Someone’s Hidden the TV Remote Control

[perfect_quotes id=”382″]

Already you know where this is going. When I finally stepped into
the digital age with my Nikon D7000, it was to travel to Alaska. I
don’t like to cart around camera equipment, so wanted
one lens. For my film SLR, I had a 55 and 135mm lens. No autofocus.
No image stabilization. No help at all. But that was many moons ago.

I got a Tamron 18-270mm lens with both autofocus and image stabilization.
How quickly we become spoiled. It certainly made Alaska more manageable
in terms of photography. The pictures were quite good and I captured
some very nice moments. But..

After 18 months, I started to crave the really sharp picture that zoom
lenses can’t quite deliver. Especially over the range of my Tamron.
I do still love my Tamron, but it was time for a second lens.

After much soul searching, I parked a Nikon 85mm f/1.4 full frame lens
on my cropped 7000. My reasoning was that some day, I’d step to a
full frame machine, and I’d be able to take the 85 with me. It was
getting rave reviews.

Out of the box, I got some really exciting shots. I also got an even
larger array of poor photos. I’ve had enough flying time behind the
eye piece to know pilot error when I saw it. I saw it. A lot.

The solution? If you want to learn it, you’d better live it. For that
reason, I made the decision to leave that lens on my camera exclusively.
My Tamron has remained in it’s box for 15 months now as I make the 85
second nature. I knew a lot of things about this lens going into this
commitment. I learned a lot of things about it, my camera, and myself
as I journeyed through those 15 months. Here are some of the things that
made my Top 10 list. I type “Top 10” not having listed things out yet.

Lets see how that goes:

Top 10 List:

1) You do a lot of walking with a prime.

Most of the time I was too far away or too close. I’d see
something, pull out the camera and find that 1/3 of the
subject is out of the frame. That takes immediate remediation.
Very clearly you are wrong and have to start walking backwards.
So a very funny combination of things gave me a solution.
85mm on a cropped 7000 is 135mm. My arm length. Finally
making an “L” with my thumb and index finger. Extend my
arm making an “L” with index finger and thumb basically
yields two sides of a box that is the view for my
camera/lens combination.
What a nice and simple solution. I still have to walk for the
shot, no longer having that remote control zoom of mine, but
I’m a lot closer to where I need to be, before pulling out my camera.

2) A really sharp lens, focused perfectly does not compensate for being too far away.

This lesson is really part B of number 1. If you are not too close,
you are too far away. Well, why walk closer when you have a
super sharp lens, shooting fast, and focusing perfectly. Yes, that’s
right, the pixels. The part of the image you are interested in covers
a fewer pixels.. no matter how sharp, fast or focused you are.
Solution. You have to walk. Okay, I learned after having to enlarge
images to the point of unacceptable grain.

3) And so follows number 3. You need to think a lot more about the picture.

Too close. Too far. Well, if you can’t turn a dial and erase hundreds
of feet, then you need to go there. You have to think about it a bit.
How do I get there? Is that cliff really as steep as it looks?
And since thinking leads to more thinking, is the light coming from the
right angle? Is it too dark? Will it be too dark by the time I get there?
Is that picture, really worth the trip?

4) One type of Lens means one type of picture.

Or: A group portrait requires communication at a distance
A celebratory picture of 8 people in a line behind the alter requires
the entire church to fit everyone in the frame. Yup. It also requires
a bit of yelling, though mom always frowned on that one.
A very valuable lesson about what pictures you can take, and what
pictures you cannot take. There is such a list for every lens that you
have. Even zoom lenses will not be able to capture some picture.
With a prime lens, the limitations become real very fast.

5) In science, to learn something you hold all variables constant except one.

When you change too many things at once, you may not know the
reason for a difference. If you change one thing, you know the difference
is because of that one change.
One of the real benefits of working with a fast prime is to be able to study
Depth of Field [ DOF ]. Telephoto lenses seem to decrease the DOF while
wide angle lenses increase it. Certainly the perceived DOF is different as
one zooms in and out. But DOF is really the effect of aperture and what
better way to look at DOF, then with a fast prime.
There are many very nice treatments of DOF and Focal Length.. here is one
I just ran across:
http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/depth-of-field.htm
Okay, so at 5 feet, f/1.4 with my camera, the DOF is about .75 inches.
Humm. Not much more than the tip of the nose. Certainly not the tip of
the nose and the eyes. Something very important to know.
I sat down the pencil and paper to chart out DOF for different f-stops and
different distances to subject. A nice calculator that I used:
http://www.dofmaster.com/dofjs.htm
dist : 50 ft
f/ : 1.4, 1.8, 2.4, 3.2, 4, .. 11, .. 16
dist : 6, 7, 10, 13, 17, 61, 122, ..
So at 50 feet, with setting f/11, everything from 33 ft to 95 feet from
you will be in focus. You don’t get to see this effect if you are wide
open. You stop down the aperture with the preview button, and you get
some indication. But when all is said and done, I think knowing is best.
Just a feeling here.
I’ve got this chart in my camera bag. Though I’ve needed it less and less.
I know that when a subject is perfectly focused, there is more of the DOF
range behind the subject than in front. More so in terms of percentage
as distance increases.

6) That’s it.

Actually, the sun is going down and I want to get out so I’ll leave
it there. I know where I want to go to get some nice pictures with my 85.
I’m starting to get an idea of how this lens works.

End of experiment. But just the beginning of learning.