We spent a little time down at the expensive toy store earlier this weekend. We came away with two new-to-us lenses.
The first is rather dull — it’s a straight across replacement for the 70 – 300 that we already had. The new one has VR, Nikon’s image stabilization/vibration reduction package. The longer the lens the more I appreciate VR.
The second lens is a bit more interesting. A 12 – 14 f4 aspherical. (Tokina.) We bought it because I want a wider lens for getting good shots of the crowded narrow streets and aisles in Mexico. So that I can get things like these pictures of the road to the farm.
I’m considering using this one on the new Blackdog and Magpie website design. Doing some thing with a vertical image on the left side rather than the totally predictable header image.
If you know my backyard well you’ll be able to see the amount of squashing in this picture. It’s actually a long way from the rock pile to the edge of the saw buck. You can also tell that the hood doesn’t fit perfectly and that at 12mm there’s some interference with the edges of the image. Oh well, I’ll have to see what I can do about it.
The other reason for getting a nice fat round lens is to be able to take good landscape pictures. Admittedly about the only thing we have around there this fall is green but it’s nice crisp detailed green.
And some more green things.
But best of all is the ability to get close and shallow on those days when the lilies look good but the patio furniture is a little dingy.
In this morning’s experimenting I found that the camera consistently over exposes shots if I let it have too much say in the exposure, especially if I let it choose a shutter speed. A little care in shooting and a little nudge in Lightroom and I get those lovely water drops on the lily… happy.
This time next week I’ll be writing the first of the posts from Oaxaca and the Mexican bicentennial celebrations. Can’t wait!
