Photography

Oystercatcher off Miramar

I was pretty pleased with this one; we went up to give Ada a promised-but-missed trip up to the Massey Memorial. On the way back to the car I managed to get an action shot of an Oystercatcher. Getting a moderately in-focus shot of a bird in flight has been a holy grail of mine for quite some time.

Nectar

Spring has arrived early in Wellington; I saw the first magnolia blooms over a month ago, and daffodils are out on my lawn weeks ahead of last year; along with the early flowering has come the flight of young birds. When I saw these guys in my garden I initially called Maire out to look at them, since they were so tiny; smaller than sparrows, sleek, lean. At a distance I'd not noticed their eye markings and assumed they must be something unusual, perhaps from the Karori Sanctuary.

While I was a little disappointed to discover they were tiny, young, and decidedly common waxeyes they were most obliging subjects, both for my camera and for Ada to enjoy.

The idea of visitors from the Sanctuary, incidentally, doesn't seem so unreasonable; the Sanctuary seems to have been a huge success not only in terms of its own breeding programs but in terms of seeding surrounding areas with bird life. I had never seen a Kaka in Wellington until around two years ago when I saw a solitary bird in the Botanic Gardens while taking Ada for a walk; last month we were heading up to the Cable Car through the same area and saw three tumbling through the trees. All of them were skinny, young birds, and it was a delight to have them buzzing us.

Flight

This makes me happy; I have been bowling along with a trusty old G3 as a convenient backup for my DSLR for some time now; up until the G6, there was always the prospect of a better camera. From there, though, it was a downhill path, with subsequent G series cameras losing various useful functionality—RAW shooting, the twist LCD, and the fast lens.

This isn’t perfect—it doesn’t have quite as fast a lens as the G3—but it’s a hell of a lot closer.

I took Ada out for a walk around Mount Vic this morning and managed a few interesting photos on the way:

(Gadget bit: All shot with a Canon 350D and a Canon 55-200mm lens.)

Not for the first time I know someone who’s being annoyed by the difficulties of scanning film.

Of course, one can go out and get a scanner with a backlit hood, like a professional uses, but that’s usually quite an increase in cost if all you want to do is share gruesome pics of your broken arm or baby scans or what have you. A cheaper way is to take the film, tape it to a window on a sunny day (preferably a window without trees and such behind it), and use the handy-dandy digital camera that every man and his dog now owns to grab a photo.

Presto: digital capture of scan. Not as good as a proper backlit scanner, but a damn sight cheaper.

It is an inarguable fact that the Internet does not have enough pictures of babies and cats.

To help alleviate this shortage, I offer the following:

Maire and Ada

Ada, Dad, and Jaques

Resting on Daddy

Ada and Great-Grandpa Ian

Ada and Polly

The Paekak Hill road is an enjoyable, winding drive that links the Kapiti-Mana coast with Pauhatanui and the Hutt Valley.

In spite of the boy racers who hoon around the area the lookout is the biggest road hazard; coming over the rise from the Pauhatanui valley are confronts you with views that make it hard to focus on the tarseal.

When I bought the 350D I got the kit lens (an EF-S 17-55mm f/3.5-5.6 Canon lens (27-88mm equivalent). It’s so cheap as to be a no-brainer, unless you plan on dropping somewhere between $1,000 and $2,000 on your main walkabout lens when you buy the camera (or already have one). Nice idea, but I have a mortgage.

From my perspective the kit lens has one glaring weakness: a fairly narrow maximum aperture; you’ll most likely do no better than f/4 unless you’re shooting wide angle. People used to better lenses than me will also tell you it’s quite soft compared to a good (read: prime or L-quality Canon) lens.

But the aperture bugs me more at the moment; with an f/4 aperture I often need a flash for indoor photography, especially in the evening. I far prefer a natural light. On top of that, it limits depth of field effects.

So I did what everyone said I should do: get what was for many years regarded as the 35mm photographer’s standard lens, a 50mm prime.

The 50mm on a standard 35mm camera is supposed to give about equivalent view to ordinary, unmagnified human vision; it ends up giving the same field of view as an 80mm lens on my 350D (due to the crop of the small sensor) but still has the DOF of a 50mm. That crop adds some interesting complications; at 80mm equiv a 50mm prime is a bit tighter and requires I get further away to get an orthodox 50mm shot, which could be a curse indoors.

There are other options: a 30-ish mm lens will give the 50mm magnification, but will have the same DOF as a wide angle lens. More importantly they’re expensive; a wide-angle lens with a max aperture of f/2 will cost as much, not as the $200 50mm f/1.8, but the high-end 50mm f/1.4 USM.

At $200, given my ability to walk backwards, the 50mm f/1.8 is a no-brainer. And I’m delighted with it—it’s giving me exactly what I want in the way of DOF, fast shutter speeds at normal light levels. It does have some drawbacks: it’s noisy compared to the kit lens, and like a industrial site compared to my USM telephoto lens.

It’s also not robust; I dropped the first one from a table maybe half a metre high, and it exploded into component parts. It was cheaper to replace than repair, especially since the fine folks at Wellington Photographic Supplies took pity on me and gave the replacement for wholesale.

Some sample shots:

Jaques (click here for full size version); f/1.8, 1/160s:

Jaques and Isis (click here for full size version); f/1.8, 1/320s:

Greg and Tamon (click here for full size version); f/3.5, 1/160s: