"Good Glass Is, As Good Glass Does"

You might be able to tell by the Post title, that this is a little bit of a different piece. And no: it isn't some sort of a Confucius saying..... it's adapted from that famous and fictitious Alabaman, Forrest Gump of course.

I realize that I've spent a lot of the last couple of months talking about cameras, lenses, and flashes. Unlike my other topics, such as computing equipment, who's function is self-evident, photography equipment demands a higher level of proof. By nature of the beast, we want to see what it does. For the last 2 weeks, I've been doing just that; culminating in last night's visit to the Chinese Lantern Festival at Fair Park, here in Dallas. 

It gave a perfect sample of something that most any family photography might encounter. An outing that offered challenging lighting, subject material, sometimes awkward shooting angles in a crowd, and an event that demanded to be recorded! 

I carried my high-powered camera, the D300, but mounted the 18-70mm (27-105mm eq.) lens instead of the 18-200mm super-zoom. I didn't need reach, but needed the extra half-stop of light that the shorter lens gave me at the long end. I gave up the VR function of the longer lens for that. I'm sure, looking at the lighting in the pictures, you can see why. Although I carried the flash, I didn't use it at all. I'm sure most of you understand that virtually none of the colored lights would have shown up when using the flash. I'll actually show you an image later where I used a flash, how and why I did it. 

In this case, the stage lighting was plenty to get the performers, but I had to also get the colored lights of the stage as well. So, I ended up using a very high ISO, which the D300 does very well without too much "noise" so I would high enough shutter speed to stop the action. In actuality, I didn't want to completely stop the action, I wanted to have some sense of motion without completely blurring the performer. And that's why I used the manual focus, 50mm f/1.4 Nikkor that my brother sent me. Sure, I would have loved for it to be a little "longer", but it was OK, at the 75mm that the APS-C sensor sees it at. This ultra-fast lens allowed me to see a VERY bright image in the finder which helped with the focusing. 

For these other pictures? I used the AF zoom for it's ability to frame exactly from the angle I wanted to use. It turned out to be easier than I thought since the "lanterns" themselves gave off plenty of light which leaned more toward "daylight" than night. Everything was fine as long as you didn't get too much of the night around the subject(s) to throw the camera off. 

Before we go away from the D300 and the 50mm Nikkor, here's another reason for it's use. Not only is it very sharp (barring photographer error), it can also give you as thin of a depth of field as you want! Check out this Crepe Myrtle "berries" encased in ice from our early December storm. 

 

Now, on to the D40 and it's stable of manual focus lenses that I've been jammering about. The first picture is of course from the same ice storm, but it was shot with the $15, Tamron Adaptall 300mm lens. The second is from some time later to demonstrate it's sharpness, contrast of color rendition. 

Then last weekend, we ran up to northeastern, Oklahoma to see some relatives. This happened right after the arrival of the Tamron Adaptall-2 28-50mm lens. It was the pricey acquisition at $40, but hey; we all need to occasionally splurge..... right! It was quite challenging to focus in the indoor pool of our hotel, but the unique underwater lights gave a very interesting effect. So I decided to play around a little. I knew if I adjusted for the ambient light, I could get it, but then, I'd have a fine picture of a pool. If I wanted my kids to be visible in the picture, I'd have to use a flash. As it turns out; I found to my dismay that the Quantaray XLF-50 is Nikon iTTL automatic ONLY!!! As such, will not work with a manual lens mounted. So I went completely manual, shot some test frames, to find that; what I read some years ago was true. If you use a slower shutter speed, it lets in more ambient light, and the flash cycle will stop the subject motion in the foreground. Using the D40's pop-up flash; as you can see, it did just that! My other pictures were of our relatives which of course, I don't want to use without their permission, so you'll have to trust me in that the D40 handles beautifully with the 28-50mm Tamron and that it's a perfect carry camera for random stuff.

Now you know. I actually do shoot photographs with the bargain equipment that I seek out!