Tag Archives: 50mm f1.4 lens

Thursday 22nd March 2012 I DIDN’T QUITE MANAGE …

… to do what  was going to do today – “no surprise there ” – ed – but I had a pretty good go at it.

In fact what distracted me was that every time I moved something in the garden I uncovered a huge bed of nettles underneath it, just on the point of springing into action.

Of course, digging over raised beds and planting seeds is not the kind of thing that is timed to the second, but all of these nettles about to burst into life may well be. So, wearing thick gloves this time, I set to with the gratter and pulled up as many as I could.

And there were thousands too, and I haven’t finished yet by any means.

This morning though, I was editing photos. and not just any photos but the ones from the last couple of weeks of footy.

I’m keeping the footy photos separate, on a fast-action SD card, the fastest one I could find, so that the camera reacts quicker to me pressing the shutter.

It’s for that reason too that I bought a 50mm lens with manual focus – that I could set it to infinity and it wouldn’t waste time recalibrating for every shot.

fast action f1.4 50mm lens football fcpsh fc pionsat st hilaire puy de dome france>But in fact I’m pretty disappointed with this lens despite the money that I paid for it, if the truth were known.

The focusing has a tendency to float away from infinity and sometimes I forget to reset it (and I don’t see why I should have to either) and as well as that, the lens is nothing like as sharp as I would like, especially considering how much I paid for the lens.

I can crop sections out of my cheap generic 28-105mm zoom lens and magnify them quite impressively, but with this lens, even a normal-aspect image is not sufficiently good.

Anyway my reverie was interrupted by Terry who was going past and so came for a chat. and while he was there someone phoned me up about a dumper that he had for sale.

Terry and I have a day out tomorrow, so it seems.

I did manage to clear one of the raised beds in the middle of all this. But planting seed will have to wait until next week. I’m busy now for a few days what with one thing and another.

Saturday 3rd December 2011 – I HAVEN’T DONE …

… anything at all today.

A miserable wet windy Saturday was enough to keep me up here.

All I’ve done is to tidy up (just a little), do a little work on the radio programme, and read a book on Canadian railways. It’s a long time since I’ve had a lazy day like that.

f1.4 50mm lens fcpsh fc pionsat st hilaire football club de foot puy de dome franceThis evening I went to Pionsat with the new lens to watch FC Pionsat St Hilaire. I’ll post a pic up here so that you can see what it looks like, but action night shots at 1/640 on ISO1600, and sufficient light to do it as well is amazing.

And with being manual focus, the reaction time is instant.

However one slight drawback is that the focus doesn’t stay locked and I didn’t realise that. It floated off from infinity and I didn’t notice, and one or two pf the photos at least are not much good.

I’m curious to see what the rest are like

But I’m going to do that tomorrow. I’m pretty tired again right now. All of this lazing around is no good for me.  

Wednesday 30th November 2011 – FATHER CHRISTMAS …

… came early – as in “this morning”.

Or rather, it was the man from DHL who came bearing gifts. And I now have a 50mm f1.4 lens, and a zoom lens of 70-300mm for the Nikon.

The zoom lens was something bought on a whim as it was second-hand and quite cheap as well, and it’s something that I’ve always promised myself if ever I saw one around.

The other lens cost a great deal of money and it has a specific purpose in that my footy photographs at night are nothing like as good as they ought to be and it’s high time that I did something about it. I either have not enough light on the subject or else they are taken too slow and hence they are blurred.

The 17-105mm lens that I have currently on the camera doesn’t stop down anything like far enough – about f4 is its limit. But then again zoom lenses like this are never any good in poor light conditions.

They both came from the USA and the taxes and fees cost half the purchase price of the articles. That’s a huge disappointment and is threatening international commerce.

Apart from that, this morning I chopped up another pile of firewood. This fire really is impressive now that I reckon that I’ve figured it out. While I was having my evening meal last night it warmed up the place from15.4°C to 22.5°C with just one log of wood, and the insulation kept the place as high as 16.5°C this morning.

And this afternoon I built a huge wooden box out of scraps of wood that I had lying around. The mice are getting everywhere these days and there’s nowhere to leave any fruit or veg where it will be safe.

I tried a plastic container but the stuff just sweated. Wood is the answer as the wood will absorb the sweat but you can’t buy wood boxes like you used to be able to do – hence the home-made variety.

And with a really late night last night and a 7:30 awakening, I’m whacked so I’m going to bed early. Well, early for me anyway.

And I forgot to add that it rained yesterday – 4.5mm. The first rain that we have had since 7th November.