'Macro'

In the past I've mentioned how I had three focal lengths available back in the dark ages - 28mm, 50mm, 100mm - and how I have come back to finding them natural to use in these digital days. Having got rid of my brilliant but heavy 105mm macro lens and replaced it with a great and light 85mm non-macro I realised that I'd made a mistake. No doubt it's a fantastic portrait lens, but it doesn't focus closely enough to be useful for me. When a 100mm Tokina macro lens came up for grabs on 'that forum' I debated with myself whether it would fill my void. At the price it was for sale I took a chance.

Although I won't be using it much for real close up photographs I have tried it out and it's good. Mostly it'll be used as a normal lens and it certainly fits my requirements of light weight and small size. It focusses quickly enough and, quite importantly, it also renders the out of focus areas nicely. Compared to the Sigma lenses I've had it matches the colours that Nikon lenses produce. Sigmas were always a bit too warm for my liking. The burning question now is to dump the fast mid range zoom or not. Somehow I doubt I'll have the bottle for that!

Using a macro lens for landscape photography would be anathema to the denizens of photogeekdom. I see endless searches for advice on which landscape or portrait lens is best. A lens is a lens, it's what you point it at that determines whether the picture will be a landscape or a portrait. Trying to get that message accross is pretty pointless. People seem to want black and white answers.

It's the weekend, so I have been out and about looking for signs of eggs. Friday was bright and sunny which didn't make for easy photography. The light was either too contrasty or from the wrong direction. I much prefer a bright but overcast sky. Admittedly the pictures lack the punch which everyone else seems to deem obligatory these days. I'll stay out of step on this one.

Saturday was just the way I like it, except that it was trying to rain. My task was to revisit the feed merchant's and get a couple of better shots of stuff using flash. I'm well out of my depth using artificial light but I managed to improve one picture.

Anything poultry related is fair game for this project, so a couple of garden sculptures of chickens seemed worth a snap. I'd noticed them last week but knew I'd need more light to pick them out.

On the way home I stopped off at an honesty box to add to the growing collection of pictures of roadside egg sales. Although I did take a couple of wider views the pink box was appealing in issolation.

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