It's been a while

It has been a while since my last post... and in that time, we celebrated Christmas with Edmund, the three of us went to Philadelphia in business (got some shots), and even got some additional toys to play with: a nice Nikon AF 50mm f1.4 lens.

Some results of that lens (among other toys) below.

For instance, I'm not really crazy about the OOF renderings here. Granted, they're great, but I think I got into a much larger problem than with any f2.8 lens. See these things:

First comes a cake (California citrus cake, for those who may care; it's essentially a pound cake) end, photographed with my new AF 50mm f1.4 lens, wide open.

Below, the same cake and almost the same composition, with the trusty AF-S 24-70 f2.8, at f2.8

Is there a difference?

To me, yes: it's in the detail of the cake texture. These shots are not, BTW, sharpened or manipulated at all. In fact, I didn't even resize them. At this point, I'm on the fence about this lens... probably because I bought it for the rare ocassions in which an f2.8 won't suffice.

Like this one below... also done with the 50mm lens.

The focus is on the end of the arm, that circular, capricious, metallic image of a curl. The back of the bench is already blurred, and the background... irrecognizable.

After thinking about it for a while, and comparing other (irrelevant) shots, I came to the conclusion that bokeh is an acquired taste. I do have it, but not yet that ever present, or at the expense of a certain amount of sharpness. In fact, I now believe that this lens really shines at f1.8 more than fully open... but, you know what? I'll keep it.

More on toys later. At least, as I reported earlier, my AF-ED 80-2oo f2.8 came back home, like new, from the folks at Authorized Photo Service in Morton Grove, IL. I even got the silly request for a name plate replacement (mine had lost it). They were able to find one, and now the lens looks (and works) better than ever.

So long!