Archive for the 'Japan' CategoryPosts relating to Japan and things Japanese The photo immediately above is the Mt. Daimonji “大" visible from much of Kyoto. For comparison, this next shot was taken from about the same place, at 24 mm (as opposed to the 1,000mm of the picture above), from my Discovering Kyoto's Mt. Yoshida post a year ago... Yesterday I offered some samples of Sigma's new "Bigma" 50-500mm superzoom with the 2× teleconverter attached, turning it into a 100-1,000mm f/9-f/13 zoom that also works as an almost 1-to-1 macro. I noted that first impressions were that using the teleconverter ("TC") lowers the optical quality considerably, and today's equally-informal tests support [...] View full post » The second day I had my new Sigma "Bigma" 50-500mm OS super-zoom lens, I took a short stroll around town in the morning. The first thing I found were these pretty pink blossoms, and I thought to try multiple apertures to see the bokeh. I like it a lot. I'm less sure how I like it in the next shot... Stepping onto the sidewalk, the first thing I see -- way down the street -- were some monks (or whatever... I'm not sure the proper term, sorry), so I thought to reach out with The Bigma's long arm to greet [...] View full post » This is a continuation of yesterday's post about Sigma's updated "Bigma" 50-500mm Super-tele Zoom, mostly to show more samples. Clicking through on the thumbnails brings up full-resolution versions. I horribly missed focus on this one, as I have on many of these. The depth of focus is pretty thin at 500mm, so I was sometimes trying "C" continuous) focus mode on moving subjects, something that I have little experience or confidence with, so I accept all blame for the missed-focus shots. Missed the focus on the one above as well, by just a bit. Adding a smidgen of extra sharpening [...] View full post » As I mentioned yesterday, I got a new camera. What I neglected to mention is that it also came with a big mass of industrial beauty called the "Sigma Bigma", the Sigma 50mm-500mm F4.5-6.3 OS HSM zoom lens. (The "OS" stands for optical stabilization, one of the new features Sigma added in this recent update to their original "Sigma Bigma" lens.) Let me say up front that I had very low expectations for this lens, beyond the versatility and convenience of a 10× superzoom that goes to 500mm. First of all, it's a 10× superzoom. Its max zoom, 500mm, is [...] View full post » Holy cow, six days without a blog post... I think that's the longest dry spell since 2005. I'm just too busy with LR3 preparations, sorry. I'm still too busy to post properly, so going to my archives for some low-hanging fruit. This shot is from the last day of our short New Year's trip. In the thumbnail view above it's a picture of a bridge over a river, but view it full size and it becomes something much greater. It joins a few other photos from the trip that got their own post, including "Theme For Our New Year's Trip", [...] View full post » |