Pressure

We can always find some way to justify spending money of stuff we've managed well enough without for long enough. I had rationalised my desire for an 85mm lens by deciding that as I rarely use my 24mm (which since switching to full frame has been replaced by a 35mm) or my 50mm (which now feels like a short telephoto having become accustomed to using the 35mm as my 'standard' lens and 'seeing' pictures wider) I needed something longer than 35mm and with a wide aperture. I also convinced myself that smoother out of focus areas would look nicer than the almost double-vision effect my longer cheap zoom gives at its longer settings. I also fancy the idea of taking one body out and two lightweight single focal length lenses - just like I did 30 years ago.

A test shot of OOF smoothness

With this in mind I visited my local 'pusher' to have a play with lens. Like any good dealer the manageress suggested I took the lens fro a walk round town... In town parking is expensive so I only had half an hour to be on the safe side. All I was really interested in was what the pictures would look like at wider apertures or when shooting something close with a cluttered distant background. I made a few such shots then began trying to make pictures. Not consciously, it just happened because I had a camera in my hand.

Having just a matter of minutes to use the lens rather than some undetermined period of time it felt like I had to look harder. Quite why, but it felt almost stressful. As if I had to make pictures, and some of them had better be half decent.

What surprised me was how many things I found to point the camera at. Not everything worked out. As is to be expected the hit rate was about normal. That still meant there were one or two worth saving. Would I have been so trigger happy using film? I doubt it. I expect I would have seen just as many possible shots, just not pressed the button on all of them.

It was only back home that I checked the results. Two reasons for that. Firstly you can't judge anything more than composition and exposure from the screen on a camera's back. Zoom right in to try and check focus and all you see are pixels! Secondly I've stopped checking the screen most of the time anyway. I'm shooting more like I'm using a film camera again. If I haven't got a shot I haven't got it. This is when doing my town and beach type stuff. On my sessions using a tripod I review shots with some care. It's a different way of working. I've even begun to use the live view feature for framing - and the helpful virtual horizon! Photos checked I made the inevitable decision and lifted the mattress...

Sun shining and new toy in hand I first visited teh dunes, and then one of the town's parks on a whim. It took a while to get used to seeing at the longer focal length, but not too long. There's something about using single focal length lenses that seems to make you think harder about making pictures. With a zoom on the camera you can see something and all too often all you do to alter framing is use the zoom. With a FFL lens you have to move forward and back, and in so doing you also move left, right, up and down. You might not need to, but you automatically check out other angles. Despite having all afternoon to make photographs I ended up with about as many worth keeping as I managed in that pressured half hour in the morning.

I don't know why it is my dog walker photographs tend to end up converted to black and white. I took two today, similar in some respects, different in others. Both worked better in monochrome. The first was intentionally taken as a picture of a dog walker. The second I was framing as a picture of trees when the dog walker appeared. I suspect that with the human and animal interest being so small, and the 'ground' of the images consisting of intricate detail, they should work well at a larger size than they are presented here..

Tomorrow I might visit the market again, with just the 35mm and the 85mm. After I put the other lenses up for sale.

PS For some reason the Blogger interface seems to knock the contrast out of the pictures in the blog when it resizes them. Click on any picture and it will open up larger, and hopefully crisper.

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