Chaos

In the past year I ended up making two trips to India. One trip (last October) was to the National Chambal River Sanctuary (not too far from Agra, Taj Mahal) and the other (December) was to Corbett National Park (about a 6 hour drive from New Delhi). Both the trips gave me an opportunity to see Gharials and Crocodiles. The Indian crocodile is not as large as ones you see in Africa or Australia, or at least I have never seen large ones in India.

Gharials (Gavialis gangeticus) are a strange looking crocodilian. They have a thin long nose, almost like a beak, except the fact that they have very sharp teeth. Mostly fish eaters and rarely a danger to people. The male gharial has two ball like structures at the tip of its nose, hence the name Gharial (a round clay pot in Hindi).

Gharials have even managed to influence architecture it seems.  Close to the National Chambal River Sanctuary is the Ater Fort. 

Ater Fort

Gharial Gargoyle at Ater Fort

The Chambal river is also home to crocodiles, though I just managed to see one.  Taking pictures when on a boat that keeps rocking is not all that easy.  As you can see, the crocodile is not very large.

The trip to Corbett National Park yielded a lot more crocodiles and gharials.  Since I was not in a boat the pictures turned out better except for the fact that I was not as close to the animals as I was at Chambal.

Bunch of Gharials.  Notice the nose of the one on the right.

I have an old (or what seems old) Sony KP-51HW40 Rear Projection High Definition TV.  Over the years I noticed that the quality of the image was no longer very good.  I called in a Sony Authorized technician who used my remote and converted the screen into a grid and got busy doing some alignment stuff (Convergence).  A few years later the same problem came back.

This time I decided it is not worth paying $200 to get the convergence fixed on my TV.  After a bit of web searching I found this  site.

I followed the steps and my TV is as good as new.  The instructions provided at the site were good but I ended up modifying the approach.  In either case be please read carefully and try this at your own risk.  I am no professional.  Please read all the instructions at the site before reading my modified version.  There is a wealth of information there.

The steps I followed were an abbreviated version of the original instructions provided by Larry Dillon  at http://www.techlore.com/article/19631/Sony-Convergence-Procedure/#29242.  I think they are simpler but I, of course, maybe missing steps more pertinent for other Sony TV models.

1. Put the TV on a 480i/p signal in full mode, i.e., go to a non HD channel
2. Turn the set off using the remote control
3. To get to the service menu press Display, 5, volume up, and then power
   • Your TV will turn on and you should see a menu displayed on the screen.  If you have a widescreen TV then press the zoom button to set your TV to Full Screen Mode.
   • 2 and 5 keys cycle through the menu items, the 1 and 4 keys cycle through the sub menu items. 3 and 6 keys change the value of the selected item
   • Mute then enter will save any changes you have made, if you have made an error, turn the set off and any settings you have made will be lost and your set will be returned to its previous values.
4. Use the 5 key to cycle through the menu until PJE menu
5. Use the 9 key to select fine convergence mode.  A bracketed rectangle symbol will show up in the center of your screen.
6. use the 6 key to select the internal convergence pattern of choice.  Keep pressing 6 to cycle through different grid patterns.  Choose one that works best for you.  I like the black background, i.e., whatever is playing on the TV is not visible, just the grid lines.
   • You will notice that the grid is white but there are red lines or bleeding out of the grid.  A lot tougher to notice are the blue lines.  In some cases you might even see red lines parallel to the white grid, not just bleeding.  This means you need convergence.  All you should see is a clean white grid.
7. Use the 3 key to change the color that you will be adjusting. As you press the 3 key the center cursor (rectangle bracket) will cycle through red, green, and blue.
8. The following steps are if your remote control has a joystick type of knob.  If your remote is of another kind then I am not sure what you need to do.
9. • Pressing the 3 key select red or blue
   • Now use the joystick left, right, up, or down button to make sure that the corresponding red or blue lines merge cleanly with the white lines.



10. The 1 and 4 keys will move the cursor position. When hit repeatedly, this will move the cursor in a spiral pattern over the entire screen. For each position in the spiral use the joystick to converge the line for the color you selected by pressing 3.  You can press 3 and change the color and converge too.  If you press the joystick button down the cursor will turn white from the selected color.  Now the top, down, left, right of the joystick will move the cursor around the screen.  Another press of the joystick will bring it back into convergence mode, i.e., the cursor will turn to the selected color and the left, right, top, down positions help with convergence.
11. I prefer using the 1 and 4 keys to spiral through the grid.  According to the original instructions (provided by an expert) its is the better way to go. 
12. When satisfied, hit Mute then enter to save data. If not satisfied, simply turn the display off to return to original settings.
13. Turn the set off.
14. Turn the set on and then check other modes for convergence errors. Such as Wide Zoom etc.  Then also look at the HD channels and repeat the steps.  Touch up any mode you wish to using the above instructions. What ever mode you are in when you enter the service mode, will be the mode you will be adjusting.

At first this all may seem daunting and painful.  But I think it took me about 20 minutes to wrap up most common modes I use my TV in.  I now remember why I liked this TV.  Over the years I had gotten used to watch poor quality image.

Most modern cameras offer metering capability for you.  What that means is that the camera decides what the shutter speed should be or what the aperture should be based on the amount of light it detects.  A smarter camera will calculate some sort of an average for the amount of light it detects and determine the best aperture or shutter speed such that no one part of the picture is over or under exposed.  In most cases this is a good thing.  But there are times when you may not want your camera to be so smart.

I recently went on a trip to Corbett National Park in India.  While the park has some grasslands most of it is a thick jungle.  This makes photography a bit of a challenge as there isn’t always much light available.  But you do have beams of light cutting through the trees and illuminating parts of the jungle.  So when you spot an animal you wait for it to move to the right position into the light before you take your pictures.  All this is good but if your camera is smart it will detect a mostly dark background and will either open your aperture or will slow your shutter speed.  The result of this smart move from your camera is that you will get well exposed flora but the animal that finally walked into the light will be over exposed.

This is exactly what happened to me.  I was with my Nikon D80 set to matrix metering (I forgot to reset to spot metering) and we saw a tiger.  The tiger was in the bushes and there was a clearing in the bush which had a nice beam of light falling through it.  I knew if the tiger walked to that clearing I would have a great shot.  The tiger decided to move and in the right direction.  As it emerged into the brightly lit clearing I went click click click…..

But alas all I got was overblown highlights.  The tiger was a bright white spot and the jungle foliage was nicely exposed.  Its then when I realized that my camera was still on matrix metering.

Spot metering is an option that tells your camera to calculate aperture or shutter speed based on the spot your focusing on and not the entire frame.  This way your camera will correctly expose for the “spot” and let the rest be.  When in a forest this is a much better option for taking pictures of animals.  This way your camera will adjust correctly for your primary objective.

This is my over exposed tiger.  Sigh!!!!!!

On a recent trip to India I went to the National Chambal River Sanctuary not too far from Agra and close to Bah.  We stayed at the Chambal Safari Lodge which in itself was an excellent experience.  Talk about a great place to stay, excellent food, and great hospitality.

On our stay there we went for a river safari.  Basically a quiet boat ride on the Chambal river early in the morning.  You get to see Gharials, Crocodiles, Gangetic or River Dolphins (impossible to photographs), and lots of different types of birds.

All the pictures I took during this trip were using a Nikon D80 and a Nikon 70-300mm f/4-5.6G AF Nikkor lens.  I wish I had a faster lens with better glass.  The 70-300 is great for its price but is not very sharp when you open it up wife ( less than f8) and is also soft at 300mm.  Of course its really cheap.  So I can’t really argue on that front.

Some of the pictures that I liked are:

A painted stork in flight.  A few people felt that a faster shutter speed would have removed all the blur in the picture.  I tend to disagree.  I like the blur at the wing tips.  To me it gives a sense of motion.  The picture below to me shows the force applied as the bird takes flight from the water.