Thursday, May 27, 2010

New Lens for my Nikon

I have added my next to last lens to the Nikon collection, a 105mm f/2.8 VR macro (still need the 24-70mm to fill the gap between the 17-35mm and the 70-200mm. I should have added a macro a long time ago but I couldn’t make up my mind if I wanted the 105mm or the 60mm. It was delivered last night just before I was to leave for a Houston Photography Meetup meeting. I quickly snapped a few photos around the house and took it to the meeting where I took a photograph of the lady sitting across from me.

Thursday I set up a table top to photograph a strawberry then walked around the backyard looking for possibilities. There were no white Magnolia blossoms down low but there are a couple that will be opening shortly so I will keep an eye on them. I got a lot of throwaways but I did get a couple of photos today that I liked.

This photograph of Janet were among the first shots with the new lens. I shot these before I took off for the meeting.
 
Below is the photograph of Diana that I shot at the Photography meeting. The assignment for the month was Bokeh (which I keep calling brokeh and misspelling.) Bokehis the blur, or the aesthetic quality of the blur, in out-of-focus areas of an image according to Wikipedia. Anyway, I noticed the light fixture behind Diana and thought it would be a good test of the bokeh of the 105mm. She agreed to the photo and I shot only the one.
 
  Of what I have done so far, the shot of the strawberries is my favorite. I had to make a grocery run this morning and while I was there I noticed that they had a good price on strawberries. Janet used to love strawberries but the last year or so I have had trouble getting her to eat them. I thought I would give it one more try and it would give me an editable model--hey, I can eat strawberries! I think I will start a series called the Editable Model, doing shots of food.I don't think right now that it will be food photography. That sounds too complicated--just shots of things that you can eat. May or may not. I've got a lot of projects already hanging so we'll see. I also got some blueberries and I might work them into the Editable Model theme.

After I tired of shooting strawberries I went out to see if there were any Magnolia blossoms. There were but none low enough that I could shoot so I took a few photographs of the pods from the spent blossoms and got one that I liked.



2 comments:

  1. AWESOME, Gary! Love the results you're getting with your new lens. How about the magnolia? Did you use a tripod? If not, do you mind sharing with me your settings? I have a feeling you used a lighting set up and tripod for the strawberry - awesome as well!!!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Jan the magnolia photos were shot at 1600 ISO f/22 @ 1/640 sec handheld ambient light 4:30pm. The strawberry was on a tripod, ISO 250, f/40 @ 1/250, -1.3EV, SB800 flash in an octobox with daylight fill from window (the -1.3EV was because I did not have any small f/stop available.)

    These two photographs bust two digital myths: 1-do not use high ISO’s, malarkey. I even like high ISOs on my Samsung. They are noisy but I like the texture they add to the photograph in low light situations. 2-do not use f/stops smaller then f/11 because of refraction, malarkey, the strawberry was at f/40 and I do not see a sharpness problem.

    ReplyDelete