365.113 Tokina & The Bee

I decided to take the Tokina out for this afternoon’s walk. We didn’t make it very far, as I wasn’t really feeling it, but I did get to play around with the Tokina’s close focus feature.

There’s a little silver button down near the aperture ring: you push it in, give the lens barrel a twist, and the rear element pulls up inside of the lens about an inch or so… lemme measure it right quick… about 8 or 10mm. (The Vivitar also has this feature, though all of the movement is internal to the lens: I’ll try to fetch a comparison shot tomorrow.) At this point, the focusing ring is of marginal utility, seeming to allow focusing from 5 feet down to 1 feet or so, and most of the focus happens with the zoom. Markings on the underside of the barrel give depth of field scales for 1:4, 1:5, 1:6, and 1:7 at 5.25 feet/1.6 meters.

BTW: Depth of field scales are brilliant, and are one of the reasons I love the small collection of old manual lenses sitting in front of me.

The close-focus thing is rather handy, but it doesn’t go very close.

So sorry, Tokina, but a Bee at 1:4 is not nearly as impressive as a bee at 1:1.5.

But composition with a healthy-ish lens is much easier than with a Zomb-E Series, and a lens that goes from 35-200 with decent contrast and saturation (under many circumstances) while also allowing 1:4 reproduction with this level of clarity seems rather fancy.

Of course, I think the 18-200 DX lens does about this well, without any fancy twisty bits, so I suppose the Tokina is not particularly impressive in this regard, and it doesn’t go to 18mm either.

Oh well: still a great buy for $35, for sure.

D7000. Tokina AT-X 35-200mm f/3.5-4.5, set for 4:1 close focusing, from a foot or two. ISO400, 1/6400th, f/3.5 (ignore the EXIF), -1EV, slight processing in Aperture, but nothing too fancy or drastic.

365.112 Zomb-E Bee

After work, I strapped on the Zomb-E and headed straight for Bee Alley. I took around 40 shots, and this was the only one that had the whole bee in focus…

I wasn’t sure about anything (I rarely chimp, and focus is impossible to see clearly on the back of the camera in bright sun), so I walked around and shot flowers for awhile, and then came across another bee that practically posed for me… Out of 10 shots of that guy, 8 were tack sharp, but I liked this one better.

Today’s route: out the Annex side to the Bee Alley (a long stretch of Idon’tknowwhat vine/bush/whatever), down Swiss to Carroll, up Carroll to Sycamore, down to Fitzhugh to Swiss and back in the Grigsby side. All told, about 40 minutes.

I’m really glad that it’s cool enough to walk right after work. I don’t know how much longer I’ll be able to keep these up, but I’ll try. Walking after dinner is on my list of things to try doing, as sitting on the sofa and staring blankly at screens for an hour or two is sorta getting dull.

D7000. Nikon 75-150mm f/3.5 Zomb-E Series. ISO400, 1/1000 (AP mode), f/8, -1EV. Mild post-processing: Exposure, Blacks +.25; Contrast, Saturation, Definition +.1.

365.111 Return of the Zomb-E Series…

Since I gave the Tokina such a nice long walk yesterday, I decided to treat the Zomb-E to walk around the near side of the rich part of old East Dallas, quite a bit farther than yesterday: up Swiss from Grigsby to Munger, back down Swiss to Annex, and back into the apartments via the other side. This was about a 35 minute walk, and distance-wise the farthest I’ve ventured away from home without a compelling reason or a buddy in many a long year.

I hope to go even further tomorrow.

Anyway…

Nearing home, I encountered a bunch of bees, and try as I might I couldn’t get a well-focused photo of one, largely due to how difficult it is to zone-focus by hand in ~3mm increments… Ditto with the squirrel I tried to capture, this time due to the difficulties associated with zone-focusing in 3mm increments at a distance of 20 feet…

The Zomb-E is not easy to work with, unless your subject stays relatively still, or you don’t mind soft focus.

Luckily, there are lots of flowers and trees in this part of town, and quite a variety of them as well.

This shot was a quick grab, with no real conscious composition or anything. I liked the multiple types of foliage going on, the various shades of green, and the bright blue sky, so I grabbed a single frame, and it ended up being the best non-flower picture I made today, and quite a bit prettier than many of those.

So it was win all the way around, and I know where to go for bees and will try them again tomorrow if the weather holds.

D7000. Zomb-E Series. IS0400, 1/2500, f/3.5, -1EV (pretty much necessary with the Zomb-E, otherwise it’s overexposure city). By the way, this is straight out of the camera, with only whatever RAW conversion Aperture performs by default: also win in my book.

365.110 Tokina vs. Squirrel

After a coin toss (Heads, Zomb-E Series; Tails, Tokina), I took the Tokina out for another stroll around the neighborhood. Together, we stalked this squirrel for a couple of minutes, and then shot a bunch of trees and flowers, and a bit of spray paint…

I don’t know about you, but it looks to me like the Tokina won… This shot is not straight out of camera, but all I did was bump the Contrast up by .05 and add back the stop of exposure that I lost due to the -1EV that was erroneously set from whoknowswhen.

In the original, the whiskers on this rather mean looking squirrel are sharp and well defined, and the hair is well modeled, though things begin to fall apart at 100%, due to the 1600ISO that was leftover from shooting rotting flowers in the fountain (dark flowers in dirty water on an overcast day requires a high ISO with a 200mm lens, as you might imagine, and I’m bad about reseting things, as you likely know if you’ve been following my progress on this journey).

The saturation and contrast are acceptable, and the corner sharpness is decent on the D7000s APS-C sensor.

And just peep the bokeh. Nice and pleasing, methinks.

(I’m getting closer to a full review… but not yet. Question: do I need to shoot lens test charts for a decent lens review? Or will real-life shooting situations like this and (maybe) a brick wall work?)

Anyways, I give this round to the Tokina.*

D7000. Tokina AT-X 35-200mm f/3.5-4.5 @200. ISO1600 (see above), 1/4000th, f/4.5 (f/3.5 reported on the EXIF, but I guess the D7000 can’t see the shrinkage since it doesn’t realize that this is a zoom lens…), -1EV later corrected in post.


*And not only that, I managed to wander farther away from home than I ever have before (without a buddy, and without intending to go somewhere specific for some specific purpose). It’s still just baby steps: I went past the alley to the nearest residential street, down two blocks, up an unfamiliar block to the nearest major road, and back up that road—with all its cars, but only a scant few pedestrians—to here, and I didn’t get chased, or asked for money, or stared at (that I noticed), and the police didn’t stop me and ask me what I was doing, and I didn’t go to jail for not having an answer. So I will continue to battle this agoraphobia, because I’m sure that it’s *mostly* all in my head.

365.109 A bit past its prime, perhaps, but still beautiful

It was cloudy all day, except for a brief bit where the sun peeked its head out from behind the clouds and said hello.

I saw it waving, and quickly hooked up the Tokina 35-200 and ran outside for a mostly cloudy neighborhood photowalk and Tokina test.

Of course, by the time I found a composition and got it in focus, the sun was gone again.

Oh well.

I did remember about changing the ISO, but only after burning a dozen shots on a squirrel, busily barking at me from on high, and too dark to shoot handheld at ISO100 and f/anything.

So I shot at 400 from then on.

The Tokina performed fairly well. The zoom on my copy is a bit sticky, and the travel is not particularly smooth: it seems to stutter at about 100mm and again at about 130mm. Plus, both zoom and focus are backwards: you push the lens out to zoom in, and pull it in to zoom out; and infinity is on the right, rather than on the left as with all Nikkor lenses.

I suppose I’m just used to the E Series (and, incidentally, the Kiron-made Vivitar 20-210 f/3.5 Series 1), and maybe zoom lenses have been rejiggered since 1984. I don’t know. The only contemporary zoom I have is the Nikkor 10-24, but that zoom zooms via a twist ring, and is not a push-pull affair.

Also, the saturation and contrast were not what I was expecting from my previous walk around with this lens, though there was bright sun and a mostly sunny sky on that day.

So after two trips out with the Tokina, I’m less happy with it than I was originally, but still way pleased, given the ~$35 I paid for it…

This particular shot was made in the close focus mode, and at full 1:4 magnification (which meant I had to rock back and forth to focus: fun, sort of, and probably decent exercise too, maybe). This mode is quite useful, allowing 1:4 reproductions at ~6 inches, but it’s no Zomb-E Series for sure.

A full review will come one day, but that day is not today.

D7000. Tokina AT-X 35-200mm f/3.5-4.5, close focus 1:4 mode. ISO400, 1/160 (AP Mode), f/3.5, and some mystery +1 EV—not sure where that came from, so lemme go fix up the camera settings right quick…

365.108 @ Ciclovía Dallas

I attended the Ciclovía Dallas on the Houston Street Viaduct today (for those of you in the New York metropolitan area, this ‘Houston’ is pronounced ‘Hyoo-stun’ and not like the Houston (‘Howsden’) Street in lower Manhattan…) as a nominal part of the North Texas Photo Explorers Meetup Group (though I didn’t see any of the group, not that I’ve met any of them before).

The event itself was much smaller than I expected, or maybe the viaduct is just so large that it made everything look very small… I’m not sure how well it was publicized, and I didn’t see any of the usual East Dallas cycling suspects, so I suspect attendance was fairly low. Also, there were facilities and services for maybe 2500 people (at the very outside), but everything was so spread out and jumbled that it looks like this was a fairly slapdash affair, which is a shame, since this is the 100th anniversary of the Viaduct, and the event was (theoretically) the anniversary celebration.

I guess maybe this points to the ahistoricism that pervades Dallas culture.

Anyway.

I tried to shoot some street photography and practice zone focusing, but failed in both regards. In the first case, I didn’t get near close enough with the 24mm ai lens, and everything you see here was cropped down by at least 1/4, and in some cases much much more. The Massage photo, for example, was a vertical shot that I cropped to horizontal, and not nearly as wide as the original either. I need to do a lot more of this, but it was a bit of a step to even go to an event of this type alone, much less actually shoot people while I was there, so it’s a baby-step-type win, I suppose.

Everything was shot with the D7000 and Nikkor 24mm f/2.8 ai, ISO100 and f/5.6 or f/8, with shutter speed determined by the camera as I was in AP mode—my usual practice when on photowalks.

The 365 shot, titled “I was always the kid in the blue shirt (and I still am, only rather a lot bigger and very much older these days)” was shot f/8 at 1/125th, and I’ll leave you to create the rest of the narrative.

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365.107 Interesting Blooms

I shot a bit of Real Estate today, and these flowers were blooming nicely on the front walk, so I grabbed a shot.

Lucky I did, since I didn’t make the time to shoot any more today. Shame on me.

I’m not too impressed with this shot, but I do like the buds and former blooms in the middle bottom and lower left. And it’s nice to compare the bokeh from the 10-24 with my usual performers… usual adjectives like ‘creamy’ or ‘luscious’ don’t seem to apply here.

This had more post-processing than normal, with a double round of burning in the sky and background, and some localized definition, but I didn’t take it out of Aperture (this version, anyway… I did play around a bit in various Topaz Labs plugins, but didn’t get anything I liked).

Also, this was cropped significantly, so the distortion from the wide end (shot at 10mm) is not readily apparent, though the car in the middle left is my Golf, parked maybe 15 meters away…

D7000. Nikkor 10-24mm f/3.5-4.5G. ISO100, 1/50th, f/3.5 (everything chosen by the camera, as this was shot in my super-secret special Real Estate user profile, though this was made from the RAW file, as the supersecretspecialrealestate profile was a bit garish to my eye…)