"Damn, I'm late!"
By the time I reached our meeting spot, it was already 6 PM. The moon has risen, but it was hidden by a layer of black clouds. They were so thick that no light coming from the moon could pass. It was only a translucent shadow that told the position of the moon.
"Man, why does this building have no lift?!" I murmured while climbing up to the roof.
I wondered if Chhaya was already there. Come to think of it, she did ask me to come a little early, but that little runt, Ishika. Well, she might not be that bad. After all, thanks to her, I got the stuff I needed. She also behaved exceptionally nicely after that with me, it's quite concerning. I never thought she, of all people, would come out to help me. It does feel bad to accept such an expensive gift, honestly. But I think I will just have to repay her someday. Yeah, that will do.
"Huh, Chhaya is not here yet?!" I exclaimed as I climbed up to the roof. It was completely empty. There were no tripods or any other equipment she might have set up for photography, either. I guess she is the one late today. I'd better tell her I was on time and was waiting for her when she came.
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It's almost 8 PM now. What is taking her so long? Man, my legs are cramped sitting here this long, waiting for her.
ACHOO!
I feel like I have caught a cold. Winters suck man. I have to wake up early tomorrow. Argh, where is this girl? How can someone be so careless? She asked me to come early, and she is the one who has not made it here yet. Does she have no sense of time? At least she could have told me to leave if she could not make it by a time. This feels cheating to wait so long without knowing when she will come, or if she will come.
WAITTT! Did she ditch me? NOOO!
This is worse. I didn't think it would happen, but now it feels like this might have happened. If it is her, she might just do that. What do I do, what do I do, what do I do? ARGH! Should I wait more, or should I go back home and come back tomorrow? What should I do?! This is driving me insane.
"Oh, wait, she lives here," I muttered.
Right. She did tell me she lives in this building. But where is an apartment in this building? It was not written on the signboard downstairs near the entrance. Is it some kind of hidden apartment? In that case, no way I could find it. Well, I might just go search a little on every floor. It's better that way than wasting time here. Also, it would be much warmer inside than here, out on the roof. Winters suck really.
I climbed downstairs and tried looking for an apartment on every floor, staring from the top. I just need to look for an entrance, a door or something like that. I mean should not be a moving wall or something she uses as an entrance. Third floor, check. Second floor, check. First floor, check. Ground floor, check. No luck.
"Man, this is tiring. I feel exhausted. I need something to eat," I said while holding my belly.
Good that the second floor was a cafe. Just need a good hot coffee. I climbed back to the second floor. The cafe looked pretty old. It felt as if it was run by the third generation now. The windows were tinted and held the cafe's name written on them. The door was painted white, which contrasted well with the black windows. I opened the door, and a chime welcomed me. There was a large serving desk on one side that doubled as the reception. The other half of the room was filled with round tables with four chairs around each. They used recessed lights placed inside a false ceiling. So the ceiling must be rebuilt. Surprisingly, there were no customers there. A contrast to the camera shop. There was no hustle and bustle of customers or any music playing here. It was just so nice and calm here. I ordered a hot latte and went on to take a seat in the far corner near the window. The window gave a view of the hallway outside.
"Man, this is so good," I exclaimed in joy after tasting something so warm. Winters suck but coffee is the best. I took my time to finish the coffee, it was not like she would appear so soon anyway.
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"I guess I'll go back now," I decided. If she does not come within half an hour now, I will leave. I cannot wait so long here, just doing nothing. I was bored to the hell. I climbed back to the roof. As I opened the door leading to the roof, a cold breeze blew past me.
"Man, the heater in that cafe must have made me weak to the cold."
"You are late," a familiar voice said in a flat tone.
"..."
W-When did she come here? I was waiting here all the time. I never noticed her from the window, coming as well. Does she climb the walls?!
"I-I was actually on time, see, and was waiting for you, but you didn't come. I was really starving, so I went to the cafe to grab something. But when did you come here?"
"Anyway, you brought them?"
"Y-Yes, I brought them. A camera with a wide-angle lens and a tripod. Everything you asked me to bring." She changed the topic, huh? Guess my bluff was not effective. Just when I thought I would make her apologise for being late…
"Hand me," she said before extending her arm to me.
"Ah, yes. Here you go," I said as I handed her the bag containing all the equipment.
"..."
She opened the bag and took out the camera, all sealed and packed… THE FUCK! I should have removed them from their packaging before handing them out to her.
"A-Ah, I just brought it this evening, s-sorry I forgot to open them up, please let me open them," I said while reaching out my hands to grab the camera box.
RUSTLE RUSTLE
She is opening them. What a bad impression I made on her. I am so stupid. ARGH.
"Please let me open the rest of the boxes," I said.
"Hold it for me," she said while handing me the unpacked camera. She took out another box and started opening it. She must like opening gift boxes. I stared at her opening the remaining two boxes containing the lens and the tripod. She brought out a small mat from her bag and placed it on the floor. She then carefully placed the lens and the tripod on it.
"Give back," she demanded.
"A-Ah, the camera right, here."
She bent down and sat on an empty portion of the mat. While I was still standing, she opened the slot provided for the battery and slid the rectangular battery that accompanied the camera into it. She pressed the power button to turn it on and waited for it to boot. It took roughly 10 seconds to boot. After that, she did some initial software setups and then asked me to come closer.
"Sit down and listen carefully. Photographing any object in general needs three equipment, a lens to focus the light coming from the object on the camera sensor, a camera that captures the object when light from it falls on the photo-sensor inside, and a tripod to hold the camera in place, eliminating any vibrations from your hand. The tripod, although optional for professionals, is still needed in astrophotography, the reason, coming later," she explained.
Why is she still looking at the camera while explaining? Shouldn't she at least look towards me while explaining? And her hair, so long that it fell all over her shoulder as she bent, blocking my view.
"Doubt, please! So the camera has no lens built into it?" I asked, raising my right hand.
"Not these ones. Some scenes could be better shot with a different lens. An interchangeable lens camera gives you that flexibility."
"Okay, like the moon shot you took," I replied. She did turned while replying, and then she went back to the camera again.
"Yes. Moving on. In the process of taking a photo, you might have to tweak a few parameters in the camera. This depends on the scene you are trying to capture. Every scene is different. For example, taking a picture at night without any major light source is different from taking a picture in the day under the sun. You need to adjust these parameters for every scene to get a proper shot."
Is she shy? No, she scared the hell out of me last time. I would never have the courage to talk to a stranger standing on the railing of a building. If anything, she is not shy.
"This camera, you see, can be operated in two modes, an automatic mode in which the camera takes care of all the tweaks for you and a manual mode in which you have to carefully set each parameter to get the right setup as per the conditions you are taking the shot in. For the most part, we will operate it in full manual mode. This slider near the lens, see, is for choosing the mode. Slide it like this, and it is now in manual mode. See the screen, it shows all the parameters that can be tweaked. This model has a touch screen display, so you can just select a parameter and tweak it or use the rotary dial given on the top."
Is she avoiding me?! Why? Because I was late? Well, she was late too. How unfair. Wait, I sounded like Ishika there. Ahem.
"To see a preview of what you are capturing, you can use this small cutout in the rear. It's called a viewfinder eyepiece. It lets you see what the lens is capturing. It's not live, so if you zoom in or tweak any settings, it won't show any changes. For that, you would need to enable the live view, which lets you see the changes live on the camera screen. Usually, it's an option found in the settings, but for your camera, there is a button here, near the eyepiece that lets you switch between live preview and settings-"
She paused and stared at me for a moment.
"You listening?"
"Oh, yeah, yeah. I got that all. Please continue."
She didn't question me further and moved back to the camera. Man, her gaze is scary. Those dark blue eyes of hers, dead flat. Have no emotions in them. Like a hunter's. I must not deviate from the lecture. Let's keep this in mind. She has a gun and will shoot me if I misbehave. Yes, I will keep that etched on my brain.
"I will go back to settings for now. Our primary concern while taking a shot is to maintain a decent light level in the image. During the day, there is plenty of light, but at night, there is often not enough for the camera to capture a photo. This is called exposure. If the light entering the camera sensor is too low, the image will be dark and under-exposed. If it's too high, it will be excessively bright and over-exposed. To control exposure properly, we have to take care of three parameters, the aperture, the shutter speed, and the ISO."
I feel like I read them back in the shop, and she is explaining them now?!
"The first one, aperture, controls how much the lens's shutter opens. This lens has a blade-like mechanism inside. Simply put, it's like a window that can be opened or closed in varied amounts. The wider the blades open, the more light they let in. It also controls the depth of the field. Depth of field means how much of the scene is in focus. A narrower aperture gives a large depth of field, letting you capture more objects without getting blurred out. Imagine a landscape scenery where you would need everything in focus. While a wider aperture gives a shallow depth of field, letting you keep only the primary object in focus, the rest of the background goes slightly blurry. Like a portrait shot where only the person is in focus and the background is blurred. Aperture is mentioned as a ratio. The larger the ratio, the wider the aperture opens. For example, 1/8 is larger than 1/16. So the blades open more in 1/8 than in 1/16. Oftentimes, the 1 is replaced by an f, making it f/8 instead of 1/8 and f/16 instead of 1/16."
"Okay," I replied.
"The next, shutter speed, controls the time duration for which the camera's shutter opens before closing again. It is the speed with which the shutter closes. The shutter is a tiny window-like mechanism, similar to the aperture blades, which covers the camera's sensor. The more time you give it, the more light it can collect, resulting in a brighter picture. A slower shutter speed means the shutter opens for a longer duration before closing. Shutter speed is measured in seconds. Faster shutter speeds are mentioned as ratios like 1/100, which means one-hundredths of a second, that is 0.01 seconds. Slower shutter speeds are in seconds, ranging from 1 or 2 seconds to over several minutes. Another use of shutter speed is in motion capture. If the object is fast-moving, think of a sports scene, it would be required to open the blades for a very short time so that the image does not get blurry. If the object is not moving, a slower shutter speed works."
"Okay."
"And the last one is ISO. It is not related to the physical mechanics in the camera. It is more like a software enhancement, it increases the amount of light captured digitally. It is a number that tells how sensitive the sensor is. The higher this number goes, the more sensitive the sensor gets, allowing it to capture more light. But keep one thing in mind that higher ISO values lead to distortions in the image called grain. So it is usually advised to keep ISO as low as possible."
"So basically, we have to control the amount of light that enters the camera sensor and a bunch of other properties as well."
"Exactly that. Aperture, shutter speed, and ISO collectively control the exposure. A night scene needs more exposure, while a daytime scene needs far less. As a rule of thumb, we choose one parameter first and fix it and then adjust the other two parameters as per our scene. For example, you might adjust the aperture as per the depth of field needed and then adjust the shutter speed to compensate for any lack of light that might be caused or an excess of light that could be caused. Or you can do the opposite, adjust the shutter speed first and then adjust the aperture and ISO later."
"So, for a nighttime scene such as in astrophotography, we need more exposure, right?" I asked
"If it's the stars you are capturing, yes, a lot," she continued, pointing at the stars, "sometimes you would be setting shutter speed as slow as a minute."
"Wow, that's quite slow."
"Before anything now, let's put the lens on the camera and place it on the tripod, and take some shots." She stood up and brushed the back of her skirt. The mat seemed clean already. Oh, wait. I should stand up as well.
"Yes, ma'am!" I replied while getting off the mat.
"To attach the lens to the camera, simply hold the camera body firmly in your hands and remove the cap covering the sensor. Make sure to hold the camera pointing downwards while doing this to prevent any dust from falling on the sensor. Keep this button pressed with your index finger along the rim of the camera. Now, remove the cap on the back of the lens and position it like this, aligning the white squares on the lens and the body of the camera. Gently twist the lens until it makes a click sound..."
KLICK
"Release the button, locking the lens in place, and now the lens is attached. You can now remove the cap on the front of the lens and begin shooting. Removing the lens is just the opposite," she continued.
She held the camera like a baby, tightly held in her lap below her chest, and then inserted the lens like feeding the baby its bottle. The fact that she was quite good at it-
COUGH COUGH That thought just there was wild.
"Want to try it yourself?" She asked while holding the camera, towards me.
"I-I guess I can try."
I tried removing the lens first.
"So, I need to click and hold this button, twist the lens in the opposite direction, and wow, it came out quite easily."
"Always point the camera downwards. The sensor will get damaged if it catches any dust," she said while pointing towards the camera's sensor.
I pointed the camera downwards and tried reattaching the lens.
"So, I click and hold the button again, align the markings and twist."
KLICK
Man, that sound was so satisfying. I could do it ten more times.
"Okay. Now, let's attach it to the tripod," she picked up the tripod and unfastened the screws near the top.
"What are those for?" I asked.
"These screws lock the tripod in place, unfasten them and adjust the tripod to your desired height and base and then fasten them to lock in, like this. Now, take a look here at the top. There is a screw placed upside down. If you look at the bottom of your camera, you will find a hole. That hole is for attaching the camera to this screw in the tripod."
It was true. There was a hole below the camera's body.
"Take a look here now. First pull this lever besides the screw which releases the sliding mechanism. Then take out the base on which the screw is welded. See it closely there are markings as to where the camera lens should point after fastening the screw," she said while showing me the base.
"True."
"Take this, and try inserting the screw into the camera. Make sure the marking and the lens are aligned."
"Okay."
I took the base and noticed the markings. I inserted the screw in the camera body and begun twisting the base.
"No, don't twist the base. You will damage the camera. Here, open this latch and twist it to fasten the screw," she came closer and pointed her finger at a latch that was welded to the screw. There were just centimetres separating us. At this point she could even feel my breath. I could not, cause she was bent staring at the camera in my hands as I fastened the nut. Man, she's too close now.
"Okay, I-I guess it's tight now."
She took the camera from my hands to the tripod. She pulled the lever and slid the base back in, before releasing the lever and locking the whole setup.
"All, done now. I believe you can do all this yourselves from the next time onwards," she said.
"Phew! A lot of work just to get the camera set up. And I need to do this every day? Hectic if you ask me."
"..."
"Hey, before anything, can we take a small break, please?" I requested, joining my hands together.
"Why, we have just begun?"
"Ah, well, you see, a little rest does not hurt. I-I also need to use the washroom," I said, looking downwards.
"Go. Come soon."
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"Oh, I was so nervous," I said, facing the mirror in the washroom. All those twisting and tightening the camera. My hands were trembling while doing all that to such a piece of expensive equipment. I also got slightly distracted. ARGH. Calm down. Calm down, Ahan. Calm down. She is just trying to help me. Focus, I need to focus.
"Okay, I am good now," I said, slapping both my hands on my cheeks.
I washed my face twice and came out of the washroom. I started climbing back to the terrace.
"Took you time."
"A-Ah…" I didn't know how to answer her. Had it been a male friend, I would have given the excuse that my thing got stuck and won't come out.
"Now, hurry up and take some shots of the sky. Don't adjust any parameter yet, just use the viewfinder to compose a scene and press the shutter."
"Y-Yes!"
I held the handle used to move the base, which attaches the camera around. I looked through the viewfinder, trying to find a good scene to capture. It was a cloudy night, so I struggled to find any stars.
"To south," she said.
I pointed the camera towards the south, rotating it by 180 degrees. The clouds were less dense here, and I could actually see a few stars twinkle. I set the camera to a good angle that captured a few stars and pressed the shutter button.
KLICK KLICK SHRUTTER
[Illustration link - https://ibb.co/Lz4xLkjN]
The camera showed the photo I just took on the screen.
"Why is it all black?!" I asked Chaaya, showing her the screen.
"Because you didn't expose the scene properly."
"But I could see the stars clearly from the viewfinder."
"Our eyes and the camera's sensor are different. The camera's sensor needs enough light to capture something. Right now, the exposure is set low. The light coming from the stars is not enough to capture with a camera. We need to increase the exposure. Try increasing the shutter speed to 15 seconds. This will make the camera try to capture all the light it can for 15 seconds before taking a picture."
"Okay," I said while setting the shutter speed on the screen. On pressing the shutter speed icon, it gave me a slider to control it. "Where is 15 seconds? It's not in seconds, I think. It shows me the values in commas," I asked.
"A double comma is for indicating seconds, and the fractions are for indicating a fraction of a second. This camera can be set to a shutter speed between 1/1000th of a second to 45 seconds."
"Okay, so 15 seconds should be here. And now I just click the shutter button, right?"
"Yes."
KLICK KLICK
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SHRUTTER
[Illustration link - https://ibb.co/v6scsWdx]
It took 15 seconds to take the image. I glanced over to the camera screen.
"Wow, I can see the stars now. Although they are still not very clear. The image on a whole seems a bit dark still."
"That is because the camera could not focus. When it is this dark and there is not enough light from the source, we need to manually focus the camera. You see this slider near the screen. It is for setting autofocus off. Slide it from AF or Auto Focus to MF, which means Manual Focus."
"Okay, done."
"Now we need to focus the camera. Try to find a bright star and point the camera towards it. Then turn the live view on and use the focus ring to adjust the focus, just right to make the star appear sharp enough. Use the north star if you wish."
I turned the camera towards the North Star and focused the lens on it.
"Gently."
I twisted the focus ring very gently, trying not to overshoot it.
"Okay, this seems enough."
"Sure, now turn the camera back to the previous position, take a picture again.
I moved the camera back to its previous position and clicked the shutter button.
KLICK KLICK
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SHRUTTER
[Illustration link - https://ibb.co/SDHFT2m3]
I glanced over the image. It was sharp but still pretty dark.
"It's still not bright enough. The contrast is bad," I complained.
"Now increase the shutter speed to 30 seconds," she said.
"Okay, done."
KLICK KLICK
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SHRUTTER
[Illustration link - https://ibb.co/fzxqnwYz]
It took the camera quite a lot of time to take an image this time. I glanced again at the camera screen.
"What are these? They are not stars," I asked, turning the screen towards her.
"It appears the stars have trailed. The Earth is not stationary. As the Earth rotates, the stars shift their positions. When you set the shutter speed to 15 seconds, they didn't change their position much. But when you set them to 30 seconds, within that time, the stars changed their positions enough to appear jittery in the image. A creative use of this phenomenon is star-trail photography, where the camera is set to extremely slow shutter speeds, think 5 minutes. The stars move enough in that time to appear as small curves in the photograph."
"I see. Then, if I cannot increase the shutter speed more than 15 seconds, how can I increase the exposure to capture the stars clearly?"
"Increase the aperture. If you do that, it will compensate for the lack of light due to a slow shutter speed. Take a picture for every aperture value from 1.4 to 32, setting the shutter speed back to 15 seconds."
"Okay."
I took a dozen or so pictures. It took a little over 5 minutes. Each picture had a varied amount of darkness. For an aperture of 32, it was almost a black image. As I increased the aperture, the images began to look less dark. At 2.8, it looked almost perfect.
[Illustration link - https://ibb.co/Kptmq04y]
"I think 2.8 is the go-to," I said to her, showing an image I captured at an aperture value of 2.8.
"Good, now try tweaking the third parameter, ISO from 100 to 1600."
I went back to the camera screen and again took a few pictures.
"Take a look at the 100 one and compare it with the 1600 one."
"Well, the 100 one is too dark. The 1600 one is pretty bright and captures the stars well, but it has a lot of distortion like pictures taken on an old camera."
"That's called grains. High ISO settings introduce graininess into the image, which is not desired. You have to settle for an ISO as low as possible and make up for the lack of light using aperture only. Because in astrophotography, the exposure is generally set quite high already."
"I think this 800 one is decent," I replied, showing her the picture I took with an ISO setting of 800.
"Yes, it is decent."
[Illustration link - https://ibb.co/MDgrdnTF]
"Chhaya, can you take some shots as well?"
"..."
"I mean, I would like to see how a pro works," I said with a chuckle.
"Move."
I made space for her and moved away from the camera. She crouched down and adjusted a few settings using the knob instead of the screen. Guess she is an ergonomics person. She pressed the shutter button and we waited for the next 20 seconds.
[Illustration link - https://ibb.co/yn4D4V5n]
"Wow, Chaaya. You are a professional after all. This is just so much clearer than mine. There are so many more stars in it. There are no grains as well. Well done, Chaaya!" I gave her a thumbs-up.
"Just need to set the parameters right. You did well for the first time. In a few days of practice, you would be able to take something like this yourself."
"Ah, I'm not sure about me. But I will try my best!" Feels so good to hear her praise me. She might not be that scary.
After that, we took a lot of pictures of the night sky together. Within the darkness of the night sky, we were finding such enthusiasm that was keeping us both awake for hours now.
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"Ah, Chhaya. To commemorate this day, would you like if I took a selfie with you?" I asked her while pointing my camera towards her.
"NO. Don't take my picture," she said while blocking the view with her hands.
"But why? Here you can take the selfie if you want," I said while trying to give her the camera.
"NO! I said NO!"
"A-Ah, understood. Sorry for making you uncomfortable."
"..."
I guess she is a bit camera-shy. But it felt like she was overreacting to the idea of taking a selfie. She was breathing heavily and held her chest with her right hand.
"Are you alright, Chhaya?"
"Y-Yes, I-I'm okay," she said, almost out of breath.
"No, you don't look like. You are clearly not alright."
"I said I am okay!" she screamed while grasping her chest more firmly.
"Ah, okay then. I won't ask for it. Take your time. Relax for a moment and take deep breaths."
I will leave it at that, then. Maybe, someday, when I grow more closer to her, then maybe she will allow.
"I-I need to leave now. S-See you tomorrow," she said, stuttering and went to pack her camera and tripod. She quickly gathered her camera and tripod and threw them into her bag, and went towards the stairs.
"Chhaya, hey?"
"..."
She disappeared from my view as she started climbing downstairs. I was now really worried for her. I packed my camera and tripod and decided to follow her. I climbed down the stairs and searched for her on every floor, but she was nowhere to be found
"How did she get away so fast? ARGH, why did I have to ask her that!" I said while punching the wall.
Worthless me.