Monday, December 13, 2010

Which one to choose?!


With the landscape front taking a rest right now... the season of staying indoors is on,  now, with the temperatures suddenly taking such a dip, we’ve been cozying up to the fire place when it gets freezing.  One of the most favorite spots at home, is the fire place.  It will not be short on company, this winter season.
Anyways, I’ve been itching to start experimenting with portraits and other candid photography!!  To click pictures that would come out, like my eyes would see it. Pictures that would have some 3D effect in it. Some depth of field to them.  To make this possible,  a Standard Prime lens is what I had in mind.  A lens with a fixed focal length in which, we would have to move around to compose a shot rather than, stand at one spot to compose the frame like my kit lens (18-105mm) lets me do, right now.
A lens which would be able to focus on that one subject while the rest of the image would be blurred out. A lens that would have a wide aperture…in other words, a lens with a lower f/(….) value.  A lens which would not send my flash along with the red eye avoider, flashing away, with a slightest decreases in light. A lens that would be fast enough even while my toddler is moving, to freeze her action, as my requests for her to stay still go unnoticed by her. A lens where I would not have a need for the VR (vibration reduction) feature, because, as I said, the speed of the lens would be fast enough to overcome that. A lens that would let me enjoy shooting in natural light and low light conditions. A lens which would let me be able to shoot some dim profiles of people, keeping the rest of the image dark. You noticed!! I’ve been enhancing my knowledge on this front to sound more like a PRO :-) The lens I decided to buy for starters is a 50mm standard Prime lens.  
I had my share of using the kit lens. It was good while I didn’t miss the prime lens. It helped me click very nice shots of my whole landscape, my family, while I stood lazily at a spot trying to compose different frames, without missing out on the tiniest detail that was beside the subject I was shooting. It looked good, the whole frame. It also gave me a broad range of focal lengths.  But, these pictures didn’t have the look of a pro. It didn’t show depth in it, even, in the best of light available. For example, if I want to take a shot of my 3 year old doing this cute and funny thing. While I tried to shoot that I find that the rest of the image is as clear as she is,  stealing some of the cuteness away from her, to show themselves clearly along with her. If I needed to get to the next level of becoming the world’s best professional photographer of the P's residence, I needed to climb the next step.  Needed to own the most basic but most useful of prime lenses, the 50mm standard lens.
“This hobby of yours is costing us dearly!”, hubby dear would mention, at the slightest hint of another lens.
“But, how much you enjoy the pictures I take!”, I had shouted back.  I was all set to use the ultimate weapon from my arsenal, if hubby dear would plain refuse to buy me the lens.  What was that? Photography Lessons!! Yeah, I was going to ask for them..But, if I get my hands on the lens.. the Internet is so full of people who love to share information.  Maybe years from now, when I will be shooting the pictures of my kids’ at their sweet sixteen, my hubby would be happy that he had decided to buy me this lens and another lens and another and the next….
Now that I had to convince hubby dear to buy me a 50mm standard prime lens. I went about finding out what’s on the market and why I need to have it, why its indispensible for my survival!  It could have been a 50mm,  60mm or 85mm or 105mm prime lens. And then there were the lesser “mm” giving me wider angle, like the 35mm and lower. Which one to pick up? Of course, price was the first priority.  Not aiming high, I looked for the 50mm standard lens, that used to be the basic lens that a camera came with in the old days before digitals became a rage, in the 35mm cameras. But, there are 3 (no! actually 4, if I included the f/1.2 into the list)  of them available for us, Nikon fanatics. One of them costs around $119.
“Why not that?”, hubby dear retorts.
It was not going to be an easy task, convincing Hubby dear to buy me the

Nikon 50mm f/1.4G SIC SW Prime Nikkor Lens for Nikon Digital SLR Cameras

instead. It costs way more than the one he was suggesting. Its about $400+ new, today. To this end, I set about trying to find out more information on why I would need this. Even if I didn’t want to convince hubby dear, I had to first convince myself, right! The more I read, the more I stumbled on information that, led me to want more lenses. The 105mm
Nikon 105mm f/2.0D AF DC-Nikkor Lens for Nikon Digital SLR Cameras
Its currently listed at more than $1000. A very good lens..how the owners of this lens, rave about the bokeh (the non-focus part) it gives!  Then we have the macro lenses or lenses used for close up photography, which have magnification ratios of 1:1.  Because the subject is magnified with that ratio, it allows for extra distance between you and the subjects, useful in case of wildlife, nature, portraits, candid photography and many other situations. A very versatile lens. The 105mm f/2.8G is currently listed at a little less than $1000 at Amazon.
Apart from macro lenses, there were the longer range of telephoto lens or zoom lens. The 70-300mm telephoto lens. The list was endless. For now, I would be fine if I got my hands on the 50mm first. Maybe the others would find themselves in my hands, someday..just not now, I decided. I wrote this long email to hubby explaining him all the details of why this lens is better than the f1.8D or the f1.4D, its predecessors.   
The other day, I was at the pediatrician’s office getting R and the triplets their flu shots and when R came across this picture of the Red Door perfume in a magazine…
image
she told me clear and bold
“Mama, you have to buy me this dress and these slippers when we go out now” pointing to the dress and shoes, the model is wearing in the commercial.
There was no hesitation. It was a demand, that was clear and bold, “I want something and you will buy it for me”. Maybe, before I take to photography..I have to take lessons from R on “How to demand and get what you want the right way!”
Another favorite song for you to enjoy. Click away on the button below to hear “Jingle Bell Rock” by Bobby Helms!!  Happy Holidays to all of you!!

2 comments:

sm said...

good post

Gayatri said...

Thanks SM..Glad you liked it.