Pregled posta

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Brought one of my favorite lenses with me on a bike ride. As the last rays of sun were kissing the earth, I noticed these berries & took some pictures of them until it became too dark to work. I was taking some photos of flowers near the ground and two guys got out of their cars to find out if I was alright - apparently lying on the ground, I looked like I was hurt. There are some good Samaritans left in Brooklyn after all. I showed them my camera & told them I was taking pictures and stopped lying on the ground after that.

The Tokina 80-200 f/2.8 is a great lens - in some situations. The bokeh that this it gives wide open is simply beautiful. Depth of field is practically non-existent (from objective tests performed in my living room, there is no part of the dof at 200mm at 10 feet that is actually in focus unless you open it up to f/4.0). It's quite heavy, and in direct sunlight, the chromatic abberation makes it almost unusable. But... when conditions are right, it turns ordinary photos into beautiful photos. I smile every time I use it. I also spend a lot of time getting focus just right & focus bracketing just in case. The tiniest movement of my body can cause something to go out of focus. Luckily, with a subject like a group of berries, there's a lot of potential for at least some of the berries to be in focus.

In brief - this photo shows you what good glass can get you. This was a relatively inexpensive, used, manual focus lens (there's an auto focus version that's twice the price), and it was intended for film (when chromatic abberation wasn't much of a problem), but for these situations, it performs better than any of my other lenses, and makes me wish I had a lens with similar characteristics, but without the chromatic abberation.... and maybe autofocus. I took it to the repair shop because it fell (thankfully, they were able to fix it - Photo Tech on 13th street in NYC, they're the best!) and the guys in the shop told me "They don't make them like this anymore." It's all metal & glass with a rubber focusing ring - I don't know if they were talking about the metal construction, or the lens elements.

Raw file opened in ACR, camera profile colors using the Gretag MacBeth mini and "auto" settings in ACR (which brought up the brightness). Black borders & resize in photoshop.