Wednesday, August 9, 2017

What a difference ten millimeters make

Last Thursday I took a camera and a trio of lenses out to the ballpark. With some time on my hands before the game started, I trekked up to the highest nosebleed seats to get some wide views of the field and stands. The results provided an interesting range of focal lengths.

Let’s start with 28mm:

Nikon D810, 28mm (28-200), 1/250, f/8, ISO 200

This is the wide side of a 28-200mm that I do a lot of work with. As a shot of the field itself, it’s reasonably good. But let’s see what we get if we go a little wider.

Nikon D810, 18mm (18-35), 1/400, f/10, ISO 200

That’s 18mm (minus a bit of cropping I did to get rid of the roof). If I was taking a traditional landscape approach, this photo would probably be my choice.

But let’s go another 10mm down:

Nikon D810, 8mm, 1/200, f/7.1, ISO 200

Now that’s a fisheye view, so much so that the image gets vignetted. Still, that’s a 180 degree view.

I had even more fun with the 8mm lens that evening, as seen in this blog post.

Wednesday, August 2, 2017

Best of the 365 Blog – July 2017

July was all about experimenting. I got a new (well, refurbished) Nikon D810, so welcome to the world of full frame photography. And I went a little crazy buying accessories on Amazon Prime Day.

The month got underway with the usual fireworks shots (alas the new gear hadn’t arrived yet).

Nikon D3000, 10.5mm, 0.3 sec, f/5.6, ISO 200

This isn’t the absolute first shot I took with the new camera, but it was the first one good enough to blog. I’ve also moved my photo management from the Apple app to Lightroom, so I’m getting used to that as well.

Nikon D810, 300mm (75-300), 1/400, f/6.3, ISO 800

We’ve been moving some stuff around in the house, including these five alligators in a cheese box.

Nikon D3000, 24mm (18-55), 1/80, f/4.5, ISO 200

One of the new gizmos is a ring light, which makes macro photography a lot easier. This is a plastic spider from the top of a cupcake, currently perching on the top of my postcard rack.

Nikon D7000, 80mm (35-80), 1/60, F/5.6, ISO 200

Shortly after I got the new camera, I added a Nikkor 18-35mm to the collection. The lens is well suited to landscape photography, but I thought I’d take it out to the ballpark and play around with it for awhile.

Nikon D810, 35mm (18-35), 1/320, f/7.1, ISO 200

I also added a full frame fisheye lens. This is my office at home, finally cleaned and organized.

Nikon D810, 8mm, 1/60, f/4, ISO 1600

We put in a small St. Francis shrine on the deck. Okay, it’s a concrete lawn ornament and a bird bath. But it fits well with the bird feeders.

Nikon D3000, 32mm (18-55), 1/125, f/5.6, ISO 140

And finally this odd specimen. This is a front view of a metal fish, part of my writing desk decor. I shot a series of macro photos and then focus stacked them (which oddly I had to do in Photoshop as Lightroom won’t do it).

Nikon D810, 80mm (35-80), 1/125, f/5.6, ISO 500, focus stacked