Day 8

7/18/10

"The Last Minutes of Maxwell Street Days"

I went back today to try out a Nikkor AF 10.5mm f/2.8 ED DX Fisheye Lens today. The folks at a local camera shop had one used Fisheye for $525, which they offered to lower to $500 (in the last minutes of Maxwell Street Days, hoping to move the lens and make a sale), an enormous deal, and though I love the lens and effect, I can't justify that much of a buy right now. Here I upped the saturation a little and the exposure as well, warmed up the tone, and cropped out a bit of my palm in the lower right corner. Its incredible what a fisheye will pick up. This also is an AF lens, not AF-S. My camera does not have a built-in autofocus motor, which this lens would work well with, but since the lens does not have a motor in it, I had to focus manually, which is kind of a crap shoot until you're used to it.


A side note about my use of saturation in photos. I try to keep it to a minimum. Though I've been shooting semi-seriously for only a short while, I've been paying some attention to photography for some time. Though you won't see as much use of heavily saturated photography until you get into professional lomography, a lot of so called pro-thusiasts over-saturate everything, even if just marginally. Its quite the effect, and though it can make photos quite beautiful, I think it can make beautiful photos mundane, if just by repetitiveness. I will try my best to vary the level of saturation and after-effect from instance to instance.

As always, click for a larger view of the capitol and the crowd.