New Lens, Dry Run

It's a rare thing when I buy something that makes me feel like an idiot for doing so. It's even more rare when I buy something and it makes me feel like an idiot for not having done so sooner. This post represents my first day out with my 70-200 f/2.8, and it's a fantastic lens. If you ever read that 'it's not the camera, it's the lens, and it's not the lens, it's the photographer', I can vouch for the truth in it. This lens makes me want to be better just so I can see what awesomeness I can unleash.

Anyway, today was incredibly grey and overcast, as will 99% of the days between now and Spring, which can't come soon enough. It was not, however, overly cold. And that means I had a great time wandering around shooting and getting to know the lens.

This pic demonstrates a few things. The first is depth of field at f/2.8. It becomes tricky to manage focus on shots where you're close enough to your subject to have parts of your pictures at varying distances from the lens. This creates some areas that are in perfect focus and others that really aren't. If done right, it's great. If not, it creates an image that just doesn't make sense to your eye. This image also demonstrates that the standard corrective profile for this lens in Lightroom does some weird things to light in the bottom corners. Finally, remember not to turnip and leave your camera at -1 exposure compensation when you don't need it.

In this shot I got the depth of field right; look at the blur on the tree in the bottom left corner. I can replicate that effect in photoshop, but never to that level of perfection. This picture was taken with an unnecessary -1 exposure compensation. But look at the detail. It's almost as good as my 105mm Micro Nikkor and miles beyond what I came to expect from my 18-200mm.

The following shots are all taken at 200mm wide open at f/2.8. I couldn't move around much, and to be honest, the lens isn't long enough for these shots so I had to crop heavily. However, the detail is really good given the constraints and that if I moved forward, I would have fallen in the pond.

This shot is taken at 1/400th of a second, and I was almost able to freeze their movement as they landed. At 5.6 on my 18-200mm, they would be a grey smear.

It's too bad I'm so far away for this shot... I would like to print out the screaming goose but there's not enough resolution to do it. Anyway, a decent moment captured thanks to the Continuous Low shooting setting on the camera.

I thought it cool that there was enough light to cast shadows underneath the birds as they flew, when at this time day with a cloudless sky their shadows should have been behind them considerably. The cloud cover diffused the early morning light almost perfectly.

This is simultaneously the worst picture I took today, and the best. Taken at 1/60th of a second at f/2.8 while panning to follow the duck's rapid decent, I managed to catch its feathers spread for maximum braking, and great motion in the background. It works, even though it was taken at a shutter speed far slower than the minimum 1/1000th of a second required to freeze the duck's motion.

If I was the kind of photographer that names my photos, I would call this one 'Christmas Decorations'.

© Jeremy Buehler and Bug Noir (www.bugnoir.com), 2010.