Yeah, It’s Sprung

Newbie photographers think, give me the longest lens you’ve got. It’s part of that guy/size thing. But long lenses are difficult to use under most lighting conditions

Yesterday, the Sun was out… and I started to feel good. Today, the Sun is back. I feel even better.

I ran upstairs to fetch “Clicky” and his Sigma 100-300mm lens. It’s not a lens I use often. It’s reasonable for sports, though it’s a whole lot ‘slower’ than what a pro would use.

My goal was to catch some of the spring colors. They’re visible for the first time this week, though our trees are still bare.

Newbie photographers think, give me the longest lens you’ve got. It’s part of that guy/size thing. But long lenses are difficult to use under most lighting conditions. They’re subject to exaggerated shake problems unless you’re willing to shoot with a very fast shutter speed. They collapse distance, often radically turning what you see into something entirely different.

On top of that, the field of view is small and focusing is critical. Auto focus sometimes has trouble finding your chosen focus point. In fact, I turned off auto focus for these shots, hoping to have a better chance of getting sharp images.

Like Kennedy’s speech about going to the Moon, I chose this lens today because it was difficult. I wanted the challenge (though today’s bright sunshine took a little of the edge off the challenge).

If the weather cooperates tomorrow, I’ll go back with a wider lens, more suitable for this task.

4 thoughts on “Yeah, It’s Sprung”

  1. Great pictures, Geoff, as usual. I’ve seen the reappearing colors in my backyard in Seymour, where my property borders a 160+ foot tall waterfall (no, seriously. Nobody knows about it, but it’s there, waking me up every morning lately with all the rain). For the 11th consecutive spring, I’ll try to capture the beauty of the waterfall and the spring buds before the summer heat dries up the water and the leaves obscure the view. And for the 11th consecutive year, I’ll fail in that endeavor. This year at least, I can’t blame it on the camera–I’ll be using a Panasonic Lumix FZ-30 (SLR-wannabe).

  2. One of the cool things about digital photography and Picasa, is the embedding of EXIF data. If you click on an individual picture you like, then on the ‘more info’ tag, you will see all the parameters.

    Most of these were set to go with fast shutter speed and small aperture, as you guessed Tom. It’s just not that fast of a lens. In fact, as SLR lenses go, this is a low end model.

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