Monday, December 29, 2008

Winter Deadzone

Boy is it cold outside. I had all sorts of plans to go out at night and shoot. Nothing. Too much cold and snow. However, I have some new things in the works. I have a new lens. It isn't exactly a low light lens, it is a 200mm f4. F4 is a little slow, but we'll see what I can do with it. I'm also looking at getting another 50mm prime. I'm getting a little tired of my Nikon. It is a workhorse to be sure, and a solid lens in all regards.

sign

Nikon 50mm f1.4 pre-AI. This was taken at dusk during the early days of Autumn. Those were good days. Things are too cold to walk around and shoot, or bike somewhere and shoot. And definitely too cold to set up a tripod.

tracks

But it is time for a change of pace. Every 50 has a different character, and I'm looking for something a little different. Maybe it will help with the winter doldrums?

Thursday, December 18, 2008

Lensography part 1

Low light shooting. It is par for shooting at night. Low light shooting presents challenges, and the solutions tend towards finding faster glass. Right now I’m trying to find faster glass. With my job ending soon, that means faster glass for cheap. There are ways to get more light for your dollar, and they tend to lead towards normal lenses.

Canon 50mm f1.8 mk 1 – I bought this used for $100 dollars. F1.8 is considerably faster than f2.8, and it was much cheaper and faster than an f2.8 zoom. It was a lot of bang for your buck. Where can you get f1.8 for less? The cheapo mk 2, sure. Ironically I bought the mk 1 for the build quality (metal mount and distance scale), but it broke after about 2 years, so it wasn’t worth the extra 20 bucks was it? Still, about the fastest autofocus lens for your dollar.

However, there are places to get f1.8 or faster for less than 100 bucks.

Nikon 50mm f1.4 pre-AI – I bought this used for $30. Throw in the adapter cost, and more like $40. Still, for such little money I got quite a lens. It is all metal and solid as a brick. It is fairly fast, and is respectably sharp and also has respectable contrasts; wide open of course. After all, I'm not buying these lenses to use stopped down.

Canon 55mm f1.2 FL – I bought this for fewer than 100 dollars. This was a project; to adapt it to an EF mount. It failed. Others succeeded, but I did not. Too bad; though not as sharp as the Nikkor wide open, it has better contrasts. It is a lovely lens, but it doesn't function focus to infinity on an EOS camera, and so was a failure for me.

Canon 28mm f1.8 – Ok, so this is the most expensive of the lot. Where else can you find a lens that wide and that fast for that cheap? It was around 400 dollars. Other lenses in the 24-28mm range faster than f2.8 tend to cost over a grand. So this is really the fastest wide angle for your dollar, and when shooting on a crop camera it becomes necessary to have one fast wide lens for indoor shooting. 50 is just too long inside.

So I have 3 normal lenses. One is broken. One doesn’t focus past 10 feet. So really I have only one, right? Therefore, when I buy my next 50, I won’t look like some weird 50 guy, right? I really hope I don’t end up with a collection of a dozen 50mm primes.

New friends

lensography: Nikon 50mm f1.4 Nikkor (pre-AI) s-Auto @ f1.4, 1/40 sec and ISO 800

And of course inside shooting

band

EF 28mm f1.8 @ f1.8, 1/25 sec and ISO 3200

Sunday, December 14, 2008

Mass communication

One thing I love about the 21st century is the ability to communicate from anywhere. People have phones and the internet in their pocket, and it makes a wonderful nightlight.

Phone

They shine on all the time at night. I find that soft blue glow on people's faces to be comforting.

IMG_7254

Nikon 50mm f1.4 pre-AI at ISO 1600, 1/13th a sec.

Thursday, December 11, 2008

Winter Wonderland

Snowfall is a beautiful thing. Funny how I always seem to be at work during snowfall. Well, it does snow at night, and luckily the neighborhood has some decent streetlights among the awful sodium vapors.

snow

Lensography: 100mm f2.8 macro
...Not the fastest, but it'll do in a pinch.

Tuesday, December 9, 2008

Potential Energy

Potential Energy

Lensography:
Canon 20d
50mm f1.8 mk1