October 19

Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday

Friday Evening in the Garden, June 28

This evening I used another neglected lens, my Nikkor f/1.8 D. It’s the only prime lens I own, and I imagine that mastering it is akin to learning how to baby an old tractor to life. The focus on this lens is manual-only on my Nikon D5200, and it is fairly useless in auto mode. I’ve had this lens for a decade, yet I’ve barely tapped its potential. That’s a good thing about the craft of photography: there’s always something new to learn if you’re willing to give it the time.

This evening I offered it some time. I crouched around the ditch and took over 150 shots, only 10 of which I liked. The photo above is the one I like best.

I like it enough to offer the option of buying photo prints and other items printed with it on Redbubble. I have a few images available through that print-on-demand site because I’ve actually ordered a couple items (a tote bag and t-shirt) from them for my daughter, and we’ve been very pleased the quality of the products. I’m proud of this photo, and I think it would look beautiful as wall decor.

The Forlorn Tamron Macro Lens

This week’s Wordless Wednesday post reminded me of an old friend who’s languished for the past five years, my Tamron AF 70-300 mm f/4-5.6 lens. I stopped using the Tamron because I found it frustrating. It was like its motor was making value judgments on the shots I’d tried to compose, like “there’s too many layers of depth in this scene so I’ll just stall the motor and make your camera shutter button useless until you come to your senses.”

I dug out the Tamron yesterday evening and found that it was just as stubborn as it was five to ten years ago. I overruled its objections through switching to manual focus.