Tough Honey Breakfast

Note that in the above picture, the honey sucking bird is having green color in its body, blue and red feathers, as well few dark feathers in its tail. The picture is taken from my home town Payyampally. Having a honey breakfast like this makes the bird full. It reminds me about my childhood days where we used to have the honey of the plantain flower. But for this bird it turned to be a tough one. Let us see how it was made tough in the following pictures.

The bird is disturbed by three intruders.
1. You can see the crow behind the scene. (Out of focus).
2. You can see small flies scattered in the air around the scene. Perhaps the flies may also contribute as side dishes to the bird
3. Last but not the lease, it is me, trying to scare the bird by approaching with a camera.

In the above picture, you can see the crow watching the bird from behind the scene, the plantain and the bird is out of focus, as I focused the crow behind the scene. I love the 12x zoom of Canon Powershot S2 IS as well as the 1.5x teleconvertor (TC-DC58B)

Focus

This photograph is taken using Canon PowerShot S2 IS, which is now replaced by Canon PowerShot S3 IS and later by Canon PowerShot S5 IS in the market.

Climate Change

These photographs are taken from the plantations near my sweet home at Payyampally. Winter is almost over and the scorching summer is slowly creeping in. Many of the trees shed the leaves to survive through till the monsoon. It is interesting how tress change the colors during this time. Pictures are taken by Canon Powershot S2 IS, no digital modification done, other than compressing the image to reduce the image size and pixel size.

Some more Snaps from Wayanad

An unfinished sculpture
This picture is taken from Kanavu - A Gurukul style education centre meant for tribals of Wayanad, run by K J Baby; author or Maveli Muntram.

"Erattavalan Kili - A bird with two tails
This picture is taken from Kallanode. This is a common bird found in Kerala, I am not sure about the English or Scietific name of this bird. You can see the tail split into two.

1. A cat
This cat was sitting on the half place of my house and watching all of us. He is a regular visitor to our house, but never dare to enter inside.

2. The Sunset through spectacles
Picture was taken on a fine evening from MindTree Global Village, Bangalore after we had a function at the Cafeteria

Bird on the rock

A black bird resting on a rock.

Camera :	Canon Powershot S2 IS
Location :	Koodalkadavu, Near payyampally
Date :	27th January 2007
Description :	A black bird (don't ask me what bird it is, I don't know.) sitting on the top of a rock projected out from the river. You can see the rock in white color, the bird excretion made it white. So I assume that this rock is a favorite resting place for the birds before or after a fresh fish meal. You can see the bird's feet which is very suitable for swimming. I had to use a little bit digital zoom also to get a closer look. Now I understood that even the combined 18x zoom of Powershot S2 + canon teleconverter won't help for bird photography.

Karivandu

Beetle on flower

Wider View of the first picture

Camera :	Canon Powershot S2 IS
Location :	Koodalkadavu, Near payyampally
Date :	27th January 2007
Description :	A black beetle ('Karivandu in Malayalam') on search of honey

Ente Khalbile Vennilavu Nee..

I was just about to get into my car after speaking with one my friend’s father from near Arattuthara Government High School, when all of a sudden some kids walking through the same road started shouting “Surpam”. In Malayalam, Surpam means snake of any kind. The harvest of paddy had already happened in the fields on both sides of the road and very near to the road, in the field I saw these snakes mating. Luckily my Canon PowerShot S2 IS combined with the canon teleconverter TC-DC58B giving a total of effective 648mm (12X) optical zoom was with me at the right time, so that I could take a snap without disturbing the animals.

In a hurry I attached the adapter and lens to the camera and ran to find a good position to take the snap. But I feared before I do everything I will miss the scene, so I took a few snaps on the way. Since these rat snakes were mating in a ground of the remaining of hay shrubs cut during the harvest, I was not able to get a snap which covered the full length of those creatures.

Unfortunately, some others who were walking through the same road noticed me sitting with a camera and clicking at something very eagerly. They two saw the snakes and went so near to them. The snakes got disturbed and retreated to gaps in between the raised stone wall of the road. I felt very angry at them for disturbing the creatures.

When I showed the photos to some of my friends, some commended that it is a sin to watch snakes mating according to religious believes, but some commended that I was so lucky in getting those snaps since people rarely see these and rarely will there be a camera with anybody during such a time.

Experiments With Canon Powershot S2 IS

Canon Powershot S2 IS

Monsoon Sky at 7:00 PM

Shutter speed, exposure, aperture and ISO mode manually selected

In simple words, Canon Powershot S2 IS a superb one especially for those who like high end digital cameras. I bought this camera very recently and the photo now you are seeing in the blog is my experiments with the camera on the first day. Those who look for a sleek compact digital camera, Powershot S2 IS will not be the one. It is a little bit heavy and we can nearly achieve the perfection of a SLR camera with this model. The weight of the camera gives better stability while we take hand held telephotos, apart from the Image Stabilization (IS) modules help.

The Jasmine Bud

Everything adjusted manually (Shutter speed, Exposure, Aperture, Focus & ISO Mode)

The special shooting modes of the camera are really great. Sepia, color accent, color swap, custom colors, black & white, foliage, night scene, snow scene, fire works etc helps the photographer to create wonderful pictures. The image stabilization module works very well which allows us to take pictures at complete 12x zoom range or the 48x digital and optical combined zoom range without the picture being shaken. The quality of video is amazing as well as the quality of the recorded sound.

The LCD which can be tilted to any angle like the one in a camcorder is very useful; especially to take photographs from difficult angles. The camera is also powered with an electronic view finder, so that we can turn of the LCD screen and use the view finder to save the battery power, which means a lot in case of out door trips. The camera can be switched to movie mood any time and snaps can be taken while recording a movie.

Powershot S2 IS also supports additional lenses like telephoto lens, wide angle lens and super macro lens that improve the functionality a lot.

Picutres taken using the color accent feature

For better results I suggest using a high speed memory card as well as the canon CBK4-200 rechargeable batteries. The camera supports additional flashes but can be operated only in a slave mode; which means the secondary flash will only fire when the built in flash fires. The camera comes with a built-in AF assist lamp, but cannot be used for night animal photography since the light will be disturbing the animals. It would have been better if they provided an infrared AF assist lamp.

Water drop on the tip of a grass

The super macro mode is used

The camera supports a macro mode using which we can take pictures of objects very close (50 to 10 inches from the lens) and a super macro mode using which we can shoot objects so close as 0 to 10 inches.