DoF and cherry trees

Looking up!

Wow!  What a glorious day today!!  I can remember a long long time ago when I was a youngster that I'd lie on my back on the grass and jus look up and watch the clouds.  I can remember there being lots of clouds in the UK when I'd look up, but today, here in GodZone New Zealand, we're pretty cloud free just now.  The sun is out, feels lovely and warm.  The cherry blossom is out and the tuis and silver eyes are feasting on the nectar.  Summer is on its way at last!

If you look to the left of the first image in this post you'll notice the pink blossom of a cherry tree.  I thought it'd be quite noce to get a shot of these flowers with a blurry background mixture of the sky and other blooms.  I put my camera on a tripod with an 85mm lens attached and took three shots at different apertures.  A couple of things intrigued me.  Firstly there's a significant difference in sharpness of the  "focussed" blooms when you compare the f1.4 and f4 shots.  Makes me wonder if I need to fine tune the autofocus!  Secondly there really is a big difference in background blur, or bokeh, as you open up the lens.  There's much more difference between f1.4 and f2.8 than I was expecting.

Oh well, such a lovely day today I'd better get out and enjoy it!!

85mm f4

85mm f2.8

85mm f1.4

Anti-biotics :-(

Not the best night last night and hopes of seeing Pacific Curls and Whirimako Black on the waterfront were dashed.  Really not well and spent a good chunk of the day resting and feeling very sorry for myself.  Quick trip to the doctors this morning resulted in a cocktail of pills including some anti-biotics.  Sadly, as I start to get ready for the evening meal this evening, I can't say that I'm feeling much better than I did first thing this morning.

Cherry Blossom.

Still keen to make the most of the lovely weather we've enjoyed over the past couple of days I attached the Nikkor 85mm f1.5G to my D300 and took a closer look at some of the blooms in the garden.

First shot was taken over the fence to capture my neighbour's cherry blossom.  The sun was a bit lower in the sky which helps give a bit more warmth to the shot.  This lens really is a gem.  It's surprisingly sharp wide open and creates a gorgeous background blur.  Quite a special piece of kit.  This was shot at f3.5 ... trying to retain the blur, but get a bit more depth of field on the blooms themselves.  Did it work?  Perhaps ley me know.

Kowhai blooms

The second shot is of some more kowhai blooms in my back yard.  This time looking up so you can get a better idea of the bell like blooms of this tree.  Nice blue sky this evening as you can see.

The last few shots are a bit of a change.  My son is looking after a chum's guinea pig for a few days, so I thought I'd get a few shots whilst I could and the 'pig' was returned to its owner.  Shallow depth of field again in an attempt to draw your attention to the creature's face and eyes.  Does it work?

Now it's time for tea and some more tablets ... hopefully I'll feel rather better tomorrow.  I must say that I'm pretty fed up with the sore throat and cough already!  Perhaps let me know what you think of the pig pictures ;-)

A bit more fun ;-)

Hard not to have fun with this stunning piece of glass!

I headed off to Auckland's Botanic Gardens on Saturday morning, set the aperture to f1.4, ISO 200 and aperture priority mode on my D300.  First shot in this post is of a kowhai bloom.  Just look at the way the 85mm lens blurs the background.  Gorgeous!  Well, I think so anyway.  I thought the image was quite sharp considering the lens was wide open.

Second shot in this post was again an attempt to see how the lens blurs the background.  This shot has a couple of kowhai trees in the background in full bloom providing the yellow haze to the pink cherry blossom.  Again, main subject nice and sharp and a lovely smooth blurry background.  This lens really is a gem.

The third shot was taken at f5.6.  It was such a bright day that at ISO 200 and f1.4 1/8000sec wasn't fast enough!  This shot is lovely and crisp and only convinces me more that this is a quality piece of equipment.

Last shot was taken at f16, which is the smallest aperture the lens affords.  Nine aperture blades help with the lovely boken effects I've noticed in previous shots, but now, just look at those highlights and the star burst effects.  Dream lens?  I suspect you know what I think.

Dream lens?

I feel extremely privileged to have been loaned this gorgeous lens.  Heavy, well perhaps, but I'm not finding weight an issue at all just now.  I really wanted to try the lens in low light situations shooting the bands.  What with all the paraphernalia littering the stage a wide aperture helps blur these into obscurity whilst enabling a lower ISO or higher shutter speed to be achieved.  I've been using my 50mm f1.8 which is nice and sharp when I get up above f2.8, but how would I fair with an f1.4 lens ... and wide open?  I should be able to tell you later tonight.

Unable to resist having a bit of a play with the lens, and somewhat desperate to see what type of bokeh I could achieve with this prime lens I headed out to the garden.  I haven't applied any colour changes, white balance changes or sharpening to any of the images ... just added a watermark and cropped a couple slightly.

First shot is of kowhai tree flowers at the head of my driveway.  It was a tad breezy, so the flowers are not as sharp as I'd have liked, but it was the background I was interested in.  Is that a lovely blur or what?  Depth of field is very shallow as you'd expect at f1.4, so that may be a challenge tonight with the band!

Second shot is of some Asian Cherry blossom also on my driveway.  Again I was looking for the background blur and this is perhaps not the best of shots.  Good detail in the foreground branch, flowers not as sharp as I'd have liked, but the lens was really showing its quality with the colour rendition and foreground sharpness.  I was starting to become very fond of this lens.  Very fond indeed!

Remember it was quite breezy this evening which caused the blooms to move about a bit.  I was also keen to persist with f1.4 and you can see just how shallow the depth of field is as you work your way along the branch.  Should be a challenge with the band tonight.  Mind you, the lens focusses VERY quickly indeed and with virtually no noise at all. Very sweet indeed.

My final shot is of a daffodil in my front garden.  Still shooting at f1.4 but again the bloom itself seems a tad soft.  This may well be due to me in an excited state romping around the front garden and shooting anything that looked vaguely colourful!  Depth of field is wonderful as is the blur of the lichen covered tree to the right.  The lens is clearly a quality optic.  I just hope I can achieve something worthwhile when I go to see the band tonight ... just couldn't resist taking a few shots in the garden before I head out.  Perhaps I'll catch you back here later tonight with some low light shots from the band along with some more feedback on the Nikkor 85mm f1.4G

Tuis in the garden

Really felt pretty rough today, but the tuis feeding on the cherry blossom was a pleasant distraction from the headaches.  I was quite amazed with how many tuis came into the tree.  It was hard to count them all as they can be quite boisterous and leap around from branch to branch.  Anyway, my son managed the shots you see here.  All shot with a Nikon P500.  Quite impressive really.  The lens was at maximum zoom and aperture was wide open if memory serves me.  ISO was 160 and shutter speed was down around 1/125 or so.  I was quite impressed with the results.  Perhaps let me know what you think?

Anyway, the birds were between 20 and 30 metres away from where we were.  I was sitting on a chair, engrossed with the birds' activity whilst my son captured the images with camera mounted on a tripod.  A little further up the garden are some kowhai trees, so we may try to get some shots of the tuis in those trees  over the next few days.

I'm back!

Whoa, seems like ages since I was here.  Where've I been?  Quite a few places really and had a great time in the process.

The aim was to visit the UK to see family and friends, but we took the opportunity to spend a bit of time in Vancouver on the way over.  I took quite a few shots of the various places we visited and hopefully as I sort through my efforts I'll be reminded of the great time we had on vacation.  I'll share some of my experiences and images on these pages and encourage you to make comments on what you see and read.

We left Auckland on a glorious spring day.  The cherry blossom was out, tuis were fighting over the nectar and the sky was a lovely even blue.  Not a day to be leaving I thought!  In fact, looking around the garden I couldn't help thinking this was an ideal place to go for a holiday rather than leave!  When you understand that our destination in the UK was Manchester, which has an unpleasant reputation for being cold, wet and miserable, you'll appreciate why I was wondering if leaving NZ was such a good idea.

The flight away from NZ wasn't the direct flight to Vancouver we'd hoped to use, but rather an Air New Zealand flight into San Francisco and then a United flight to Vancouver.  Not the best of experiences I have to say.  The flights were OK, but San Francisco was not the most pleasant.  After leaving the plane we queued for two and a half hours just to get photos and finger prints taken.  We then had to collect our bags even though we were in transit.  This was a HUGE difference to the experience at Singapore's Changi Airport on our return trip, but more about this later.  Needless to say when we arrived in Vancouver we were shattered. One flight was 12 hours, we then waited 7 in transit, a further 2 hours to get to Vancouver and then we had to drive to our accommodation.

Accommodation in Vancouver was superb.  If you're staying in Vancouver check this out ... Nature on Norwood.  We'd originally thought of staying in the city and using public transport, but in the end a hire car from Alamo and Nature on Norwood was more cost effective and significantly more versatile.

So there were were.  Exhausted, but in Canada and the weather was every bit as good as that in New Zealand :-)

Over the next few days we travelled around the Vancouver area and had a wonderful time, but I'll tell you more about that in the next post.  If you can't wait to see more images from my trip check out my Facebook album for a few more shots.