A generous splash of colour

Nature's very own beauties

Adult Male Bengal Tiger

Spotted Deer enjoying a sumptuous meal



White tiger cub

Sambar Deer - Stag



White tiger - Size does matter!

Flutter flies

Butterfly park - Bannerghatta Zoological Park

Malabar banded Swallowtail

Crimson Rose

Love is in the air!

This shoot started more as a test of my camera's macro capabilities. I think FIGO did reasonably well. I still cant identify all these beautiful creatures by name. However, I promise myself to learn about the different species and tag them here. These creatures are REALLY jittery... fluttering every micro second.. No wonder then that they are called butter flies :)

Panasonic Lumix DMC FZ50 Review

After reading just about every lumix review posted on the internet for the last 5 months ,I jumped in to buy the DMC Fz50. Most people feel that this camera has just one chink in its armour. NOISE. Reading through the reviews makes you feel that the images are completely unusable and that Panasonic has made a tectical blunder here in upping the megapixel count when noise/ noise reduction should have been their focus.

However , i have been using this camera for the last 2 weeks...have shot around 1000 pictures already. Following are my experiences.

Body and design : 10/10

The FZ50 feels very solid . Close your eyes and you would think its an SLR. The weight is well distributed. The buttons and dials are ergonomically placed. The zoom and focus rings are very good. Once you get used to them you would never use the motorised zooms on other cameras. One thing i didnt like was the flimsy strap . Pana, you can do better than that!

Operation : 9/10

The camera starts up very fast..typically a second or so. Image stabilization is very effective, especially in the tele-photo range. Colour reproduction is pretty accurate. However i feel the high setting on the contrast and saturation tend to over-saturate the hues and the std setting tends to under saturate. Card write times are pretty fast. When i shoot in RAW, it normally takes 3 sec to write to the card (more a virtue of the high speed SD card than the camera).Auto focus is very good. Sometimes i find it a little tough to achieve focus lock at some distances between 1 ft and 3 ft. But this is the same with any camera in this range.

Lens : 15/10

Wow!! Its a leica and its awesome!! Nothing more needs to be said. The 12x zoom is awesome. The extended optical zoom is more a marketing gimmick than anything else.

Flash : 10/10

Pretty decent for distances upto 15 ft

Battery : 10/10

I can shoot around 300 shots without a recharge. So that is pretty good. Lack of motorised zoom does save a lot of power.

Image quality: 8/10


Day shots at ISO 100... no problem
Low light / night shots without flash at higher ISOs.. quite a bit of noise. ISO 1600 and 3200 are not usable. But performance upto iso 800 is commendable considering the size of this sensor. Shooting in RAW gives amazing results. I was able to get an ISO 200 jpeg equivalent by shooting in RAW at ISO 800 and then passing it through SilkyPix. RAW is the way to go with this camera in low light.

Overall image quality is pretty good. Much better than most cameras.

The noise issue is overrated by most reviews. Shooting in RAW produces good results and mitigates noise. It is unfair to compare this camera to simple point and shoot cameras. This one is in a different league of its own. It beats the Canon S2, S3, Sony H1, H2 hands down. No question about it. The Leica lens makes up for the points the sensor loses on Noise reduction.

The very fact that most reviews compare the performance of this camera with SLRs like the D70/RebelXT/EOS speaks volumes about it. I am not saying this camera is as good as an SLR.

It is probably the closest you can get to an SLR right now , paying half the price.

My baby comes home..finally

(Female Parakeet guarding her nest - Panasonic DMC - FZ50)


(Lotuses standing tall and proud - Panasonic DMC - FZ50)

(Two male parakeets fighting over a female - Panasonic DMC - FZ50)

(Pond Heron fishing for food - Panasonic DMC - FZ50)

(Hostile male parakeet - Panasonic DMC - FZ50)


(Tete-a-tete with a Pond Heron - Panasonic DMC - FZ50)

(Male parakeet guarding the female and her eggs - Panasonic DMC - FZ50)

(Autumn flowers - Bougonvilla - Panasonic DMC - FZ50)

(Parakeets in love..all's well, that end well :) - Panasonic DMC - FZ50)

This was a special week for me. After months of waiting , my baby finally crossed the Atlantic and came home. I now own my very own camera..finally! A brand new panasonic lumix DMC FZ50. As my friend handed him over reluctantly ,my first impression was ..WOW! This camera sure looked solid. Although i was worried about the noise issue that is painted over the internet, i knew that if handled well, this camera could produce stunning shots. I was not wrong.

These are my very first shots with the fz50... I quickly realised that this camera would need some getting used to. The vast array of settings need to be mastered to get the best results...and it will take some time. This is not a point and shoot camera that you can carry around in yr shirt pocket. However, my preliminary trials produced excellent results...three cheers to Pana and the amazing Leica lens!

I christened him FIGO

Strike two

(Lotuses in full bloom - Lal Bagh 02-12-06 7:00 AM )

(Squirrel enjoying an acorn - Lal Bagh 02-12-06 7:00 AM )

(Squirrel enjoying an acorn - Lal Bagh 02-12-06 7:00 AM )

(Autumn flowers - Lal Bagh 02-12-06 7:00 AM )

(Wild flowers on the lake bed - Lal Bagh 02-12-06 7:00 AM )

(Standing out - Lal Bagh 02-12-06 7:00 AM )

For a few months more...

Due to sudden onset of winter and the lack of migratory birds , this blog shall hibernate till December....

Birds' eye view of Ranganathittu

Painted Stork
(Canon S2IS f/3.5 at 1/800s at 425mm focal length)


Painted Stork
(Canon S2IS f/3.5 at 1/800s at 454mm focal length)

Painted Stork
(Canon S2IS f/3.5 at 1/800s at 400mm focal length)

Black headed Ibis
(Canon S2IS f/3.5 at 1/800s at 326mm focal length)

Feathery wonders

(Canon S2IS f/3.5 at 1/250s focal length 72 mm)

(Canon S2IS f/3.5 at 1/1600s focal length 72 mm)

KingFisher
(Canon S2IS f/3.5 at 1/100s focal length 400 mm)

Heron
(Canon S2IS f/3.5 at 1/320s focal length 234 mm)

Slithering wonders

Rat Snake
(Canon S2IS, f/3.5 at 1/100 s focal length 72 mm)

King Cobra
(Canon S2IS, f/3.5 at 1/40 s focal length 108 mm)

King Cobra
(Canon S2IS, f/3.5 at 1/40 s focal length 69 mm)

Russels Viper
(Canon S2IS, f/3.5 at 1/120 s focal length 72 mm)

Well i know a lot of you who see these snaps will not like them. To tell you the truth, i hated snakes before i went on this shoot. I guess this can be attributed to an underlying fear that comes to be associated with anything that is dark, slithery and poisonous. This shoot however changed my perception drastically. Snakes are beautiful creatures. Left alone , they rarely harm humans. Most of them are non-poisonous. They move like greased lightning. They are as graceful as a ballet dancer in movement.

The rat snake is a beauty! Its white underbelly is spotless and she is very graceful and slender. She is non venomous and mostly feeds on small creatures in the undergrowth like rats, frogs , etc. The Russels Viper is a highly poisonous snake. One bite can leave you paralysed for life, if not cause death. Its body has an intricate pattern of scales and patterns.

However nothing compares to the king of all snakes ...the King Cobra! This snake can grow upto 15-20 ft in length. One bite usually means instant death. Less than 3 ml of its venom is enough to kill an adult human in a minute. I am told that this guy can stand up to a quarter of his length. That means if a 5ft tall human is confronted with a 20 ft long cobra, the snake can literally look the guy face to face....Scary or what?!! Capturing this snake made the hair on my neck stand up. It made me go weak in the knees to think that this 12ft long creature was just one foot away from me. The diversity in nature never ceases to amaze me... Although my fear of snakes hasn't left me, i have a new found respect for these creatures. If i can describe them in two words it would be SLICK and POTENT!

Flowery dreams - part 2

(Canon S2IS, f/3.5 at 1/200 s focal length 454 mm)

(Canon S2IS, f/3.5 at 1/200 s focal length 919 mm)

(Canon S2IS, f/3.5 at 1/640 s focal length 223 mm)