One of my co-worker’s hobbies is model trains (Gert - the crazy Namibian). Last week I went with him to a local model train club and snapped some pictures with my Nikkor Micro lens. Although several of the shots came out ok, I think more than the one lens would have been best.
Here’s a picture of one of the model engines. As I mentioned above, this image was captured with my 105 mm Nikkor Micro lens. The photo was captured in aperture priority. I chose an aperture of f/11 and the camera determined the optimal shutter speed of 2.5 seconds. With an exposure time of 2.5 seconds, this photo was taken while mounted on a tripod. A handheld 2.5 second exposure would be a blurry mess.
The aperture f/11 means that the diameter of the camera stop was 105mm/11 = 9.5 mm. I chose f/11 because it gave me a little more depth of field (more of the image was in focus). Smaller apertures like f/22 would give me greater depth of field but at the expense of image sharpness. At these small apertures the resolution of the lens becomes degraded by diffractive effects (I’ll spare the details for another post).
Last weekend, I took the dog to the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge in southern Oklahoma. The area is about 3.5 hours from Dallas. My original goal was to get there around 2pm, hike for a couple of hours, and then take some photos later that evening.
Well, that didn’t work out. It was way too hot for the dog. We walked about 10 minutes and she just quit on me. To kill time, I drove on all of the roads in the refuge area. By 4pm I had been on all of the roads. I was bored enough that I decided it wasn’t worth sitting around another couple of hours for the light to get better (for photographs). So we headed back to Dallas.
I saw several of buffalo, texas longhorn, and prairie dogs within the area. The picture above was taken from the car as I passed a grazing buffalo along side the road.
The refuge was pretty cool but I should have planned it better - like arrived near dusk rather than the middle of the day.
This image was pulled from a recent Nikon patent. It gives some insight into the complexity of modern camera lenses. This example shows the lenses for a zoom lens with a vibration reduction mechanism. Look at all those lenses!
There are sixteen lenses organized into five groups. The spacing between the adjacent groups are changed when zooming. When you zoom from the wide-angle (short focal length) to telephoto (long focal length), the separation between (G1) and (G2) increases, the separation between (G2) and (G3) decreases, and the separation between (G3) and (G4) also varies. It is incredibly complex, based on my knowledge of very basic zoom systems, none of these displacements is a linear motion.
Although they are not shown in this drawing, sensors are used to detect vibration of the lens. After these signals are analyzed, motors are used to move the last lens group (G4) perpendicular to the optical axis to cancel the vibrations. I am currently reading through additional Nikon patents about their VR technology. I hope to post a description in the upcoming days.
Here’s another bee picture from my trip to the Dallas Arboretum. Similar to the other picture, the camera was in shutter priority mode. For an shutter speed of 1/1000 sec, the camera selected an aperture of f/6.3. I was using my 105 mm Nikkor Micro lens (I love this lens!). To really see the sharpness of this lens, check out the pollen sticking to the bee’s hair in the original size.
Ansel Adams is my favorite photographer - probably because he shared my love for the outdoors and landscape photography.
Today, I stumbled upon this video of a recent interview with Ansel Adams’ son. He discusses his father’s ability to take make a photograph, particularly with respect to the sights in Yosemite National Park. Pretty interesting stuff.
On a side note, I will be making a trip to Yosemite in September. Although I don’t think September is the peak time for photography, I can’t wait to start snapping my digital camera around the park.
Here’s a picture of my dog taken with my new 105 mm Nikkor Micro lens. Jade was sitting near the window. I opened the blinds to get more light on the side of her face. The camera was set in aperture priority mode (where you select the aperture and the camera selects the shutter speed). I used the maximum aperture of f/3.2 to get the fastest shutter speed and thus minimize any motion blur. Based on this aperture, the camera selected a shutter speed of 1/250. For my other lenses, this shutter speed would probably produce a blurry image. However, my 105 mm Nikkor has Vibration Reduction built into the lens that allows me to take this sharp image.
To see the sharpness of this new lens, check out Jade’s eye in the original image.
This morning I went to a local camera store called Competitive Camera. It was awesome - a real photographer’s store. The prices were excellent too. Anyhow, I ended up buying a new lens that I’ve wanted for a long time - the Micro-Nikkor 105 mm f/2.8. This lens is specially designed to focus at close distance, which means large magnifications.
The above picture was taken at the Dallas Arboretum with this lens. The camera was in shutter priority mode with the exposure time set to 1/1000th of a second. (Shutter priority mode means you select the shutter speed and the camera determines the optimum aperture size). This short exposure time ensures that their will be very little motion blur in the picture. The camera selected an aperture of f/6.3 based on this exposure time.
For July 4th, my company rented a third floor suite at a local minor league baseball stadium. The game started at 7pm and finished with a tribute to the armed forces and fireworks. The suite was awesome and included all types of free food and drinks. The picture above is the view from the suite. This was taken around 9pm with my zoom lens set to a focal length of 28 mm. The photo was taken in aperture priority mode (where you set the aperture and the camera determines the shutter speed). To minimize the exposure time, I chose the largest aperture available on my lens, f/4. This resulted in an exposure time of 0.1 seconds. If you look closely you can see that the players are blurred as they moved during this 0.1 second exposure time. I could have increased the ISO but that introduces excess noise into the picture.
I visited the Fort Worth Zoo this morning. I lugged my camera equipment and tripod through the zoo and took pictures of all their animals.
The picture above was captured at a focal length of 300 mm (equivalent to 450mm for a full-frame, 35mm camera). The camera was set at aperture priority (where you select the aperture size and the camera automatically determines the exposure time) with an aperture of f/5.6. This is wide open for my 70-300 mm lens. This relatively large aperture gives a short depth of field that blurs out non-relevant areas like the background behind the bird and tree. This aperture resulted in a 1/20 sec exposure time. Even though I was using a tripod, this short exposure time was definitely less than ideal for the moving bird- many of my shots were blurry. I could have switched to a higher ISO (= electronic gain) but that also leads to greater noise.
