Steel test

My dad has worked for more than 30 years in a Steel plant and surprisingly, I have never ventured inside to see his environs though I know that they have made him the hardened man that he is (pun intended).
I was testing the hardyness of my S5IS to perform in this dusty, hot surrounding. I got a chance to carry it through a lot of situations. I list the departments and the challenges they pose

• The Sinter plant - red oxide dust of ... microns with a density of ... basically u turn red if u just stand half hour there.

• Blast Furnace - The hottest place in the plant obviously to combine various components of the alloy to make steel.

• Rolling Mills -  A little less hot than hell, where steel is shaped into sheets, rods, rails etc. However there is too much Infra-red around that can melt a camera which is not watercooled like your body. IR also affects ur shots.

• Coke Ovens - Straight out of a Noir comic in looks, this place is where the coal is made worthy of being put in the furnace. Carbon dust is anywhere, even in your lungs within five minutes.

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Rainbow with Polariser

On my trip to Bihar for the Eclipse I was carrying my self made polariser. The purpose had been to take pics of the corona's polarised light. Of course the rains having just given us a raw deal (but a lucky peek at the eclipse too), we could not take those pics. However, during the train trip  back, We saw his amazing double rainbow out of the window and I attempted some shots from the moving train. I experimented with the polariser too and here are the results.

Nanda Devi Panorama

Rarerly does one get an occasion that deserves only a pan shot and nothing else. Today, me and some students from Aarohi took an early cab to reach the Nainital observatory in the morning. Turning around a bend we were treated to this amazing sight of teh Nanda Devi range. I got just that and the pan turned out to be really good. I have tried photoshop and the Canon photomerge tools both and I find the Canon one better.

Discovering CHDK

CHDK stands for Canon Hackers Developer Kit and finding it was amongst the happier moment of my photographic life.

CHDK... it just takes the S5 closer to a dslr & u can use it on other Canons too!!
Opensource community rules...!

http://howto.wired.com/wiki/Supercharge_Your_Camera_with_Open-Source_CHDK_Firmware

http://hackaday.com/2008/05/27/how-to-expand-your-camera-with-chdk/

S5 specific tech details are here:

http://chdk.wikia.com/wiki/S5IS

Projection of output

This is not really an experiment. Me and Vivek had gotten together to try out a projector on my bedroom wall. Both possessing a S5IS, we thought of trying out the TV-Out port. We were trying out if the recorded videos from the cam can be seen directly on the projector like we do on a TV screen. During this we turned it on to the shoot mode. A lo behold... we got a projection of what the camera saw! And then we shot the picture that you see ofcourse with me as the unprepared model.

Awesome discovery of an awesome effect...

The Doors open

The first click with your own camera is always sacred. And serendipity being my other name... I got this as the first light for my sensor! This my friends is IMG_0001... The guy was taken aback that someone random should want to click him for their first foto... but hey it was for Jim. Its still on the 32 mb SD card that came free with my Canon Powershot S5 IS.