My Camera Search

Over the past few days, I was involved in searching for a right digital camera for me.
I like California very much and I feel that I should capture it just as it is and put it online for others to like it as well. Plus, I really begin to feel now that this life is beautiful and should be treasured that way. I am not going into why and how of it. I will just say that I start looking for a camera that could capture great images and that too very easily. I do not want to put in a lot of effort in capturing one picture but want to put a lot of effort to capture lot of pictures.

I know that any photo enthusiast could easily tell me now what type of camera I want. A camera that has enough auto modes to allow point and shoot in every situation and still could capture excellent images if I put in a little more effort. Luckily, there are cameras in the market for exactly this requirement and they are called SLR-like cameras. They are not SLR as they have point and shoot features with a whole lot of digital processing and auto-mation - auto focus, auto exposure, auto modes, and many more. They are SLR like because they allow manual controls, focus control, exposure fill control, bigger lenses, metering, and bracketing. I still have to figure out what the last two terms mean.

Initially, while going through all the digital camera models at Amazon, I was skeptical to buy a SLR like camera. I must say that all the terms of an SLR camera (including SLR) used to scare me away from them. The camera community, as it looked to me, has devised their own terms which no one outside could understand without spending a couple of thousand bucks (dollars/rupees) and even then you are not sure whether you could actually learn them.

Then, I drew a parallel of camera industry with the computer industry. I felt that, unlike me, many people find everything about computer confusing and ahead of them. Just the way, I felt about pro-cameras. I, of course being a computer engineer, knows everything about the computer industry, all its terms and features, inside out. So, I thought that if I could know about computer so well, I could as well learn about the cameras. For one, camera research, however old it is, has not grown fast over these years (otherwise I would have heard). There was not a camera engineering branch at IITs to do research in the field. Secondly, ultimately these digital cameras use processors (aha!) inside them and I am familiar with every capability of the processors. So, it should not be that hard for me to learn all the features and abilities of an SLR digital camera.

So, I started my research on SLR cameras. For starters, SLR stands for Single-lens reflex camera. While single lens is not something special about these cameras, the fact that they use reflex (reflection from a mirror inside) is. Wikipedia defines SLR as "The single-lens reflex camera, more commonly known by the abbreviation SLR, uses a mirror placed between the lens and the film to project the image seen through the lens to a matte focusing screen." The other original type of camera is (used to be) range-finder camera. The auto-focus point and shoot cameras came very late.

I have learned about effects of focusing, exposure, aperture, shutter speed, night modes, and portrait modes. I will keep writing about these things as I learn about them.

The camera that finally clicked for me is Canon S2 IS, to be released in US in June 05. Its love it or hate it looks (which I love) and huge power (full manual controls, 12x zoom, Digic II processor, Canon MyColors) impressed me a lot.

Ernest Hemingway and The Soul

I am half way through Ernest Hemingway's 'For Whom The Bell Tolls'. This book is about a soldier of Republican Army (Americans and British) in Spanish Civil War (1936-39) who goes behind enemy lines to blow up a supply bridge. The whole book describes his two day stay among the native rebels who were hiding in jungle and fighting against Germans.

I did not start reading this book for knowing about Spanish Civil War or because I like to read about World War II. But I am reading it because it is a Ernest Hemingway novel. When I came to US about nine months ago, I happened to read his 'The Old Man and The Sea'. The short novel instantly became my most favorite. Though it is not a self-help kind of book, the novel should be an inspiration to the people who live alone and want to make most of their lives, goals and struggle. The novel was the culmination of Ernest Hemingway's literary career and gave him both Pulitzer (1953) and Nobel (1954) awards.

I got introduced to Hemingway not through 'The Old Man and The Sea' but through 'To Have And Have Not' about 5 years back through my friend, Pavan. I also read Hemingway's collection of short stories. The 'For Whom The Bell Tolls' will be my fourth Hemingway book.

Hemingway is the writer of human soul - a soul isolated and strong. The three novels, 'Old Man...'., 'To Have And..' and 'For Whom..' describe the internals of three highly professional men. Ernest Hemingway never talks about deep psychological questions of mind, that many authors tend to write when they want to talk about a human mind. Instead, he writes in very simple words the working of mind of these men. His characters are not philosophers. His characters do not think just one issue that is bothering them. Instead their mind is shown to move from one task to other at random, but somehow giving a final conclusion on each task. Just like any normal mind. While reading those pages of no-dialogue-but-just-thoughts in his books, you feel like your mind is going through that roller coaster rides of the minds of these men, taking you very high in some space and then abruptly turning you in a random direction, and finally taking you back to where you started, rejuvenated.

It is highly unfortunate that the author of 'the Old Man and the Sea', an unexemplary story about the struggle and survival of an old man on a boat in the rough sea among sharks, should die by committing suicide. The greatness of the soul of these characters in his books seemed to have sucked the soul out of himself.

I also came to know of one thing about reading. One should always read the work of authors in the reverse order. Read their last work first, then second last and so on. The reason is that all the good authors have a particular style of writing. And by the time of their last work, they have solidified their styles. The style becomes most visible in the last books. These books could make one decide whether he/she likes the author or not. If one does not like the author, it is no use to read more of that author. If one likes the author then reading backwards gives another pleasure too. It could show the process of crystallization of that style from a solid state to embryonic nascent state, and that is a revelation in itself.