Puppe

1/50 second exposure, handheld at 500mm and ISO 1600, for the record.

Sitting quietly, doing nothing, spring comes, and the grass grows by itself.

Nothing Like the Sun

According to National Geographic (http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/01/100129-biggest-full-moon-2010-mars/):

The biggest full moon of 2010 will rise in the east tonight [...].

January’s full moon is also called the wolf moon, according to Native American tradition associating this month’s full moon with wolves howling in the cold midwinter.

The 2010 wolf moon will appear 30 percent brighter and 14 percent larger than any other full moon this year, because our cosmic neighbor will actually be closer to Earth than usual.

The moon will be at its closest perigee—the nearest it gets to our planet during its egg-shaped orbit—for 2010 at 4:04 a.m. ET Saturday, reaching a distance of 221,577 miles (356,593 kilometers) from Earth.

Meet Ze Monsta

The Sigma APO 150-500mm F5-6.3 DG OS HSM (otherwise known as the BigmOS) is an ultra-telephoto lens designed primarily to replace the range covered by their discontinued APO 170-500mm F5-6.3 DG model. It represents a fairly low-cost alternative to the high prices commanded by OEM lenses that cover the extreme end of the telephoto range.

The lens, in comparison to OEM lenses, carries only a fraction of the out-of-pocket cost of the most popular high-end glass. It also has a little bit more reach than most of that crop of lenses offer, as typically you see the top end of the zoom range at 400mm. Even the more competitively-priced Nikon glass will not afford the extra 100mm of range offered by the Sigma lens.

Build quality appears to be fairly robust. The lens has Sigma’s typical black matte finish, and comes with front and rear caps, a somewhat undersized lens hood, a removable tripod collar, and a large padded carrying case. The lens is big, and it’s heavy. Bringing it up to shooting position is definitely going to build some muscle, and carrying it around all day will be a chore. The weight will cause zoom creep as soon as the lens barrel is tilted downward, so there’s a lock switch that operates when the lens is set at its 150mm focal length.

The focus ring operates very smoothly, and the HSM motor allows high-speed AF and full-time manual adjustment, so it’s not necessary to move the switch from A to M to refine your focus point. On the other hand, the zoom ring is stiff and clunky at best. What’s more, the zoom ring turns backward. I am used to turning my wrist clockwise to zoom in — in this lens, you’d turn your wrist counter-clockwise to zoom in, and that takes some getting used to. The focus ring is closer to the focal plane than the zoom ring is, and I found that when turning the zoom ring, I would occasionally disturb the focus.

Image quality is quite acceptable, although sharpness is best, as one might expect, through the middle of the zoom range — between 200mm and 400mm. The lens also performs best somewhere between f/8 and f/11. This is definitely a daytime, bright-light lens. Colour and contrast reproduction are quite good. The lens hunts only in very low light, and focus speed is very fast.

The OS is definitely a benefit, and worked well enough for me to be able to hand-hold at 1/100 and f/6.3 with the lens racked out to 500mm. I was even able to shoot at 6 fps under those conditions with the OS engaged with good results. With OS disengaged, it becomes a chore to get sharp photos at a shutter speed lower than 1/500 of a second. You’ll definitely know when the OS is at work, because it’s loud.

Against a bright background, there will be some colour fringing observable at high-contrast edges of your subject, but those are very easily removed in post.

If you’re not a pro, and you’re looking for something with extended reach, you could do a lot worse than this lens. You won’t get the IQ from it as you will from Canon’s L glass or from Nikon’s high-end lenses, but then again, you’ll pay only $1 000 for this lens, and at that price, I’d consider it a bargain.

I’m going to spam the URL here, among other places, so that all my faithful readers can follow me there and join me in discourse that isn’t limited to threaded comments!  So … please feel free to join me on my little adventure.  Who knows?  It might turn out to be fun!

:: verbal connections ::

P.S. The link is also in the column on the right side of the page. Share and enjoy!

"needs sugar"

Without going into too much detail as to the whys of creating a mini-forum, suffice it to say that this is – I hope – going to be a better way to engage with the (chosen?) few who stop by to read my blog and check out my photos.  As to the hows, those are a different story.  There will eventually be a link in the column on the right that will allow you to register and logon to the new forum.

Who knows … maybe in a few months, I will get tired of this idea and remove the forum completely.  On the other hand, it may stay up forever.  I’m sure that the experience will in any event prove at least to be interesting.

Twenty Ten

These are the things I don’t have:

Lists, top ten or otherwise, covering the past year or ten.
Rants.
Resolutions.

This is what I do have:

Sincere good wishes for a healthy and happy year.

Open To Midnight

Don’t get me wrong.  Not shooting isn’t necessarily a bad thing, unless shooting is what you do for a living and you’re on the verge of getting tossed out of your well-appointed home because of the aforementioned lack of production.  For the average hobbyist, the photographic equivalent of writer’s block is merely irritating, and not in any way life-changing.  But there are ways around almost any roadblock, if you care to find the one that works best for you.

How do you get out of your slump?  Shoot.  That’s easy.  How do you make yourself shoot?  Not always so easy.  If it were that easy, we’d all be shooting the lights out every single day.  There are plenty of things that you can try — most of which luckily turn out to be lots of fun.

• You can carry your equipment with you everywhere.  It actually surprises me that there are large numbers of hobbyists that carry their stuff everywhere with them.  Me, I have two bagsful of equipment.  If I ever actually mean to carry everything I really want to carry everywhere I go, I’ll have to hire a pack mule.  What might be better if you’re an SLR shooter could just be to open up your creative options by shooting one camera with one prime lens.  It’s hard to explain just what doing that teaches you about how to see differently.  But if you ever choose to do it, you’ll know exactly what I mean.  You could also switch from carrying a digital body to carrying a film body (or vice versa).  You don’t necessarily have to buy a new camera to do this type of thing — you can doubtless borrow one from a crony who’s in a slump, just like you are.  What I will tell you is this … the price of film SLRs has dropped considerably since the explosion of popularity on the digital side of things, and film bodies can be had for a song (and perhaps a dance or two).  My 35mm film SLR, an old Pentax Spotmatic SP500, cost me the princely sum of five dollars, complete with a very nice 55mm f/2 Takumar multi-coated prime lens.  If you want to spend a bit more, and if you care to experiment in other ways, Diana and Holga cameras are fairly cheap and will definitely provide you with a novel shooting experience.  Coolest thing about shooting film?  Telling people “no” when they ask to see the photo you just shot.
• You could do a project of some kind.  There are definitely plenty of ways to keep yourself engaged and interested behind the lens.  The photo-a-day hobby horse is always capable of bearing one more rider.  Some do daily self-portraits, while others choose not to restrict their subject matter at all.  The main thing?  Pick up the camera and take a photo every day without fail.  It’s helpful to remember that you’re not going to make a piece of art every single day you shoot.  If  you want to limit your scope, shoot a photo every hour that you’re awake for a single day.  Other options include shooting the alphabet, which is something I’ve never done.  If you really want to grit your teeth about doing an alphabet project, give yourself a deadline to have every letter covered, or try to shoot the alphabet in order.  Bring your dictionary with you when “Q” day rolls around, though.  Scavenger hunts can be fun, although you’re typically going to involve someone other than yourself to either create the list of objects to be photographed or to help you find them, or even to compete against you to see who can complete their list first.  In a variation of the scavenger hunt concept, you can take a paper bag and fill it with slips of paper upon which are written various abstract ideas, or the names of random objects.  The game then would be to draw a slip of paper from the bag, then to spend the day taking photographs that show or express the object or concept that’s written on the slip of paper.
• Find a group of like-minded souls and get together for a photo walk.  Make sure that the walk ends at a pub or restaurant, though!  Although the act of taking photos is by its nature a solitary sort of undertaking, it seems that having agreeable company nearby makes the process more enjoyable at least, if not easier.
• I also tend to draw inspiration from other forms of art, and (if the truth be told) from other photographers.  I shoot photos that remind me of song lyrics or of snippets of poetry.  I shoot homages to other photographers’ work.  These things tend to get me absorbed and engaged enough to be excited about picture-making again.

And the end, I think that the common thread at the root of all my suggestions is that you should try to enjoy your photography again — to find new ways to recapture the sense of enchantment and entrancement that you felt when you first picked up a camera and discovered what happens when you press the shutter release.  The final result isn’t always going to be art, nor should you expect it to be.  What it should be is fun, and your focus should be to reclaim that aspect of your hobby!