Nikkor 85mm f1.4G

Meryl Cassie (ISO 1250, f1.4, 1/250)

I was right.  This really is a dream lens.  It's a light magnet!  It's quite sharp wide open and it's an absolute joy to use.  I went out to see Contagious last night at the Cock and Bull.  They have pretty good lighting, but I wanted a reasonable shutter speed so was choosing ISOs in the range 800 through to 1600.  Aperture, well, that remained fixed on f1.4!  Even wide open the lens remained sharp ... surprisingly so.  I'd taken a few shots in the garden earlier in the day ... you may remember these from the previous post, and to be honest I suppose I was kind of expecting a bit of softness to the images.  Well, the lens well exceeded my expectations.  This lens is fast, sharp, has wonderful bokeh and behaves well with colour and point light sources.  Dream lens?  Never has a truer word spoken.

Anyway, I've added a few shots here for you to look at.  Each shot has been reduced in size, but apart from having the watermark and converting to JPEG there's no changes made to the image.

I must admit to being quite fond of the shot of Brett Robertson (second shot in the post).  I've never really found it too easy to get a shot of Brett, but the blur this lens has achieved has really helped make him pop out from the background.

There's only a few images in this post so if you'd like to see more perhaps head off here to my Facebook Page.  You might "Like" what you see.

Brett Robertson (ISO 800, F1.4, 1/100)

Meryl Cassie in some pretty strong green light! (ISO 800, f1.4, 1/125)

Terrance Guillard (ISO 1600, f1.4, 1/200)

Carlos Cameron (ISO 1600, f1.4, 1/100) 

Carlos Cameron (ISO 1600, f1.4, 1/80)

Contagious ... WIDE!

Friday night at the Cock 'n Bull at Botany with a wide angle lens and Contagious on stage.  The first shot in this post was taken at 12mm.  The only problem really was the aperture.  f4 just isn't really fast enough for the amount of available light.  I was keen to get more of the lights in the shot, and the wide angle lens would certainly let me do this, but as Terrence and Birgette move around on the stage my shutter speed wasn't fast enough to freeze the action.  Never mind ... you live and learn.

The second shot was also taken with the wide angle lens.  I think it gives some nice distortions sometimes.  One effect is to make the guitar increase in length.  Another less flattering effect can occur of you get a bit close to people and put them at the edge of the frame.  I'll try to avoid doing this :-)

Third shot in this post is again taken with the wide angle lens.  This lens lets me get quite close to the performers yet retain a lot of the background.  Sadly I need to boost the sensitivity which then introduces a bit of noise into the image.  This third shot shows Brett Robertson on keyboards.  Let me know what you think.  Does it add to the atmosphere perhaps?

Some of my favourite shots are of Carlos on the lead guitar.  He has a small spot light that illuminates him when he has a bit of a solo.  The contrast between him and the background I find particularly pleasing.  Again, sadly, there's a reasonable amount of noise as I need to boost the sensitivity up a few notches to ISO 3200 or even 6400.  You may recall a shot I took a few weeks ago of Carlos.  The previous shot was taken with the 50mm lens and a lower ISO so there's not as much noise.  This shot was taken with the wide angle lens and I think is a bit noisier.  Perhaps let me know which you prefer and why ;-)

The last shot in this post is of Birgette.  Sadly I haven't managed to get any shots of the drummer.  There's so much hardware in front of him that it's nigh on impossible to get him performing without a microphone appear to be protruding out of his ear or something else casting an unpleasant shadow across his face.  I'll keep trying, but so far, no joy :-(

Anyway, Birgette completes the shots for this post.  More images are on my Facebook page should you want to see more.