Recently when I was photographying sloth bears at Daroji badly needed hyperfocal distance chart for different focal lengths ranging from 12mm to 24mm at different f-stops. While depth-of-preview button gives nice visual feedback of depth I often ended up wanting more dof when I open see the image at its actual size on screen and in print. Though there are nice DoF calculators I felt it is desirable to have a short printed chart which covered my entire focal range (12-24mm) in a single handy chart. So I made this small chart which covers focal lengths from 12mm to 24mm (for 1.5x croped body). Please feel to print a copy for your personal use – may be useful for landscape work too. DoF numbers will be very slightly higher for those bodies with 1.6x crop factor.
DoF Chart from 12mm to 24mm (for 1.5x crop sensor)
posted by ganesh at 9:07 am
Box
These days I am scared about home work ! My little son in 3rd standard comes home often with complex home work to be completed – guess what, I don’t qualify to do justice to some of them. The recent one made me thinking a lot. “I need to write a my own story – can you help ?” he asked. Good he wanted my support in finding the right Hindi words (he knows I can find them on net) and not in arriving at the story. For a moment I started thinking about making “my own story”. Alas, I just could not think of a “new” story. All my attempts were leaning towards either some real life experiences (so not genuinely “new”) or some variations of Akbar-Birbal/Panchatantra/Tenali Rama etc. Looks like the “creative instict” is dead a few decades ago ? A few minutes later my little one said, “ok, I have my story and need your help in drafting it in Hindi” – what a relief !
I was keen to know what the “new” story was. Though it looked quite simple it had a subtle learning for me. The story being – While going to school Ram falls down and gets injured due to a stone. It wasn’t an ordinary stone but it had some supernatural powers. Suddenly he hears stone talking to him and consoling him. Stone asks Ram why he looks so dull. Ram says he comes last in foot ball play and everyone laughs at him. Stone blesses him which makes Ram the best foot ball player in the school.
What is the learning for me here ?
The ease with which these little minds give life and personalities to stones !!
Can we do that ? I certainly find it very very difficult. Not only stones stopped talking our mind long back there are several other thick masks in front of our mind today which seem to seriously limit our abilities for creative thinking, creative expressions or creative image making.
Wave
Not only kids can “create” original stories, they seem to geneuinely “create” new images. I am just using my son’s earlier “creations” here for illustration but I am sure every kid has this ability. In the Box image above bright graphic color qualities seem to be part of their mind. Mixing dimensions (3d vs. 2d) is a non-issue !! They seem to have amazing observation capabilities – as evident in usage of colors in the “Wave” image below. Again, shape of the waves and laws of physics is a non-issue !!
When did we last not worried about aligning in the horizon or water level in our images to perfectly and scientifically make the “right” image ? 
These images above to me are really original and creative – needless to say they portray innocence too.
Compared to above images this one below is made by creativity starved yours truly !
Scientifically Perfect
What is that I “made” here beyond capability of my 600mmf4 lens to blur the background and faithfully portray just the bird ? The years of “learning” planted firm barriers in my mind which prevents me from even having creative thoughts coming to mind. Over the years it appears we want to “see” things in some way and unfortunately in those ways only ! If this being the case how can I make “my own story” ?
How can I make my own images ?
Wish the answer was easy..
posted by ganesh at 5:50 am
Recently ARKive requested a few images of Philautus neelanethrus which I made some time back – thanks to Dr Gururaja. Some of my images of Philautus neelanethrus are now on at ARKive’s site.
You may read the interesting story behind these images in one of my earlier blog here.
posted by ganesh at 1:49 pm
