Oh shite! Aka biogas.

Crap is a great source of energy, if only we can get it out in a useful fashion. So, this article appeared recently which lists many measures in the US. Good reading. But, hang on, if you are Desi and about as old as me (pushing 30).. then surely, you remember the old "biogas lagwao re bhaiya.. biogas lagwao" viddys on Doordarshan..? Hmm, a quick search revealed this page. Yeah, I have some time on my hands right now to be thinking about random shite.

A beautiful example of time lapse photography

Time lapse is when you show a series of photos at a speed much faster than you took them. This can be done by simply "speeding up the reel" in old film video cameras, or by pasting photos taken with wait periods into a video. It is the opposite of high speed photography. Time lapse viddys of the night sky are particularly wonderful. Here, look at this one: tell mw what you think.

Some new pictures from California

Photographs taken with a Canon Rebel XTi. Lenses: Canon 28-135 IS, 70-300 and 18-55. Postprocessing on Gimp. Thanks to Krishnan for loaning me the camera.

Insane lenses, cameras which bleed awesomeness and cost as much as the National Debt

I thought since it has been a while and then some, since I have written anything about photography, I should be back. There have been elections back home and people dying just south of the border. With any such event or conflict come the reporters. Some call them the vultures of war. But it is true that in many cases they do a job that is difficult, under the most extreme conditions. And many of them never make it back. So, what about the tools they use?

Lets start off with the age old Leica rangefinder series. This has been the darling of serious (read well funded) news agencies in the early postwar years. Built like a phookin' tank, the M series brought a revolution to the 35 mm wurlde. The M pedigree continues in the sleek M8.2. Ragefinders are different from SLRs in that there is no mirror. Focussing is achieved by optimizing path length through a beam splitter. In practice, you turn a knob until two images coincide. There are fewer moving parts and hence rangefinders are quiter and more compact than SLRs. But SLRs are more versatille. Here, read this comparison.

Leica also had an SLR lineup, (which they developed with Minolta, the company that gave the wurlde the first SLR with an integrated autofocus and lens drive) the R series. But being Leica, they decided that they were too awesome for autofocus, which everyone and his grandmother has had for about 25 years. Then, they went in for a collaboration of sorts with Olympus, Panasonic and Sigma in the Four-thirds system. Except, they built one DSLR and essentially went to sleep. Oh, and they did promise a 14-150 mm ultrazoom which is not very easy to find.

Now, it seems, after much soul searching, Leica has come up with a new SLR series, the flagship being the S2. This promises to be close to medium format quality. Which will give the Canon EOS 1Ds Mark III (yeah, a mouthful) quite a headache, and maybe Mamiya heartburn for its ZD medium format cameras. Medium format means larger film size, or larger sensors and is only for you if you have lots of cash to drop, maybe work for a fashion magazine or a high end porn studio and are as serious about resolution as an erection problem.

Now a leetil aside on Leica being all icky with the Four-thirds gang. Come on, Olympus is the only plucky guy putting out great cameras out there with this standard. I use an E-500 myself, which is simply lovely. They have a pro grade E3, a semipro E-30 and many, many prosumer models. Much better bang for the buck than any APS model SLR. And they have such wonderful lenses!

But lets step aside from this discussion of camera bodies and talk about a couple of lenses which have caught my attenshun. I have mentioned the Leica ultrazoom already. You would use the ultrazoom for daily "street" photography. This would be a walkabout lens with a zoom range of 10-12x. Nikons 18-200 mm antivibration lens is a runaway success. Ken Rockwell loves it. You probably will as well. This is awesome for news photography. Canon had no equivalent for a long time. But that is about to change. With this lens and an EOS 50D, I imagine you could goo up against a D300 and win, especially in static frames. But the ultrazoom lens market will have changed forever with the introduction of Tamron's 18-270 mm. This is available in EOS and Nikon mounts (typical!) and goes for less than 590$ on Amazon (not a plug). In your face Nikon/Canon! Bear in mind that point and shoots these days have 22x zoom and sell for half that of an SLR body. A good photographer with a decent P&S can get better results than a newbie with a pricey DSLR.

But more on lenses. The brightest Canon EOS lens is the 50 mm f1.2. Pricey and awesome. Nikon's brightest is a f1.4. Still awesome. Leica has an f 0.95 Noctilux lens for its M series. Yeah, breathe in and out slowly while your heart rate comes back to something decent. You can probably shoot handheld in candlelight with that piece of glass. Which means, its time to wrap up with the story of one of the fastest lenses ever made used by Stanley Kubrick.

Open question: should genes be patented?

Read this CNN article and then decide.

An open letter to John le Carre, and a word about his latest novel.

Dear Mr. Cornwell,

I have admired your work for many years. My father first introduced me to George Smiley. I then became friends with Guillam and Connie Sachs. I hated Tob Esterhase and pitied Lady Ann for being a fool. And I developed a sneaking admiration for Karla.

I have spent many pleasant afternoons debating the relative character defects of Smiley with the only comparable character anyone else has written: Len Deighton's Bernard Samson, also of the SIS.

It has been perhaps fifteen years since I first opened a le Carre. My tastes in literature have evolved. But my admiration for you has only grown.

A Man Most Wanted leaves something lacking. I must apologize for saying this. Firstly, as Robert Heinlein had once put it to a fan "you never wrote to me about all the books you liked, and now you are writing to complain about the one you didn't!" Guilty. Secondly, you, of all authors have nothing left to prove. But this latest work is very flat in comparison to the many coloured, nuanced writing that has made you so famous. Just an opinion. A respectful one.

I hope to keep reading your novels in the future. May you enjoy good health and happiness.

Akash, a fan.