Back to manual focus

 

For a photo like this, a Fritillary butterfly on a Purple Coneflower, I would usually pull out my macro lens, the SIGMA 150 mm, f2.8, and then follow the insect like a madman. It just doesn’t always work very well, especially on a very warm day when butterflies never seem to stop in their movements. I tried to do something different by attaching a 1.4 teleconverter to my Sigma 50-500, giving it a 700 mm focal length and having the whole rig mounted on the tripod. With the teleconverter the lens does focus only manually. This is how we have done it back in the old days and I realized how much autofocus has spoiled us over the years. So, why did I use such a long focal length and put up with manual focus and a much slower lens (this image was shot at 700 mm, equivalent to 1050 mm on a full frame sensor, 1/60s, f/9, and ISO200)? The answer is, because of background control. The slow approach (camera on tripod, manual focus) made me to visualize the shot long before I hit the shutter release button. I made only a few clicks until I had what I wanted…:-)

Iowa Landscape: Storm chasing

 

Yesterday was a very muggy day. In the evening some thunderstorms moved though our area. We only got a few brief showers and some thunder was rolling but it was a great chance to chase some clouds and thunderheads.

I gave myself an assignment for this storm chasing trip. First, I wanted to use only one lens, the Carl Zeiss Distagon T*, 35 mm, f/2 ZF. This lens has manual focus only. And second, the main subject had to be a cloud, cloud formation, or thunderhead. Any other element in the picture had to be there only to complement the main subject. Except for some slight straightening of the horizon line in some images no crop has been applied. The goal was to get it right in camera.

I didn’t shoot with a tripod because of time. The clouds moved very fast and the scenery changed constantly. Sometimes it wasn’t easy to find a place to park the car safely, so it was key to be fast in and out in order to make the click.

As always, I made many mistakes and some shots where I thought I had nailed it turned out just to be, hmm, not so good ;-). It is the mistakes that can make us better photographers as long as we try to learn from them. I had great fun on this little storm chasing tour above the Mississippi Valley and down at the river. Can’t wait for another one… :-)

Nature clicks #161 - Northern Rough-winged Swallow

 

It was a great weekend to be outside. I did some shooting around the house on Saturday but today nothing could stop me to go back to the Green Island Wetlands. There is plenty of water everywhere. The Mississippi water level was even higher than on Friday, most islands are under water, and I heard there is still a lot of snow up north...

Have you ever tried to make a picture of a flying swallow? Well, not an easy task as you can imagine. Actually it was quite a challenge that I faced today and it took me a while to figure out a way of getting an image of a swallow with open wings. There are many of the Northern Rough-winged Swallows in the wetlands at the moment. They feed almost restless on insects over the ponds and lakes. As I said, almost restless. Sometimes they sit for a few seconds on a perch, mostly a branch that sticks out of the water.

I approached carefully one of those perches that the swallows used frequently, (hiding behind a dirt hill) and focussed on the end of the branch. Because the lens has such a shallow depth of field at 500 mm focal length it needed manual focus to make a halfway sharp image. There is no way that the autofocus will really lock on when a bird approaches the landing site with high speed as swallows usually do. It happens so fast that I have of course plenty of pictures showing the bird finally sitting but a few shots worked out well as you can see... More to come

Love those evenings...

I wrote two days ago that I love the evenings on Antelope Island in the Great Salt Lake. Landscape photography is probably much more rewarding during the winter and spring because of great clouds that move fast over the lake and along the surrounding mountains. If you like feel free to click HERE to see what I mean.

However, the wind calmed down Thursday night and even some clouds moved in. A sunset is always nice but it is the hour after it that I enjoy the most for landscape photography. The little marina on the island was my anchor for this image with great reflections on the salty water. The Carl Zeiss Distagon T*, 35mm / f2 ZF is a wonderful sharp lens for this kind of photography. It has manual focus, something that many people probably not even consider anymore, but the quality of this lens is hard to beat. Still more to come...