The Author – Bart Busschots
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Dec
11
Night Time Photography – Another Reason to Go Fast Fixed Focus
Filed Under Photography on December 11, 2007 | Leave a Comment
When I recently purchased a 30mm F1.4 fixed focus lens I explained my reasons for doing so while reviewing the lens. Today I realised I left out yet another reason to add a fast fixed-focus lens to your collection. Because fast lenses gather insane amounts of light you can shoot hand-held at night and actually get good results. I did manage to get some night time images before using the standard 18-55mm zoom that comes as part of the Nikon D40 kit, but that was really working at the limit (see the results here). Because that lens is quite slow at F3.5-5.6 I had to crank the ISO up to 1600 and even then the exposure times were still very high. This resulted in images that were grainy and a lot had to be junked because they were blurred to a greater or lesser extent.
On my way home from work this evening I had a go at some night time photography with my new F1.4 lens. It was such a nice experience! With the ISO turned down to 800 I could easily take hand held shots that look pretty good.
You can see the results of my work in this gallery.
Dec
1
30mm F1.4 Lens from Sigma – First Impressions
Filed Under Photography on December 1, 2007 | 2 Comments
I’ve been looking for a good fast fixed-focus lens for a while. It was quite tough because I have a Nikon D40 and very few lenses autofocus on this camera because it doesn’t have it’s own built-in focusing motor. This means that only lenses that contain their own motor will auto-focus on the D40. After a lot of searching I finally settled on the Sigma 30 mm F1.4 DC lens. It arrived earlier this week so I’ve been doing a little playing around with it since.
[tags]30mm, Sigma, DSLR, Nikon D40[/tags]
Aug
6
Nikon Zoom-Nikkor AF 70-300mm Lens – Initial Thoughts
Filed Under Photography on August 6, 2007 | 14 Comments
So my new toy finally arrived. It’s taken me ages to get my hands on one of these lenses but since Allison has the same one and is really happy with it I wanted to get one too. My very first reaction was one of disappointment. This lens doesn’t do auto-focus. Mind you, had I actually read the spec properly before buying it that wouldn’t have come as such a surprise 🙂 I was a bit worried about the lack of auto focus for about 5 seconds, till I gave the lens a go! I’ve been using manual focus for years on my old Olympus OM1 so it’s not a problem to use it again. I think I’ve been a bit spoiled by the great 18-55mm zoom that came with my D40 though.
[tags]Nikon, Zoom Lens[/tags]