Monthly Archive for March, 2008
I wasn’t entirely satisfied with the test I did a couple of days ago. Specifically, I was not sure I had optimized the focusing. I took both shots with the cameras set to a similar focal length. In the case of the P5100 I set the camera to its minimum aperture of f7.3 and I set the D200 to f8 - near enough.
But the camera-to-subject distance was quite small, which reduces depth of field. What I wanted to do was to do the test again and increase the depth of field by increasing the camera to subject distance. That should reduce the effect of any focusing errors.
And I wanted to get the focus target as near as possible in the same plane as the most important element in the composition, which was an egg. Eggs are good subjects because shadows roll off them so delicately. And there is lots of small detail in the surface of an egg. So I cut a hole in the test target and placed the egg within the space created.
I increased the camera-to-subject distance and repeated the test more or less as before except that I used an 85mm lens on the D200 (which is 127.5mm in 35mm equivalent terms) and set the lens on the P5100 to its maximum focal length, which in 35mm equivalent terms is 123mm.
Judge the results for yourself. I see better detail in the D200 - better detail on the surface of the egg, better details in the upturned glass, better details in the shadows behind the egg, and less noise in the shadows.
500 pixel wide comparison shot - Nikon D200 on the right
Thumbnail of the comparison shot above - click for larger image.
There is a lot of building going on along the banks of the Manchester Ship Canal near the Imperial War Museum. Across from the museum there is the Lowry Arts Centre, which has been completed. It houses a gallery of his work and a theatre.
I found myself looking at a building that is being built, thinking that it is going to change. When it is complete it will achieve a permanent look of its own, but that at the moment it is a skeleton framed by cranes. And then I stopped and looked again at the building as though it were complete now just as it is.
I imagined the cranes, not as cranes but as something else whose function I did not know, but which were a permanent part of the building perhaps staircases or something. And then the skeleton of the building and the cranes took on a life of their own, making one piece together.
