Weekend getaway at Bordi, Dahanu

In the last week of October this year, we went for a weekend outing to a silent and lazy beach town of "Bordi" around 100 KMs off Mumbai in Gujarat on the "Gujarat-Maharastra Border". We reached Bordi from Mumbai in 2.5 - 3 hours by taking a train from Borivali up to Dahanu and then covered the 15KMs stretch of Dahanu - Bordi in auto-rickshaw.

We reached Bordi MTDC Beach Resort at 8.30 AM and after having breakfast headed straight to our "Beach Hut".

MTDC Beach Resort is the only place in Bordi which offers stay in the "Beach Huts". Mind you, these are no ordinary huts, but full facility studio rooms with A/c, water heater and nice clean wash rooms. The view is just mind blowing from the huts. Open the glass sliding windows and you see the beach right through.

A nice small private garden with lots of flowers and greenery.

Ample space for children to play and chase the butterflies and dragonflies that are found aplenty here. We just relaxed ourselves looking at the setting sun and listening to sounds of birds that you never get to hear in a city like Mumbai.


(The cottage where we were staying......air conditioned, but plan for 4 hours of load shedding)

The beach is not the best part here. I say so for two reasons: 1) The water is not very clean...it has this blackish tint to it (maybe because of the oil deposits) and 2) the high tide comes in for some time in late afternoon, but for most part you will have to walk a good 2-3 KMs to reach water !!!


So we decided not to go in the water and instead focus on taking pictures around the beach. We were not disappointed by the results.

The design formation of the sand caught our eyes. It was as if lot of snakes had wriggled and formed the design!!.

On the beach, we found a lot of small sized shells and crabs. Actually, tons of them.....!! Crabs had dug out holes in the sand and it felt as if one creative artist had done embroidery on sand !!

Then we saw this nice large shell. The yellow design on the shell looked almost golden in the warm light of setting sun. I brought back this shell as a souvenir from the trip!!!

Sunsets are always special and gives you a very warm feeling. Sunset at Bordi is is equally enchanting. We spent lot of time observing the sunset!! Yeah, we observed how the sun actually changes color and then slowly sets creating an illusion that it is going in the water!!

We have been to Juhu beach in Mumbai on many occasions, but I do not remember when I spent even 5 minutes observing this natural phenomenon. I guess that is why we desire for a weekend getaway where we can do all these things we don't have time to do in time boxed city life.

Apart from the beauty of place, another reason to visit Bordi is the food at MTDC. I have not eaten better konkani / malvani food anywhere else. If you are staying at MTDC, enjoy the local sea food. Just inform them what would you like to eat a few hours in advance and they will get fresh stuff just for you !! I say that is special treatment !!!!

We tried both vegetarian and non-vegetarian food - and both the variations were much beyond our expectations.


After two days of fun and a rejuvenating experience, we headed back to Mumbai.

Face Detection: How does it work?

The latest and greatest feature that all camera manufacturers are up selling is the "Face Detection" technology. It's available in most of the new compacts and must say - it is impressive.

One of my friends recently bought "Canon 950 IXUS" which comes with the "Face Detection" technology. We tested it and it works very well. We were pretty amazed and being IT people, started asking ourselves - "how the hell it knows how many faces are in the frame"

After googling around for some time, I got some answers to this mind blowing technology.

How does FD work?

All digital cameras have computers built into them - we like to call them "Processors" and "Sensors". Auto Focus (AF) and Auto Exposure (AE) features are based on this computer and it's thinking power.

When we "half-press" the shutter button, a beem of light is sent from the camera to the subject to determine the focus range, exposure and ISO settings. Once the computer stores all the details, a "beep" sound comes which tells you that it is ready for the shot.

Face Detection (FD) also takes help of this same computer. Manufactures have prepared a database of millions of facial structures and it's relative positioning in the face. Some things that go into this database is:

- Structure of eyes
- Structure of nose
- Distance of eyes to nose
- Face size
- Color temprature of skin tones (Yes - we all have color temprature measured in "Kelvin", do a google on it as I cannot explain it here)

As soon as you "half-press" the shutter, the FD algorithm in computer takes image in the frame as input and compares with the facial structure database and color temprature of skin. If a match is found, then that object is focused.

FD can identify more than one face in frame - so if 5 of you are posing in as a group, FD will "main" focus the center subject and then "additional" focus on the subjects to either side of main subject.

So no more "out of focus" subjects and no more loosing opportunities due to lack of focus.

Does FD fail?

Yes, it is a very new technology and it does fail in certain situations.

- Low light situations
- Subjects not facing the camera
- Distance between two subjects very high

These are all very minor issues where FD fails. Manufactures are working towards the next generation FD technology that will solve most of these issues. Until then, switch off the FD in such situations and depend on the traditional "Focus-Recompose-Shoot" technique :-)

AIRC has a very nice article on this subject with pictures that will give a good understanding of how different brand of cameras implement FD.
http://www.adorama.com/catalog.tpl?article=052107&op=academy_new

Happy Face Detecting !!

Your camera manual is your best friend and guide.....

You are on a beach with your latest camera (of course !!) and taking lots of pictures of the beach, your friends, sunset and trees...


You have been following all the instructions your dealer gave you - "switch on, point to subject and shoot" and the results have been quite nice for all the pictures you have taken.

You followed all the above steps today too, but to your astonishment, the pictures have come dark - some of them way too dark. In some cases, they are overly bright. You are totally worked up after seeing the photographs and tell to your self - "this camera is such a sad model - it does not take good pictures". You are right? NO - you are wrong.


This is a very common problem with everyone having digital camera faces. As new users, we all are very high on energy but very very low on basic technique.



Above situation gives all of us few important lessons:


1. Read your camera user manual. Don't just flip through pages, but study each and every option available in your camera.

2. Follow step 1 and re-read the manual until you understand each and every feature and how to navigate the camera options.

3. Google is your friend. There will be points you do not understand. Google and you will be blessed with thousands of articles you can read about the feature.

4. Understand basics of photography: ShutterSpeed-Aperture-ISO. It is called the "Exposure Triangle". Read the details here: http://digital-photography-school.com/blog/learning-exposure-in-digital-photography/

5. Flash is available in camera does not mean you have to put it on. Flash kills the texture and creates harsh shadows on subject. Experiment taking some pictures in evening or indoors with flash turned OFF. Try to capture the mood and the ambiance.

6. Photography is all about capturing subject with respect to light - angle of light, intensity of light and duration of light. Here is one test you can do at home to learn about this.

- You will need (1) one fruit (2) study lamp / 60watt bulb (3) camera (4) hard surface on which you can rest your camera


Now light the apple using the table lamp and start taking pictures keeping apple and cameras' position same but changing the position of lamp in every shot. Now go and observe the result. Check out the impact of light angle on the apple. This is what we need to ask our self before taking a picture - is the angle ok, is the intensity ok....got it....? now go and eat that apple !!



Couple of take aways:

- study camera manual ("cram-it-up" as one of my friend says!)

- find out what other settings your camera has to offer

- make an effort to study photography as a subject

- try to come out of "AUTO" mode and experiment with other settings

I will keep writing on how we can utilize the features in compact point and shoot cameras to get some stunning results. Enjoy your camera - it has some kool features that you are not aware of. Find the features and explore ;-)