All eyes on me! Or at least on my lenses …
Only one of the owners of these eyes can fly. Guess which and click on the eyes to open the full picture. Animals shot at the Zurich Zoo, Switzerland, with a Nikon 70-200 VR II
Learn the soft spot of your lens, learn how to use your lens! The case of Nikon AF-S 70-200mm f/2.8G ED-IF VR on D800
Do you know what the “soft spot” of a lens is?
If you google it you find odd sentences related to soft spot like: “OMG, my lens has a soft spot! I paid so much for it!” or “ I have multiple soft spots! What can I do?“. Forum guests usually reply “Give your lens back, it is defective!”
Is it really so? What I learned a “soft spot” is and what you find in DxO properly described is the following: “It is common to refer to the “soft spot” of a lens, which paradoxically refers in fact to that range of settings where it produces the sharpest images”
Ah! So, now you also know how good the soft spot of your lens is: nothing related to giving your “defective” lens back. Learn how to use the sharpest settings of your lens. Look at the pictures I shot to the full moon tonight (click it to magnify it in a new window). You clearly see that the soft spot of my Nikon 70-200 VR-II (max. extension) on my D800 is around f/5-6.3 – at f/22 we might have also moon shift as time is a slow 1/8
Keep the goodness of the soft spot in mind when you shoot distant objects with details: birds, moon, foliages… it will make *the* difference!
Sticky pictures from the scene of the crime
Which weapon killed most of them? Toothed traps?
Sticky mats?
Glue drops?
Find it by clicking on the pictures, shot with a Nikkor 16-35 mm f/4 that almost got glued onto these carnivore plants. Its minimal focus distance is 29 cm and evaluating it through the wide angle is often counter intuitive. For broader point of views on toothed Dionaea muscipula , sticky Pinguicula gigantea and gluey Drosera capensis click on the square pictures below.
Shopping list for “ambrosia” bee-bread: a photographic recipe from the experts!
First some pollen … avoid pollen into eyes, it is painful … No bags needed, it sticks to body hairs!
Then grab the nectar … throw up some … mix it with pollen and stick it on the legs!
And on and on until there is space on your limbs! A hundred of fungi and a dozen of bacteria are the secret ingredient to finally produce bee-bread, or ambrosia, as some of you call it. Enjoy and click on picture strips to magnify.
Alps REWIND: a D800 interval-timer-shooting point-of-view
Interval timer shooting seems easy. Just fix the camera on a tripod, switch off all automatic setups, start the program and wait to fill up the card(s).
However, I could not find yet a way to have a smooth from-day-to-night sequence. Whatever slightly overexposed setup for the day I choose, it will be too dark for the night.
I could find no software for auto-toning the whole sequence. Additionally, with too dark pictures colour noise increases and does not look good. Any help is appreciated.
