“Every once in a while, a new technology, an old problem, and a big idea turn into an innovation”Dean Kamen, American engineer, inventor 03SCI-TECH

➤ Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk has unveiled thelatest iteration of his space company’s newly assembledStarship, outlining a speedy development timeline forthe centerpiece vehicle of SpaceX’s quest to launchhumans to the moon and Mars.

➤ Musk showed a crowd of space enthusiasts andreporters at SpaceX’s rocket development site in theremote village of Boca Chica, Texas, animations ofStarship landing on the moon and Mars and predictedthat the rocket’s first orbital flight could come in thenext six months, followed by missions to space withhumans aboard the next year.

➤ “The critical breakthrough that’s needed for us tobecome a space-faring civilization is to make spacetravel like air travel,” said Musk. REUTERS

ELON MUSK UNVEILS NEW MARSROCKET PROTOTYPE

Understanding camera-relatedjargons is a crucial first step towards

improving your skill as a beginnerphotographer...

1MEGAPIXEL (MP): This is the size of the image captured from a digitalcamera and smartphone camera

This is probably the first thing that comes to mindwhen we talk about a smartphone camera. Megapix-el stands for millions of pixels; an image is made upof tiny units called pixels (1MP means one millionpixels). A higher megapixel count in a camera willresult in a richer and bigger image. Basically, megapix-el can also be termed as the resolution of the image(picture size). While higher megapixel means biggerresolution and an indication towards better imagequality, this does not always hold true. This is becausepixel quality matters more than the number of pix-els. Got it!

2 APERTURE (F/STOP): It is theopening of a lens which basicallycontrols the amount of light that

can pass throughThe second most commonly usedterm in the smartphone camera isaperture. It is a hole in the camera,just like the pupil of our eyes. It con-trols the amount of light that can passthrough the lens and the camera sen-sor. The f-stop is also known as the f-number. It is represented as f/1.5, f/2.4and so on. Lower aperture value in-dicates a wider opening of the cur-tain’s hole. This implies that morelight can pass through the cameralens and sensor. The aperture alsoregulates the overall sharpness of theimage and helps in achieving a shal-low depth of field.

3 OPTICAL IMAGE STABILISATION(OIS): It helps in reducing the blurredeffect of the image

This is a technology for cameras that physically moves thelens to compensate for camera movement. OIS determinesthe camera movement using a gyroscope sensor to countermovement by moving the lens module sideways or upwardsand downwards. This feature is useful while taking low-lightshots. One factor to keep in mind is that this mechanism canonly minimise the effect, not completely eliminate it. Interms of video recording, the addition of OIS can offer ahuge benefit. Here the constant adjustment of the lens tocounteract camera movement can result in a considerablyless shaky footage.

4 SHUTTER SPEED: It controls thetime gap for which the sensor of thecamera is exposed to light

There are three main pillars of photography – shutterspeed, aperture and ISO. The camera shutter acts likeour eyelids that open and close to let light enter. Like-wise the camera opens and shuts to capture an image.The speed is related to the time for which the shutterwill remain open exposing the light on the camera sen-sor. Shutter speed helps in controlling the exposure ofan image which can further be related to the brightnessof a picture. The slower the shutter speed, the brighterthe image. It is helpful while shooting in low light con-ditions.

5 ISO: It measures the ‘effectiveness’ of your camera image sensor

It is the measurement of how sensitive your camera sen-sor is to light. ISO can help you to achieve better lookingphotos even in low light. The thumb rule is, darker thelight, higher the ISO. But cranking up the ISO in smart-phone cameras can result in a relatively grainy image,which hampers the overall image quality. ISO stands forInternational Standards Organisation, which governs theimage sensitivity rating for camera sensors.

6 DEPTH OF FIELD: It helps infocusing on the subject of the image

It stands for the area in which the image is being taken.For example, if you are taking a portrait image, the sub-ject should be in focus, but this zone can vary depend-ing upon the picture. If an image has everything in fo-cus, it has the deeper depth of field and if an image hasits foreground or only background in focus, it has a shal-low depth of field. The depth of field is controlled by theaperture of the camera. Lower f/stop will give shallowdepth of field and vice versa.

7 FLASH: It is the source of light for your camera while shooting in low-light conditions

Smartphones are portable and easy to use. In well-litconditions, all smartphones take good-looking pictures,but when it comes to low light photography most smart-phone cameras fail. Here comes the role of camera flashwhich helps in illuminating the subject in dark. Smart-phones usually have two kinds of flash – LED and TrueTone LED. LED is the cheapest technology available andmost commonly used flash in budget and mid-rangesmartphones. True Tone LED flash is one of the bestflash technologies available in modern high-end smart-phones — which is basically the combination of whiteand amber LED — and it helps in maintaining the whitebalance of the image.

HD REC7SMARTPHONE’S CAMERA

ABOUT YOUR

THINGS YOU MUST KNOW

00:00:00

Technology has allowed us to store largeamounts of private digital data these days. Wecan store information on our systems andportable platforms or opt for cloud storage.Due to our ever-expanding data storage, manya time we tend to forget the name of thestored file. We even forget whether we kept aparticular file in our storage at all! Times NIEoffers some help...

LOCATING RECENTLY-SAVED FILES

1This tip is for instances where you save Microsoft Wordor Excel files without looking at the file path. In suchcases, you have no idea in which folder you saved that

file and this can create a tricky situation for you, especially if

you need that file rightaway. So, just open theapplication and the list of recent files. In MSOffice suite, you will be able to access recent files. Or else, goto File, Open, and then, Recent Documents.

LOOKING IN WINDOWS WITH PARTIAL FILENAME

2If you had saved the file some days or months ago andcan remember the first letters of the file name, go toStart in Windows, type those letters and hit the search

option. Most of the time, you’ll find the file.

SEARCHING WITH THE HELP OF EXTENSION TYPE

3 This method can get the file’s location if you searchby just typing in the file extension. For example, ifyour file was an MS Word document, hit enter after

typing ‘.doc’ or ‘.docx’ in the searchbar in File Explorer or, if it was Excelfile, search by ‘.xls’. Similarly‘.mp4’, ‘.mp3’ etc.

SEARCHING WITH THEHELP OF CORTANA

4Another way to search is to make use of Cortana (onWindows 10). When searching

specifically for documents, if you clickthe Cortana icon in the taskbar, a listof your most recent activities can befound under ‘Pick up where you leftoff’. Your most recently saved filescan be seen here. Or, click on‘Documents’ under ‘Search for’ andtype in the file name.

4 TIPS to find misplaced files onyour computer

➤ Uber recently unveiledfuturistic concept images for‘Skyports’ – which will act asstations from where passen-gers can hail the firm’supcoming flying taxis.

➤ These ‘airports’, attachedto existing buildings, willenable people to board anddisembark from Uber Airvehicles.

➤ Eight firms unveiled 16new designs for Skyports atUber Elevate, its initiative tolaunch uberAIR, the aerialelectric ride-hailing service.

➤ The company is workingwith real estate developersand cities to install the ports— which are a bit like heli-pads — atop parking blocks

and other under-utilisedstructures. According toreports, this service could berolled out in Dallas and LosAngeles as soon as 2023.

Taxis atopparkingblocks will‘fly’ to you!

Photo: Getty images

Photo: Getty images

Photo: Getty images

■ WILD FRANK, DISCOVERY CHANNEL, 3.00PM: Frank embarks on a quest to theexotic land of India to find the BengalTiger. Along the way, he gets acquaintedwith elephants, yaks, snakes and oth-er animals.

1669: Rembrandt van Rijn, Dutch painter,passed away.

1880: William Lassell, British astronomerwho discovered satellites of Uranus andNeptune, passed away.

1881: Edward Leveaux received apatent for the player piano.

1883: The Orient Express departedon its first official journey from Paristo Instanbul.

1977: PM Indira Gandhi released fromcharges of political corruption.

1990: The German parliament had its first

meeting since reunification.

1992: The 16-year civil war in Mozambiqueended.

2004: SpaceShipOne reached an altitude of368,000 feet. It was the first privately

built, manned rocket ship to fly inspace twice within a two week win-dow.

2006: WikiLeaks was launched, cre-ated by Julian Assange.

2012: 7-time Formula 1 world drivers cham-pion Michael Schumacher of Germanyannounced his retirement from racing atthe end of the season.

■ 100 DAYS 100 TALES, ANIMAL PLANET,5.00 PM: The host observes variousspecies of wild animals to understandtheir behaviour and how they survivein their natural habitat.

■ IT'S NOT ROCKET SCIENCE, DISCOVERYSCIENCE, 7.00 PM: The build team con-testants find out if it is possible to scalea building with vacuum cleaners andif an amateur can land a plane withradio instructions.

■ TRUST ME, I'M A DOCTOR, SONY BBCEARTH, 8.00 PM: Learn whether simplychanging mealtimes can help in losingweight.

■ BABY DRIVER, MNX, 3.00 PM: Docforces Baby, a former getaway driver,to partake in a heist, threatening tohurt his girlfriend if he refuses. Theplan goes awry when their arms deal-ers turn out to be undercover officers.

■ RUMBLE IN THE BRONX, HBO, 5.39 PM:Keung, a Hong Kong policeman, trav-els to New York for his uncle's wed-ding, but he ends up befriending a lo-cal gang to bring down an evil crimi-nal syndicate.■ TOY STORY 2, &FLIX, 7.10 PM: When

Woody is kid-napped by agreedy toy collec-tor and isnowhere to befound, Buzz andhis friends set outto rescue him.However, Woodygets tempted bythe idea of becoming immortal in amuseum.

■ X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE, STARMOVIES, 8.50 PM: Colonel Stryker re-cruits mutant brothers Logan and Vic-tory as commandos.

MOVIES ON TV

OCTOBER04, 2019

TELEVISION

MUST DOMUST SEE

THISDAY THAT

YEAR