter and anti matter to give warp speeds.

I so wish the later remakes should be made to give hope to fans not terror !

over and out.

-Live Long and Prosper !

Random Thoughts

Random Thoughts

When I was a child I never thought I would turn out this way, I do not know whether it is good or bad, but I never did aspire to be this way. I had so many dreams and still what I am today is not at all close to even one of those things I wanted to become. In other words I did not expect to turn out this way. I wanted to be a pilot,an astronaut,a cricketer, an artist, a businessman .... as I grew up I began to realize that none of this was even closer to the skills I had, or I was made to believe I had. Well, I thought I was good in drawing and fair in playing cricket. In studies I was zero absolute zero, my parents never thought I would study till Post Graduation, for them me passing SSC (10th standard) was a milestone !

Who knows life will take me where. Wherever I go there is an element of surprise. Surprises are always around the corner for me, few good most of them bad. I have my own beliefs about good and bad but I am about to shatter them. Now I am beginning to realize that there is no good or bad, there is only action and reaction. And good or bad is what your society thinks, if we go by the universal frame of reference there is no good or bad thing. Isn't that astonishing, world without good bad. Its just like one man's bread is other man's poison.

For me life has always been a flashback, I tend to go back and ponder what I did, how I was. The more I think the more my memory takes me in my past. I love those childhood years spent in 'Gold Finch Peth', Solapur, my adolescence in 'Awanti nagar', where I started realizing that may be I can be friends with girls and the whole chemistry of my physical body was altered, not to mention the economic recession was still in progress. But still, I was satisfied, with all my friends with all my wrong notions, with all my false beliefs, I was at-least happy.

/srm

Photo Blog

A picture is worth a thousand words.

-Fred R. Barnard

These are some of the pictures I clicked when I went on a road trip to Utah and Colorado. 

This was my attempt to capture raw nature, hope I succeeded to  some extent.

---

'Wild West' 

This picture was taken at the corner of Canyon Lands Utah, this was farthest point we could wander from the normal trek with our sedan, Chevy Impala!. A 4X4 is what you need to explore the beauty of the wild west.

Sambhaji Lake, Solapur

This picture was taken on a blissful morning of 26th Jan in Solapur, 

my hometown, my place of solace.

Road

On our way back to Columbia from Utah, somewhere on the border of Colorado. 

Rocky mountain chain is clearly visible in the backdrop.

Smile Please !

Trust me, it was so difficult to smile, 14,000 feet above the sea level

and strong winds blowing off your face, thats my Seinfeld moment right there.

Beware of Aliens !

You would have probable guessed it right if you have seen the movie,

'Close Encounters Of The Third Kind'

Fountain of Youth

Its not actually called that way, but something 

reminds me of that name here!

Fill it, shut it, forget it !

Thats how we roll baby.

Glenn Canyon

Ahead you can see Glenn Canyon, one of a myriad of natures spectacle 

Garden of Gods

Oh  really ! 

Human Human !

We saw a cowboy while driving down from there ! yes we did travel

all that road.

Monument Valley

No words can express the magnificence of this place, oh and if you

are one unfortunate soul using Vista, you might find this exact same scene 

 in your pictures folder, I have to admit Windows does have some cool wallpapers :) 

Monument Valley

Sunlight was all we wanted ! 

Arches National Park

Side view of the Delicate Arch

Delicate Arch

Its the mother of all arches.

Heaven on Earth !

Icy rocky mountain chain, Pikes Peak, Colorado. 

1400 feet above the sea level

Border

Monument Valley, Utah.

Stairway to Heaven

Arches National Park, Utah

Arches National Park, Utah

Arches National Park, Utah

Thats all folks, thanks for taking time. Hope these pictures made you realize how much we owe to mother earth, and how we are parting away from her, due to our materialistic lifestyle.

/srm