Through The Lens

A Photographers Blog

Comment on Bon Voyage by Vikramdev Rao

October18

Dear Praveen,
Just got your message have seen your pictures posted on flickr. I think the ones attached to this blog are better. Judging from your program you must have a had a hectic but satisfying trip.

All the best,

Vikram

Pottery

October14

Pot Making

Pot making at Pottery Town, Bangalore

Comment on Skies and Clouds by Promethius

October7

4th one from the top is my fav. It looks like the edge of heaven.

Styling tables using CSS

October6

It can be difficult to ensure that you remain on a particular row as your eyes work across a large data table. Displaying table rows in alternating colors is a common way to help users identify which row they’re focused on. Whether you’re adding rows by hand, or you’re displaying the data from a database, you can use CSS classes to create this effect. However, there are two ways of implementing this:

1. Display alternate rows by default with an alternating color OR
2. Change row colors dynamically on mouse-over or on hovering the table rows.
I prefer the 2nd option as it is easier to maintain the color scheme in blend with the color scheme of the whole page. This is how we will implement this

Step 1: Define styles for the table
I shall declare a class called mytable and shall define a style for my table in general
.mytable{
font: 0.8em Verdana, Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
border: 1px solid #D6DDE6;
border-collapse: collapse;
width: 50%;
}

Step 2: Define styles for the header row

.mytable th {
border: 1px solid #828282;
background-color: #515151;
color: #66FF33;
font-weight: bold;
text-align: left;
padding: 4px;
}

Step 3: Define styles for the table cells

by default all cells will be applied with a dotted border and will be padded with 4px of space

.mytable td{
border: 1px dotted #aaa;
padding: 4px;
}

for some special cells I would like to change the text color to something bright so that it stands out, for which I define another style

.mytable td.alt{
background-color: transparent;
color: #00FFCC;
}

Step 4: Define styles while a mouse is hovered over a row

.mytable tr:hover{
background-color:#aaa;
color: #fff;
}

and presto we have a style definitions for a table that changes color on mouse hover and the result looks something like this

tablehover.PNG

you can copy all the above defined styles into a CSS file and link the stylesheet to your HTML document to acheive at the above result.

Hope this was helpful

CSS Links and resources

October5

I thought I would share with you guys some interesting links where you can witness web 2.0 in action.

CSS designs on display here: http://www.cssmania.com, http://www.cssbeauty.com, http://www.cssvault.com, http://www.webcreme.com

You can read some how to’s and the latest happenings here.

http://veerle.duoh.com/index.php, http://www.24ways.org, http://www.csszengarden.com

and you can catch some examples with source here

http://www.cssplay.co.uk

good day guys!!

Anatomical 18% gray card

October4
Any SLR user (advanced) who shoots in “M” mode must have surely come across the term “18% gray”. So what exactly is this 18% gray and how does it affect exposure?

Mostly all cameras have an in-built light meter, which are calibrated for 18% gray i.e. the reference point for a camera’s light-meter to determine exposure are the surfaces that reflect 18% of the light that if falling on them. It is similar to a thermometer: At room temperature the thermometer stay at 94-97 deg i.e. the mercury in the thermometer remains stable during these temperatures. As the temperatures rise above this point the mercury starts reacting and shoots up the meter depending on the temperature it has been subjected to. So a reference point for a thermometer are the points at which it stays stable. Depending on this you can say if a person has a fever or if there is a drop in temperature. Similarly a camera’’s light-meter is calibrated for, surfaces that reflect 18% light, or in other words, surfaces with 18% reflectance. So the mid-tones in your frame are rendered as surfaces that reflect 18% gray and deflection from this point results in an over or an under-exposed picture.

For instance if you compose a picture with your SLR camera in such a way that the frame is filled with any black material, the famous example is when you shoot a black cat. Place a black cat on a leather couch which is also black in color and then compose and shoot the picture with the whole frame filled with the black cat and the background, the black couch.

The results will be surprising you will see that the camera will fail to understand the shades of black and your picture will have a noticeable layer of gray on it. This is because of the camera calibration to 18%gray. Since the light-meter cannot find any mid-tones it renders the whole picture as gray. Similarly you can try this with your frame filled with only whites and you’ll see that the results are more or less the same.

So, how do we expose correctly for black cats :) or rather when your frame is filled with same colors? The answer is very simple: “Use an 18% gray card/surface to determine the exposure”.

How do I take the reading for a good exposure?

You can place the 18% gray card next to the subject of interest. Zoom in with your lens (or go closer) and now focus the gray card, adjust your shutter speed such that the light meter indicates perfect exposure. Now remove the gray card, zoom out and recompose your frame with your cat or whatever it is, DO NOT CHANGE YOUR EXPOSURE SETTINGS (let the reading be the one that you took off from the gray card) and then shoot et voila you now have a better and most realistic colors and shades of the picture as opposed to the one that the stupid light-meter has decided for you.

So now where do I get a gray card?

You can pick them at any of your local store for a few dollars.

What If I don’t have one or If you forgot one at home?

Most of the camera bag manufacturers (LowePro) provide the adjustable partition strips inside the bags with gray color. you can just strip on these and use it as your gray card. Alternatively an average human palm is supposed to reflect 18% gray so you are never out of options.

Tricky situations can be encountered when you are shooting a landscape with hills, clouds, flowing water, rocks and the green valley. Obviously, one cannot walk up to the hill place your gray card, come back place it on the water and then on the greens, take readings and shoot. The solution for this is quite simple and also complex

keep reading this blog for more on exposure techniques.

Good day people!

Comment on “ONE BEDROOM FLAT”- BY AN INDIAN SOFTWARE ENGINEER..- A Bitter Reality by chamarthi

October3

Well you see life’s like that! the decisions made in one’s life are controlled by a few factors and for some people a lot of factors and they take their decisions based on what they feel is right at the time.

Avoiding Camera Shake

October3

If you are an ardent shooter using a SLR (Single Lens Reflex) camera then am sure you would have experienced some shots with camera shake, even though it’s not dark. You would experience this quite often if you shooting in “M” (manual) mode.

Well there is a reason behind this and this is often referred to as the “Camera Shake rule

The safest shutter speed you can shoot without a camera shake is when you have shutter speeds greater than one over the focal length i.e. 1/f, where f is the focal length in mm, of the lens in use.

e.g. If you are engaging a prime lens like 50mm then for shake free shots make sure you shoot with shutter speeds greater than 1/60 seconds.

As the shutter speeds get slower the probability of loosing sharpness increases greatly.

Not enough light? use a tripod (with a shutter release), engage the flash depending on the distance between the camera (you) and the subject or brace the camera against any solid object. If you are not carrying a tripod then try to place your camera on solid base like a railing or any slab of stone near you alternatively you can try leaning on to a wall, take a deep breath and release the shutter without shaking the camera.

IF you have stable hands and follow the “photographer’s stance” with discipline then you can manage some sharp shots even at slower shutter speeds.

Hope this helps.

Good day and happy clicking

Comment on “ONE BEDROOM FLAT”- BY AN INDIAN SOFTWARE ENGINEER..- A Bitter Reality by venkat

October3

Very bad, When you have good offer in your motherland. Why did you go USA. Over expectations are too bad for a human being.

Validating your CSS

October2

Some Web designers regard a Web page that validates under both HTML and CSS guidelines as the Holy Grail. I prefer to think of validation as an extremely useful tool, but not a religion. CSS validation, however, is suited perfectly for debugging your code. CSS validators can catch those unclosed curly braces and other typos easily.

Numerous CSS validation services are available. I use the one from the W3C located at http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/.
Validate CSS

you can also validate your HTML here: http://validator.w3.org/

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