Rodney Campbell's Blog

I had the camera in the office one day and as I had to leave a little early that day I photographed a few interesting buildings and things around my office whilst I walked to the car park.

I only had my new Sigma 50mm f/1.4 lens with me so it was a good experience to be forced into using just one focal length for all shots. I would highly recommend other budding amateur photographers also give this a try – I think with the current pervasiveness of very good zoom lenses these days, more and more people are just standing still and using the zoom for composition rather than using their feet to zoom and create interesting perspectives and images. Using a fixed focal length forces you into physically moving around to get the shot and to think more about what you are composing and shooting.

This first is a small abandoned? (or at least closed) church just down the road from my office. The 50mm lens on my crop sensor camera actually gives me an equivalent focal length of a 75mm short telephoto lens so it’s not possible to go wide and fit the whole building in, so instead I tried to get closer and point almost directly upwards to focus on a particular portion of the building against the interesting backdrop of a cloud filled sky. The exposure range was much too wide to capture this in a single shot (and I’m also on the shadow side of the building) so I did a handheld HDR by fixing the aperture (so as to not get any depth of field shifts) and bracketing three exposures at +2, 0 and -2EV. I also applied a slight duotoned effect to give it more gothic feel.

NIKON D90 + 50.0 mm f/1.4 @ 50 mm, 1/125 sec at f / 8, ISO 200

Some interesting Christmas decorations hanging in the open space inside a tall office building nearby – this shot was taken wide open (f/1.4) and looking through both the decorations and the building itself out the other side and into Hyde Park on the other side with the sun setting sort of behind me.

NIKON D90 + 50.0 mm f/1.4 @ 50 mm, 1/800 sec at f / 1.4, ISO 200

In Hyde Park there were some beautiful and bright flower boxes at the steps of the monument. It was extremely bright in the late afternoon sun so I tried taking a shot effectively facing towards the setting sun so as to backlight the whole flower bed and give the flowers a more “translucent” feel.

NIKON D90 + 50.0 mm f/1.4 @ 50 mm, 1/1600 sec at f / 2.8, ISO 200

… and the reason I had to leave early was to pick up my daughter and her friend from their jazz dance lessons. This was taken on the walk home with very strong backlighting provided by the sun (5PM) almost directly into the lens and almost silhouetting the girls and giving the image that washed out look.

NIKON D90 + 50.0 mm f/1.4 @ 50 mm, 1/125 sec at f / 5.0, ISO 200

Two of my daughters and I decided to spend the afternoon in a park, taking photos of flowers in the streets nearby and playing on the equipment.

For the following shot we used a scrim (a large white translucent popout circle – part of a reflector kit) to soften the very harsh and bright afternoon sun and also used my Tamron 90mm Macro lens.

NIKON D90 + 90.0 mm f/2.8 @ 90 mm, 1/320 sec at f / 3.5, ISO 200

For the remaining photos in the park I’d switched to my 70-300mm lens and taken some images playing on the equipment.

NIKON D90 + 70.0-300.0 mm f/4.5-5.6 @ 122 mm, 1/250 sec at f / 4.8, ISO 200

NIKON D90 + 70.0-300.0 mm f/4.5-5.6 @ 260 mm, 1/250 sec at f / 6.3, ISO 200

Late in the afternoon some friends from school arrived in the park to make a small movie they were working on for a class project, we helped out with filming and as extras, and also took some portraits of everyone in the very late afternoon (6PM) light.

NIKON D90 + 70.0-300.0 mm f/4.5-5.6 @ 100 mm, 1/60 sec at f / 4.5, ISO 280

NIKON D90 + 70.0-300.0 mm f/4.5-5.6 @ 100 mm, 1/60 sec at f / 4.5, ISO 320