50mm Prime + Photo Trip

It's been a while since the last time I posted anything on this site. During this hiatus --not to imply that I was an avid blogger, far from it; I have accrued a total of....one new lens. I had been preoccupied with the potential possibilities of possessing the 18-200mm VR lens instead of the 18-135mm, as well as quickly upgrading the body to a MA frame. Turns out though, that I would end up spending fully x2 what I had set as my budget....not that I already didn't spend close to 2K on what I have, but taking into consideration the difference for the upgraded gear, I would be spending about another 1.2K. Just writing about this is making my stomach churn!

In short, I ended up keeping my zoom and adding the world famous 50mm. I spent about an hour or so at the local cafe playing around with it and quickly realized why it was such a famous lens. It's FAST! Both the AF and the aperture worked really well indoors, whereas the 18-135mm would take what felt like hours to. It also helped me learn a bit about framing and composition the hard way. With the 18-135mm I could sit in a car and just zoom at what I wanted to capture (eg. the pictures I took after the storm featured below were all in car), while the 50mm actually forced me to move back and forth and orient and reorient myself at least a dozen times. This was something that became really annoying (and embarrassing) really quickly! I also learned (the hard way) why it's a portrait lens and just how limited my ability to shoot with it really was. Aside from items/products placed in a light box or of portraits, this lens was incapable of taking much of anything else --at least at my stage. I know Henri Cartier-Bresson only used the 50mm...but then again, his setup cost more than a house! The pictures embedded in this paragraph are the ones I took just a few minutes after purchasing the prime as well as some from the CONTACT photography festival at the Art District.

All the talk about how amazing the 50mm is...is stupid. I hated it. I took less pictures (that I actually didn't mind) with the 50mm in 3 weeks than I did with the 18-135mm in the first 2-3 days! I did learn quite a bit while having the 50mm attached to my body because after switching back to the zoom, I experienced first hand what barrel distortion, vignetting, chromatic aberration, and image sharpness and clarity degradation is. I was also able to build my self a quaint little schema linking photography jargon with experiential cues (...taking cognitive sci. really raped me in ways I am not ready to express lol). Yah, anyway, I now have a basis to compare AF speeds with. On the slow end, we have the glacial 18-135mm. On the fast side is (by comparison) the 50mm scramjet. Also, my 18-135mm is a DX so it does not have an aperture ring, whereas the prime does...although I never actually used it as I can simply adjust the aperture dial on my camera. [just an aside for other music addicts...get your hands on the new Maroon 5 album...great music]

During this hiatus, I have also had the opportunity to go on my first "photo trip", which wasn't much, but first times are not meant to be bragged about, just to build off and improve on. I have told this story at least half a dozen times, embellishing it in some way every time of course (for presentation)...but I am including it now just to contextualize one of the pictures I am going to be posting. The creature you see before you was this hideous creature that tried to hump my face. I was kneeling to take angled shots of geese and this thing creped up from behind me and by the heavy panting I just dismissed it as a dog or an ungainly child that had one too many pastries, alas it was this grotesque bird. I cried. On the inside. Seriously though, it bothers me that I cannot seem to identify it as anything other than a breed of geese (perhaps bred as livestock?) Anyway, it was the only one of it's kind in the whole of the pond. It was actually rather sad to see it so dejected and ostracized by the other geese there...maybe if it was a bit more attractive? Pfft...animals, so unabashedly shallow. The pictures taken that day were at a small place about an hour north of where I live (Unionville...lol "-ville"!!). I had some assumptions about the townsfolk going in...but the balance of beautiful women were favorable :D
must be the clean air...I also had reverted back to the 18-135mm by then (except for the framed shot of the trees w/the arches).

It's crazy late and I am making less and less sense so, ciao for now.


All pictures are property of Habib Ahmadzai and of Prime Photography and cannot be redistributed or used without authorization by owners of the images contained on this webpage Copyright © 2007.