The Difference a Day Makes

Spent three hours last night shooting the Eclipse. Spent 5 minutes tonight shooting the full moon. Spent 1/2 hour in Photoshop to make this:

Supertelephoto Art, In Seattle

A few weekends ago, I got the chance to play around with my 400mm f/3.5 supertelephoto up in Seattle. I'm exploring the artistic merit of shooting anything but birds and sports with a supertelephoto lens. I think it works. As always, click to enlarge (in Flickr).


(D2H, 400mm, monopod, Photoshop)


(F4S, 400mm, monopod, Fuji film processed at Costco and scanned onto CD at processing, Photoshop)

Film, Revisited...

I just essentially traded my old film camera for the film camera I've wanted since I first started getting into photography - the Nikon F4s. Granted, digital offers so much more for so much less in the long run. With as many pictures as I take during the year, I certainly can justify spending $1000 on a dSLR. But I still will always have at least one film camera body. And I LOVE LOVE LOVE my 'new' F4s. I haven't even uploaded the pictures to my computer from my D2H, but here's one shot I made about three hours ago on my F4 (with the Nikkor 400mm f/3.5):



Granted, that's a crappy scan from the 1-hour photo center at Fred Meyer. If I scan the negative, I can get a little more tonality and texture out of the wall. But, honestly, that's pretty darn good!

And there's something about the smooth whir of a frame of film advancing in the back of a Nikon F4s. Plus the camera itself is a work of art.

Film is not dead. Not by a long shot. I can't wait to get some Fuji Velvia 50 through that thing...

Edit -- here's the same shot w/the 1.5x 'teleconverter' that's inherent to the dSLRs, from my D2H:

A Look at the Moon Through a Supertelephoto

Grabbed the 400mm tonight to grab a few shots of the moon. I also wanted to see what the image quality would be with the crappy Tamron 2x teleconverter. Here are a couple of the shots:

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:

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...