Zeiss @ 35mm

I’ve been shooting sunsets and landscapes for the last couple years and it’s really a comfort zone.  It was a pretty easy mode to wander down to the lake and point it at the warm golden skies and get a perfect sunset.  But one of my good friends, Mikeal, told me, Ray, sunsets are a dime a dozen.  Use your eye and shoot something unique. I am paraphrasing, but you get the point.  I looked at my stream and it did seem to be one sunset shot after another, broken up by still water lake shots.  I was in a rut.

Sunflower - Never Surrender

So, since he said that, I have been looking for a new angle; new things to shoot that are not overdone or cliche.  Through a series of inspirations from various shooters on the web, I’ve began to look at the world right in front of me, rather than the vast expanding landscapes that can be found on every photostream on the net.

And that world was found in the ordinary.  Things I walked past everyday.  A rock on the ground.  A root sticking up from the dirt.  A drooping sunflower.  By using depth of field and focus to draw your attention to the story this tiny world suddenly became quite vast.  And I knew this new style would take quite a bit of work to make it emerge.

To change my style, one of the first things I wanted to change was the way I shoot.  I bought myself a Carl Zeiss 35mm lens and went to full manual.  Manual focus, manual settings.  With that, landscapes became boring and I started to look at unique ways to focus in on objects, such as the off-center sunflower shot.

Depth of Field

And I fell in love with Zeiss.

This was no fling, this was true love too.  Everything about my shooting was changing – and it wasn’t just because of the D700.  It was that this lens was like nothing I have ever held before.

After about a month, I sold all my gear and picked up the Zeiss 18mm and began to open up the world around me.  Now, I am picking up the Zeiss 85mm today, and will open up that world even more.  Sure, I’ve laid down over $3,000 in lenses in the past 2 months, but it is helping me to expand my passion.  So glad I never waited for the fabled D700s or D700x!

No, better lenses do not make you a better photographer, but they make enjoying the road to better photography so much better.

The Carl Zeiss ZF.2 Family

My somewhat disturbing fondness for my latest piece of glass – the Carl Zeiss 35mm f/2 – was so strong, and frankly quite fervent, that I decided to throw caution into the wind, damn my low bank account and upgrade ALL my gear to Zeiss.  Today, having successfully sold my ultra-wide Sigma and my Nikon Fisheye lenses, I was able to purchase the drool-inspiring Carl Zeiss 18mm f/3.5.

21mm Versus 18mm

So, you ask, “Ray, why the 18mm f/3.5 instead of the 21mm f/2.8?”  Good question.

The $300 difference in cost had nothing to do with it.  When you’re dropping $1500 on a lens, the price isn’t a factor anymore.  It’s about my style.  If you look at my stream from the days I was shooting on my D80 – it was 90% shot with my Sigma 10-20mm glass.  I love the incredibly obnoxious wide shots of landscapes.  And though the difference from 18 to 21 mm isn’t mind shatteringly huge, it’s enough.  I like to go as extreme as I can and since Mr. Zeiss isn’t offering up that sexy 16-35mm lens for Nikon yet, 18 is as wide as it gets for me.

Can I deal with f/3.5?

As for F-stop, the 3.5 and 2.8 are irrelevant for my shooting.  I do long exposure in low light for most of my nature shots.  Being on a tripod is my key.  I tend to keep the shutter open from a second to 30 minutes.  Though I do love lenses that hover below f/2.8 – in landscape photography, they are not a must.

So, What’s Next?

Well, I’ll be in poverty for quite some time now.  But that’s OK – it’s very much worth it.  I will now begin saving for the CZ 50mm ZF.2 Makro and the CZ 100mm ZF.2 Makro.  It’ll be at least a year before I can afford to do that.  I do have 2 more pieces of glass to sell off, but that’ll get me only $500 or so.

Perhaps the kind folks at CZ would like to donate one for me to promote?