Macros with a Nikon D40 kit

These last couple of rainy days got me thinking about the summer (jeah, it didn't take long to miss it:) ).

Digging through vacation photos found these macros I took with my dads Nikon D40. It had the kit lens, the 18-55 one, and some no-brand macro filters attached to it.



Really liked this small camera. It has almost no weight (I guess I am doing unfair comparison to my stuffed backpack), so having it with me all the time did not require any effort at all. Now I feel like going Ken Rockwell on you... :)

More bugs and butterflies inside the post!













Jep, if you're on a budget, a couple of macro filters will give you a lot! And I would never call their quality bad...

Still, the summer was nice and warm :)

New member of the crew - Nikon 70-300/4,5-5,6G AF-S ED VR

Yes! Finally - diving into the world of long lenses, shallow DOF and getting close to things I could not reach before!

Sample images from this lens (shot with my good old Nikon D70s) and some more thoughts inside the post.



Lets start with the sample pictures of autumn colors/critters:


Sharpness - check.


Nice colors - check.


And the DOF is as shallow as it should be, fixing the background for you. Though I've learned that you need to be really careful with it, especially if you have such long-nosed subjects as below... I managed to focus on her nose most of the time, leaving the eyes not sharp enough.



Just love it how long lenses separate subject from the background!

This picture of Terra, my dog, is completely uncropped. I have not done any vignette removal on it in post processing; it was shot wide open at f5.6/300mm. Now you tell me if the measurebators whining about 70-300 vignette are worth listening to... Sure, if you take a picture of someone with blue sky in the background, you might see vignetting... But usually you will also be able to stop down to f8 to remove it ;)

As for reaching far away objects - the millimeters speak for themselves. Below two pictures of a bird at 70 and 300mm, 70 being as far as I could go before getting the new lens (yes, 70mm is the small one in the corner... sheesh... :) ).



BTW, this bird was really funny, pretending to fly or blow-drying himself for quite a while there :)

VR

Is a really neat feature! 70-300 is first ever lens I have used with VR in it. It is really cool and does it's job like it should (according to it's name :)). Below picture of weird colored mushroom was taken in dark woods with shutter speed of 1/20 at 220mm zoom. Jeah, I need to practice holding this long beast, but without VR there would be no mushroom today...



Tripod

This is probably going to be an issue. My tripods ball head (Manfrotto 486RC2) does not seem to be able to cope with the weight :( After composing, fastening the lock and letting go of the camera, it slides down a few millimeters, making quite a big difference in the viewfinder, especially on 300mm zoom. Be prepared for new investment here :)

Summary

If you have not yet came to the conclusion- I love the lens. Jep, probably if I'd tried the big bro 70-200 f2.8 I would love that one more, but for the fraction of the cost, my newest toy does miracles!

I'll update this post with more new pictures as they come.

Cheers!

Down below will be links to new posts where you can find pictures made with this lens
Nature in winter

Snowy stone in Säveåns nature reserve.

The Ballad Of The Broken Birdie Records

Leidi misterie made a cover of The Ballad Of The Broken Birdie Records by Múm and I got the great privilege to make a picture for the song.

As there was no chance at all to find a crying jackdaw (or any other black bird to that matter), it was clear from the start that this is going to take a lot more post processing than usual.



Jump inside to read how I hunted down the bird and how the image came together.

First off I needed to get a picture of the bird. And just my luck, the day I set myself out hunting was the day all of the birds in Gothenburg were on vacation... For two hours I could not even see a single crow or jackdaw or anything similar. Not until it came to me, that I need to go to the dirtiest place in town- the central station :) So, the birds were there, but I could never reach them with my kit 18-70 Nikkor lens. At that time new train rolled to the station... The front was all covered in mosquitoes and the bird fiesta started. They were pecking that train without bothering that there was some guy with a camera just one meter away...

Here is the picture I picked out of about 30 shots:


Now all that was missing was a nice background. It took me two weeks of waiting until I saw the perfect sky for this shot. It was almost dark then and the clouds looked just perfect.


All was here. Time to glue things together. Cutting out the bird is easy, all you need is patience. Selected it with as much detail as I could manage, copied it into the cloud picture, put it on the fence. Now making the bird cry was something I've never done before. Internet saved me once again- found a great tutorial on drawing tears by Globator.

Afterwards the whole image looked just a bit fuzzy, so I over-sharpened (using unsharp mask) the birds body only, making the eye, tear and feathers be more contrasty and standing out of the image.

And we're done. I finally heavily post processed an image :) It was used as background for the song on youtube.