Paul Lester Photo

Nikon D300 – Nikkor 100 mm @ f/8 1/125
Another fun little experiment that I’ve wanted to do, take the same photo with both cameras. Here’s a shot of the moon from last night taken from my porch. Both shots were taken with the same lens, but using different camera bodies. As you can see, the D300 appears much larger given the crop factor of 1.5.

I took both of these images with the same lens, around 2 or 3 minutes apart. I cropped them both to be the same size. As the seniors on both cameras are almost the same size, this seemed like a fair experiment. As you can see, the D300 photo looks quite a bit larger, which is cool for pulling in distant objects. Of course, we all know that the D700 would ‘win’ on the other side of the playing field, at the wide angle.

Anyway, it was something fun to do and it gave me a reason, though I don’t even need one, to take photos of the moon!

Nikon D700 – Nikkor 100 mm @ f/8 1/125

Every once in a while, on a slow day, I’ll do what I call link hopping. That is, for those of you bloggers who visit my site, I’ll visit yours and see who you have on your blogroll (that reminds me, I need to do a better job of keeping my up-to-date). If you don’t have a blogroll, then I’ll read comments and click though to some of the commentators’ sites. Then, I’ll visit a site or two, see if I like the photography and/or writing, then perhaps add them to my RSS reader.

What I have found is that, for the most part, if I like your site, I will, the great majority of the time, like the sites of those who comment or who you have on your blogroll. Now, I had to try the counterpoint to that. I went to a blog that I really don’t care for, the writing or the photos, did the same thing and had similar results. That is, for those commentators that commented on his site, regularly, I clicked through and found that I didn’t care for their photography or their writing. I do admit that I could have already been heavily biased against those who frequent this blog because of my personal opinion of the opinions and photography therein. It is a bit pretentious, in my opinion. As they say, birds of a feather, flock together.

Naturally, there is no point to mention the blog, for that is not the point. Both Tom and Earl know which blog that I speak of because we discussed a similar topic during our get-together in Salisbury.

It’s just interesting, at least to me, to notice how similar people/photographers tend to find a comfortable place to hang out. Not surprising, though. I think that it is not necessarily the photography that doesn’t interest me, it’s more of the attitude that goes with it – If you don’t like ‘this’ type of photography, you’ve not grown as a photographer. I’ve never cared for that particular attitude.

Anyway, link hopping is pretty fun and I’ve found some cool blogs. I try to keep my number of RSS feeds down to about 30. So, when some go dormant and don’t post for a long while, or go away, I start hopping and always find new and interesting blogs! There are lots of interesting folks out there and all sorts of styles to admire.

I was going to make this post into two posts, but I think that I can blend them into a cohesive unit. I think. The first part:

The other day, Tom Dills and I were talking about photography while on vacation and how we handle it. Even though we have different approaches, we pretty much handle it the same. We take our time to do the personal work, say in the morning while everyone else is sleeping. He doesn’t like to process or blog while on vacation, while I have no problem with it in the slack times, when I’m not napping. There’s always quiet time available on my vacation, sometimes I just sit and enjoy the breeze or conversation, other times, I blog and process photos.

The second part:

Debra asked me if I enjoyed my visit to Butterfly World, which I did. Further, she asked if I enjoyed photographing the butterflies, well that was a yes/no kind of answer. Yes, I did enjoy the visit and chasing the butterflies trying to get a shot or two. The “no” part was that it was in the middle of the day, around 12:30 in the afternoon in the Florida sun, clear blue skies. She remarked how great a day it would be to take pictures and I had to explain to her why it was not such a good day for picture taking, but great for being out and enjoying each others company.

I knew, when I walked out of the house at 10:30-ish that the chance for me to get what I would consider a ‘good’ photograph was slim and none. There would be lots of people, the sun would be directly overhead, the contrast range would be way out of sensor range, and there would be lots of people. None of these are conducive to taking photos of colorful butterflies unless you planned to take diffusers and other light control items with you. This doesn’t work in a crowd, especially a crowd of gleeful youngsters. However, I was not in the least disappointed because it was not my intent to be a ‘photographer’ at that moment, but to be a companion having a good time.

It’s much the same on vacation. Sometimes I’ll get up early, do my thing, then come back, eat breakfast, and be ready to be a tourist, leaving the camera behind until evening hours … maybe. Sometimes, depending on what we are doing, it may not see the light of day again until morning!

It’s nice to go out without the camera sometimes and not worry about recording events or seeing things. Of course, I’m always looking, but no pressure on myself to capture it – I much prefer wee hours of the morning when I’m the only one around.