“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

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

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

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

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.

“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.”

“Chhaya, can you take some shots as well?”

“...”

“I mean, I would like to see how a pro works,” I said with a chuckle.

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.

“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.