Like Father, Like Son...

Look at that technique! And that's my F4 and 80-200 F/2.8 Nikkor. I could do w/o the tattoo, however...


Have Camera, will smile!

This shouldn't be possible...

Click on the picture to pull it up in Flickr. Then click on "All Sizes" to see it as large as I can display it on Flickr.

This is a 1/5th-second exposure, hand-held, in Shutter priority mode, with the flash set to TTL (normal synch, not rear-curtain). With the 55-200 VR lens giving me the advantage of a few extra stops of sharpness, and with the wind being mostly calm to hold the tree steady, there's enough sharpness there to make things interesting. Certainly the flash exposure would be much quicker than 1/5th of a second, but the available light was reasonably dark even though I was standing under the streetlight.

The layers of the falling snow is what I wanted to capture here, juxtaposed with the lighted and snow-filled needles of the pine tree. The 1/5th-second exposure, combined with the flash did some very interesting things to the falling snow. Notice there's several flakes that are reasonably stopped within the scene. Then there are streams of other flakes, lit by the street lamp, blurred by the long exposure at 1/5th second. Finally, there are a couple of "blobs" that are sorta in-between -- outside the field of focus to be sharp, yet not quite blurred enough to be seen as a streak in the scene.

I'm happy to have captured the various directions that the snow was falling, and the snow on the pine branches. At 1/5th of a second, I'm not sure a non-VR lens would've captured this the same way. Yeah, there would be some sharpness in the branches thanks to the shortness of the flash exposure, but there'd be more blurriness, too, since the natural movement of the camera/lens at that focal length would've been amplified. I may still crop this scene a little bit (the shallow DOF forcing the bottom branches nearest me out of focus is sorta distracting -- and not part of the scene like I might've explored with the Group F/1 style), but overall I'm pleased with this result.

Bentley Hybrid Upcoming???

Okay, well, no. Not quite yet. I have no clue if they're even thinking of it. But it was the first thing that crossed my mind when I saw this scene at the 2007 Seattle Auto Show.

More pictures are posted on my Flickr stream.

Testing the Tokina 300mm F/2.8 AT-X SD

Finally got a chance to put the Tokina 300mm through some tests outside. Fortunately my puppy was a willing subject. What an awesome lens! Between the two of these superteles, I can hardly wait for baseball season -- the 2008 season -- to begin...

Supertelephoto Art.

Supertelephotos are quite often used to chase around critters, whether small or large, and action, whether fast or slow. You don't see any wide-angle lenses in the sports pits shooting the action on the field. I'm still learning how to handle a supertelephoto for chasing the action. Meanwhile, I took a break practicing shooting action to see what things look like from the perspective of a supertelephoto, when the action wasn't an important part of the image.

Here are a couple of the results:

Welcome, Autumn!

Is it just me or is it coming a little later this year. The colors just now seem to be turning around here.

More from the 400mm f/3.5

Still practicing. Still missing shots, because I'm still trying to control this monster. But I'm getting better...


Interesting bokeh...

First Impressions: 400mm F/3.5 EDIF

I happened to luck into my first supertelephoto over the weekend. These lenses don't become available very often, let alone at the price I paid for it. Fortunately I had just enough in my lens fund, and was able to purchase this awesome lens. I can't wait to shoot a baseball game with it, although, I really have to get used to not having a zoom and using a monopod. This lens is heavy!

I've never shot with a supertelephoto, so I'm trying to get the technique down. It's a different world, that's for sure. I need to practice practice practice...





So, I took a break from using my son as a model. I decided to chase our poor dog around the back yard this time. With the compression that a telephoto gives you, I probably could've used a smaller aperture, to get the nose and other features more in focus.



I was blown away by the crispness of the numbers in this picture, when zoomed in at 100%. I don't think the full 4.1 MP image will display when you click on the picture, but you get a good enough idea.

This lens will change my photography. Heck, at this point, that should be my goal in acquiring gear. It's not about the gear you have, really, but about how you use it. It's too bad the Rainiers' season is over, otherwise I'd head to Cheney and shoot away. Need to practice a bit more before I head to Safeco...

More from the 55-200 VR

I'm really digging this lens! No, the slow-shutter-speed telephoto shots aren't totally sharp, but for on-screen viewing, they're "acceptible." Consider that it was so dark that I had to use the little LED "flash" on my cell phone camera as a flashlight to walk through the woods to get this image, well after the sun had set on the horizon:



1/8th @ 200mm ISO 800, a little sharpening and NeatImage.

It's not perfect, of course, but considering I was shooting in near-total darkness, literally catching the last light hitting this mountain, I think it's pretty cool that I was able to catch something hand-held...

Here are a few more images, some with VR needed, and some without:



1/90th @ 200mm ISO 200

Mmm. Huckleberry. Some of the softness is probably because I was a little too close. I actually wanted to slap the macro on, but since we were too busy picking huckleberries, I decided to leave the 55-200 VR on and step back beyond the 3-feet minimum. Here's where the 18-200 VR would've shined a little more, since its minimum focusing distance is only .5 m (compared with the 1.1m of the 55-200 VR). Again, pay a lot more, get a bit more...







The clarity of this lens, even when VR may not be needed, is still pretty amazing.

I can tell that the images I'm going to get in the 55-200mm focal length will be much better than what I've gotten out of my other lenses in that focal length. Nikon has produced yet another low-budget beauty (to accompany the 50mm f/1.8 AF).