We executed another Smashening; this Smashening breaking a dry spell of a couple of years. Taking the usual set of photos, we were thoroughly impressed with a new piece of technological wizardry that made our setup and time-to-shoot drop to marginal levels.
Aside from the experience and photographs, Ryan was kind enough to splice together a video of the event. Be warned, language is not tasteful.
We took this immediately after getting our 105mm macro lens. This, if memory serves was more than just the lens itself. We did put in a couple of extension tubes, as well as an inverted 50mm in order to really bring in the focus point. The pineapple is so close, that you can see how poorly we cleaned it. The snapshot above doesn't really do it justice, if you look at an untouched crop of the original you can see some ugly nasty detail.
Photographers contend that gear does not make you a better photographer. Learning about depth-of-field, composition, and moving around the aperture-shutter-iso triangle will make a point-and-shoot a formidable tool in anyones hands. Taking control of the available light and using a tripod will result in much better photos than dropping extra money for a megapixel count.
Of course, everything has an exception. Today I got my hands on Nikon's tilt and shift lens. Not prepared to drop that kind of money on a lens, we instead decided to rent it. Now that I've had a chance to play with it, I'll admit that there is really no way to replicate tilt and shift without having the gear. Normally, your focal plane is runs parallel to the film or sensor in the camera. With tilt built into your lens, you can turn the focus plane so that it isn't running along the same boring parallel line.
Examining the large version of the above photo you can see that the focus plane does not sit perpendicular to the viewing angle. The bottom left of the photo is in focus, and the focus plane moves across the middle of the photo to the upper right. The focus plane makes the braiding in the upper right pin sharp, whereas if you step off the plane the image is quickly overcome with pleasing bokeh.
It's too bad this lens costs as much as it does.
A stack of pay stubs made an excellent candidate in Photo Friday's Arranged challenge.
A photo from our trip to Amsterdam, now used as an entry for Photo Friday's Wheels competition. Here's a larger version for those that don't have access through flickr.
