Common Jezebel

Common Jezebel, seen near my home.

Sunset

Lalbagh Flower Show - January 2011

Few photos from Lalbagh Republic Day Flower Show, 2011

Sap

Jump!

Shot at Pondicherry Pier

Eucalyptus

Baronet

Baronet butterfly

Dark Palm Dart

Edit 01/16/2011 : This is a Dark Palm Dart and not a Moth as mentioned earlier.

Araucaria

Araucaria branch

Multifunction Cable Release for DSLR

I've been working on a multifunction cable release for my Canon DSLR for a while. Today I managed put together a prototype on an independent board. Here is a photo of the prototype. So far things are working as expected. At this point, the following functions are supported - Trigger, Bulb mode, Delay Mode and Variable time mode (Intervalometer). I'm planning to add few more functions soon.

Technical details
The system uses the ATmega328 8bit AVR micro controller. The programming was done using an Arduino Duemilanove. Squeezing the menus in the 16x2 LCD display unit and navigating the whole thing using only 5 buttons was fun.

Currently the system runs from a 9v battery and draws about 50 (including LCD back light). At this point no power saving measures are implemented. Once power saving functionality is in place, I might be able to run this using 2 CR2032 or CR2025 cells. I should be able to reduce the size of the whole thing when I design a proper PCB for this.

With minor code changes and adding an IR LED, I was able to trigger a Nikon from close range.

Tailed Jay

A Tailed Jay butterfly, seen near my home. This is the first time I was able to take a picture of one of these guys. Extremely active, they hardly sit anywhere. This one was a bit cooperative, but was resting at in shade among leaves and I had to increase the ISO to 800 to get a shot.

Flowers

Caterpillar

A caterpillar of Oleander Hawk-moth. One thing that came to my mind when I saw this caterpillar was the story Green Patches by Isaac Asimov.

Spot-billed Pelicans

Spot-billed Pelican