My 50

After doing a job for a friend recently, I decided to grab a small, light, wide, sharp, travel-friendly lens for my camera. Nikon recently released the 50mm 1.8G. I haven’t owned a 50mm before, but I was familiar with the focal range as my zooms have always had that covered. I shoot full-frame, so 50mm on my camera gives me roughly 1.5 times the field-of-view as Jas’ camera, which is not full-frame. This means that I can use a 50mm on my camera where it would not be wide enough for Jas (Jas can always use the 35mm 1.8G that I own to get a similar field-of-view on her camera).

After carrying it with me almost exclusively lately, I thought I’d post some photos to give you an idea of what it is capable of. It’s quite sharp wide open – but really performs when stopped down to 2.8-5.6. I enjoy the focal range – it’s intimate enough to show off a single subject, yet wide enough to give some context to the photo. The colours render well, though I haven’t setup a profile for it yet.

Here’s a shot of some Jasmine – the standard flower photo required for lens testing. You can see how beautifully the out-of-focus areas are rendered. The lens doesn’t have great magnification however, so you can’t get too close to focus. I think I’ll acquire a macro to play with next.

The lens is so small that I have no problems carrying my camera and lens to breakfast on the weekend too. Though I usually have my battery-grip on the camera, I like having a small, well balanced rig to grab and go. The 50mm gives me the option of taking one lens for the day and not worrying too much about weight/size. You’d probably be able to smuggle a grip-less body and 50mm into a festival.

Breakfast and a coffee at Bumbles. Jas organised breaky with Lady Dash for a bit of a catch up and to enjoy some tasty food. I’m a sucker for eggs Benny – and it was delicious. Everyone enjoyed their food – but I made the mistake of expecting a good breakfast venue to serve me a semi-decent coffee. Bumbles failed miserably. The coffee came out roughly 7000 degrees hot (I didn’t have a thermometer, but the flaking layers on the roof of my mouth and tongue are quite sensitive to heat and can measure temperature accurately). Maybe I’ll get a juice next time and make myself a coffee at home.

Jas and I walked around a bit after breaky, staring across the canal at our future abode… *dreaming*.

I haven’t tested the 50mm on white seamless yet, but it is Nano-coated and seems to deal with sun flare quite well (as in, it will barely flare!). I did shoot a few headshots of Jas as a lighting test recently, and the 50mm performed exceptionally. I enjoy shooting close with a 50 – but I wouldn’t get much closer than this photo so that I don’t get any unwanted distortion.

If you shoot Nikon and you’re interested in the new 50mm 1.8G, I’d highly recommend it. It is as sharp as most other 50′s (you can check out the sharpness scores on other blogs) and the colours and contrast pop nicely. The lens is small and solid (though not as small as the 1.8D) and focusses quickly and accurately. I’ll post more photos as I use the lens more – but for $250A, you can’t lose!

Henri Cartier-Bresson in Brisbane

Jas and I made the trip up to Brisbane today to visit the latest (and greatest) exhibition on at the Queensland Art Gallery – a photographic experience put together by and for the famous Henri Cartier-Bresson. Since I was first pointed towards Cartier-Bresson’s work, I’ve been in love with B&W film. I haven’t had any experience with it, but I love the quality, romance and the ability to tell the wildest stories that Henri has/had with black and white film. Mr Cartier-Bresson mastered his camera. To him, it wasn’t a gadget to fiddle with, or an engineering-masterpiece to measurebate over, it was a tool that had the ability to capture what his eye saw, in fractions of a second. And his eye was amazing. If you ever want to learn composition, I highly suggest studying his photos. He knew shape and form, light and texture like no other. His exhibition is inspirational.

I wasn’t allowed to photograph any of his work, but Jas and I bought some copies of prints from the giftshop to make a collage of his work for display. I’ll be sure to post back when it’s complete. Just do yourself a favour and GO AND SEE THE EXHIBITION!

Canvas coffee appreciation

I love coffee. Canvas loves coffee. I love canvas. What better way to spread the love than by having a Coffee Appreciation morning. Sunday consisted of a trip down to Canvas with Jas to enjoy the delicacies of quality coffee, learn and appreciate flavour profiles and tasting methods and gorge on delicious French pastries. The morning was run by the man responsible for Canvas’ house blend – Brandon (name?). He’s a coffee guru who is more than willing to share his knowledge about coffee, beans and the industry. What a privilege it was to enjoy some coffee and pastries with a group of like-minded individuals in such a cool venue.

Coffee ground and sitting in filter paper ready for water.

Brandon was explaining that the flavour profile for coffee is best tasted neat. It is important to get the dose and water levels right prior to tasting – otherwise flavours may be too concentrated or too “watered down”. It was interesting to taste the coffee filtered, as I normally only drink latte or espresso. Adding milk, he was saying, will mask a light bodied coffee and make it more difficult to detect the subtleties of the coffee flavour profile. It is important however, to try the milk version before buying, it that is how you would generally consume the coffee.

Water added – start the timer!

Just because this is filtered, doesn’t mean that there isn’t the same science involved. Brewing times are still important – but once the brew was over, it was time to filter the coffee.

Sitting this magic filter jug on top of a pot made the coffee drain from the bottom through the filter. It was awesome to watch and now I want one.

Here’s Brandon sharing his information on the drying process…

Did I mention delicious pastries!

And another coffee to be filtered… both were very different but equally delicious. Actually – the second one was a bit stronger and more to my liking.

Here’s Jas in the beautiful light that filters in through Canvas’ facade.

We took some of the house blend home to try on our machine. Dark City will have to have a bit of time off… I’ll report back with how I find the Canvas House Blend.

What a cool surprise – Shida has put up some art on the side of Canvas. I <3 art.

Not something you see everyday – little different to the usual school shoes or joggers…

Have a good day – go check out Canvas (Facebook Beanhunter What’s on @ Canvas)

Sunset photography

I ventured out this afternoon to take some photos for round 1 of my Photography Fun Facebook event. Basically, I’m trying to motivate myself, and others, to get out and take a ‘themed’ photo every week, and then upload and share it on Facebook. There is no level of gear/skill required, and no one is competing in this challenge, it is a self-rewarding project that should bring photography lovers together.

I submitted this (which is a single frame):

I also snapped these, some of which are HDR’d:

I hope you have enjoyed these – they were fun to take. I also urge you all to get out and use your cameras. It’s good for the mind, body and soul.

I head back to Uni this week – urgh – 1 week off is NOT enough to revitalise – especially when you start the holiday with your birthday. I feel exhausted and need rest. Sleep when you’re dead, hey?

Photo walks and friends

Post-exams has seen me carry a camera almost 100% of the time. I love taking my camera with me – you never know what you might see. Mostly, it’s just Jas being silly, but I love taking photos of her anyway, so it’s win-win. Here’s some shots to show what I’ve been up to.

Some test shots with Jassie

Beautiful afternoon sun!

Sunset anyone?

Fun at Rhys’ 21st. Thanks again for having us all at your party – it was a great night and you have a beautiful family and friends!

Beer on tap.

Not sure who the waiter is, but he’s sexy

West End riots.

Thanks for looking – hope you all have a good week – I’m off for more photos tomorrow! Yay!

Love you all

P.S – most of these were taken using the 35mm 1.8 Nikkor DX on my D700 – not a bad little lens – though the ghosting drives me nuts!

Exams are almost over!

I’m right in the thick of it. Actually, I’m probably just emerging from the far side of the thick stuff. I’m day two into exam-block and have just completed all of the written aspects of the week. I still have Anatomy spotter exam and OSCEs to go, but I have the whole day tomorrow to think about those. Right now, I’m in a good place. I’m quite confident that I’ve done enough to pass – most people I’ve spoken to feel that same way.

Med is a post-graduate course. What this means is that people have to complete a previous degree before they can be accepted into medicine. Some people have a science background, and find the science of medicine a little easier – some people have a business background, and find the interactions with people a little easier. That doesn’t make one student better than another – it makes them different. Medicine is designed to bring everyone roughly up to speed in the first year or two, as there are no good undergrad predictors of a good doctor. This promotes diversity, which is exactly what Medicine entails, there is a different speciality or role from all of us on the other side of the next 3.5 years. All we can do now, is be best friends with uncertainty, and listen to those who are guiding us towards the finish line.

The last few days have shown me a number of things. Firstly, people deal with stress in all sorts of different ways. Some people try to focus on what we’ve been told and keep everything in perspective, others lose it and do the weirdest things. Secondly, you can not replace true, good friends – everything comes out in the wash. And third, when you are stressed, get away from the laptop/study notes and take a walk for an hour or so. If you lost perspective along the way, I’m sure you can find it outside, especially on the Gold Coast.

I had to get away from both the internet, and my own study for a while this week. I thought I’d go for a walk, and replace the pen that I’ve been uncomfortably gripping onto for the last week with the beautiful ergonomics of my camera. I had a little 35mm prime stuck to the front, that isn’t actually designed for my camera. But I thought I’d have a look at the performance, and post some images for you all.

The first thing you’ll notice is the natural vignette that is produced by the lens. This is because the optics don’t distribute light all the way to the corners of the cameras sensor. Some people will hate the effect, some will love it. I quite like the look, but not every photo lends itself to a vignette. The next thing you might notice is the surprising ability it has to reduce flare – though I got it to ghost in one image, but it does surprisingly well – especially for $200. I love the colour rendition and the sharpness, especially wide open, and I think this lens will be either in my pocket, or on my camera for the next few months.

I’ve thrown these last two in because people keep asking me what my home coffee machine setup is. It’s not clean at the moment, but here it is. Certainly does the trick.

The results.

I can’t wait to finally be on holidays, and spend some more time shooting and posting. I hope you are all well, and I wish you all good luck for your exams/business decision/life events.

Jas at Black Coffee Lyrics

So we made it back to Black Coffee Lyrics last weekend.  It was amazing.  We enjoyed a spot of breaky and a beverage each (I had a milkshake – I rarely trust anyone else with making me coffee these days) and Jas had a juice (I think).  We both ordered the same thing, which doesn’t happen too often, but we both wanted something specific and weren’t up for sharing.  And I’m glad we did.  TWO times the awesome.  The vege-stack with poached eggs on top was amazing.  It had caramalised onion, roast veges, two smaller bits of slightly toasted turkish bread and was JUST the right size.  It’s good not eating too much in the morning.  We love food, but we don’t need to eat enough for 43 people.

After we ate, we sat around and soaked up the ambiance a little on the outside tables.  Here’s some shots of Jas that I snapped.  I recommend going to check out Black Coffee Lyrics in Surfers Paradise… and might be having a birthday brunch there soon.  6 thumbs up.

ISO-1000 with no noise reduction for those playing at home.