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Old Lenses, New Camera

Daniel — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 03:51:18 +0000

I did a couple of experiments with old lenses on the new FX sensor. First of all most of them has gotten into a much “apartment” friendlier range. 50mm acts as one, not as 75mm on DX. So is 105mm macro. I’ve noticed it focusing much faster on the new camera as well.

Wide angle though is really something. It really is a DX only lens, hence the black circle. However 10mm on FX sensor is weirdly impressive. Talk about wide.

All the distortion also creates interesting effects. Here is a mega-cat for you. The camera actually has a DX mode which produces close to 6 mega-pixel images, same as D70 did. Or you can crop the circle out manually, which I prefer to do.

And this one is a great shot. Too bad it’s not sharp. Shublik got extremely close to the camera to “distort” so much, but since it’s not a macro lens it doesn’t focus at such close distances.

Cat Eyes

Daniel — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 16:24:58 +0000

Shot of the eyes with a macro lens. It’s not possible to keep Shublik still for more then 1/8th of a second though.
August 2009.

Drops

Daniel — Wed, 06 May 2009 16:27:18 +0000

Macro shot of rain drops on green leafs, with a multitude of mini-self-portraits.
Niagara Falls, Canada.

Shublik The Model

Daniel — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 18:42:23 +0000

I managed to take a few photos of Shublik’s eyes today. Normally it’s a hard task since he just does NOT sit still for a second, and today wasn’t any different.

My trick was to use a lens with a focal length of 105mm at f/2.8 and a flash. This way I could stand far away and the amount of light allowed me to freeze his movement — very short exposures. The macro lens has performed well, I think.

I still had to discard most of the photos, but these 3 are the best of the series. Hope you like them too, as I’ve become very biased with things related to this little monster.

Lightbox

Daniel — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 20:25:20 +0000

With all the watch excitement lately I needed to come up with a good way to share with the readers of the blog. For that you obviously need good pictures. And to take good pictures of watches you obviously need a lightbox of some kind.

I used a simple guide posted on Strobist to build one without spending a lot of money. Borrowed a cardboard box from work, Alena bought some tracing paper and that’s pretty much it.

I need to replace one of the lamps with a regular bulb with a lamp with a tungsten bulb to get rid of the yellow light. And I guess a 2nd flash would do wonders too. But overall not bad of a result at all for a first try with this cheap structure.

Macro Portraits

Daniel — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 00:02:29 +0000

I started to get nostalgic about taking macro pictures, and since I didn’t have any good subjects I decided to look through my archives of raw images. I found a good picture, did some post processing and ended up liking the result.

Later on I noticed macro-selfs reflecting in the drops.

Colorful Insects

Daniel — Tue, 05 Sep 2006 21:33:16 +0000

The main reason I wanted to go to Canada was so that Alena could see all the great things that I’ve seen. So we were making stops at locations which I’ve visited before many times.

This time around we decided to stop by the botanical garden. I’ve seen signs pointing to it many times, but never actually went there. The garden itself seems to be rather large, and we were short on time, so we visited only one part of it: Butterfly Conservatory.

I armed myself with my new macro lens and went hunting. The first butterfly that we came upon was actually flying outside of conservatory, and the pictures of it came out the best. The conservatory itself was filled with all kinds of beautiful and exotic butterflies. They would even land on people and would refuse to fly away.

But I guess because the lighting condition weren’t great and I’m only an amateur majority of the pictures came out fuzzy. It still was a very fun experience nevertheless.

Then on our way back I stumbled upon a nice bumblebee flying around the flowers. He didn’t really want to strike a pose for me, but I think I still got a nice shot. Looks like he was flying around and collecting nectar from flowers.

My dad took a lot of butterfly pictures as well on his camera. Looks like he and my mom were having fun too. Also we got yet another magnet for our refrigerator. Alena refuses to leave without those from anywhere now. We brought 3 new ones from Canada.

Lens Galore

Daniel — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 04:41:08 +0000

I just love getting presents! This birthday has been especially good for my photography hobby. I got 2 great new lenses. One is a wide lens that I mentioned yesterday was given to my by Alena, my parents and my sister Lina. Today I got another one. An awesome Sigma macro lens (check out the shot on top) from Eldar and Moisha! Last year was great as well, when I got a super zoom lens from Maruks for my birthday. Thank you, everybody!!!

Here’s my current list of lenses (all autofocus), listed in the order I got them:

Nikon Zoom Super Wide Angle AF 18-70mm f/3.5-4.5G ED-IF AF-S DX Zoom-Nikkor
Sigma Zoom Telephoto 70-200mm f/2.8 EX DG APO HSM
Sigma 2x EX DG APO Autofocus Teleconverter
Nikon Normal AF Nikkor 50mm f/1.8D
Sigma Zoom Super Wide Angle 10-20mm f/4-5.6D EX DC HSM
Sigma Telephoto 105mm f/2.8 EX DG Macro

I can’t wait to take more pictures with my new ones now. Niagara Falls will be a good test for wide angle lens, weather permitting.