Zeiss 35, Meet Zeiss 85

If you like smooth, sexy, creamy, rich bokeh (and hell, who doesn’t) then you really need to look into some good glass.

Bokeh, from the Japanese – which means “blur” or “haze”

A great camera helps, but is not necessary.  Wether your shooting from a Sony α A900, a Canon 1Ds Mark III, a Nikon D3x (or D700s/ D700x – should bring some hits to the site) or even a Nikon n60, there is a Zeiss lens for you.  Yeah, I know the story.  It’s not the gear, it’s the photographer.

Bull hockey.

There are just some things the best photographer in the world can’t do without the right gear.  And a creamy depth of field is one of them.  Sure, you can shoot a shallow depth with a crappy camera and ok lens, but you can not get milky smooth bokeh with it.  Not without photoshop, ya liar.

You don’t need to spend a fortune either – but with Zeiss glass, you really do get what you pay for.  Yes, the Nikkor 50mm f/1.8 has about the best bang for the buck out there, but the bokeh is really lacking.  It isn’t bad, mind you.  But it isn’t as sexy as Kate Beckinsale in tight leather.  (See, Zeiss is just that).

Damn, I sound like a product ad.  I wanted to talk about bokeh, but I got all derailed when I mentioned Kate.  I need to get back to this later!

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.

85mm Cream Machine

I usually have something technical to say about my shots.  This isn’t one of those times.  It’s my 85mm f.1,8 on full manual (including focus) while laying on my back by the lake.  I’ll let the creamy colors say the rest!

Tagging Photos - Be Creative - But Be Honest

If you are maniacal egocentric shooter and sheerly enjoy having people gawk at your photos to give you words of commendation and love, then smart tagging is a skill you really need to develop to feed your Ego.  Proper tagging will get your proper hits.  There are a mind boggling 60,000,000 sites out there with information on how to do this properly, so I am not re-inventing the wheel here.  Just adding my 2 cents to the topic.

I ran a test with the above photo on Flickr this week.  Among the tags, I added “sexy,” “naked” and “porn” as a play on words for this lens.  (I am also adding those tags to this blog to see what traffic is driven here).  I got over 100 hits in the first few minutes of posting the image.  Triple what I usually get in the first few hours! Sure, I got some pissed off people who were expecting to see Danica McKellar from The Wonder Years who just did a half naked photo-shoot with Maxim, but I also got the people that were searching on the legit words like “Nikon” “85mm” “portrait” and “lens” to stop by.

These are the guys I want to check out my work, leave comments on my stream and possible begin to follow me.  The ones that got here under false pretenses are not going to leave any constructive criticism – other than perhaps a few choice words about my mother.

By using proper tagging, you are making it easy for people to find your work.  You are making Google index your photos properly.  You are not being a pain in the ass.

For those that got here on my misleading tags, I apologize.  It was just to prove a point.  But I did give you links to the Maxim spread above!

Nikon D700's Best Friend

The photo above says it all.  Jamming that 85mm onto my D700x (just kidding, it’s still a D700) is a dream.  First off, I feel the D700 is the strongest camera in the Nikon lineup, yes, even over the D3x. Paired with the Nikkor 85mm f/1.8 lens – a fraction of the price of the f/1.4 – you get tack-sharp images across the entire focal range, a bokeh to die for, and a photo that needs very little post work.  I thought this was the ultimate set-up.

But wait, there’s more! After adding CS5 into the mix – well, now it’s just now heaven.

As I said in my previous post, CS5 offers a ton over CS4. Now that I have begun to dig into it, I am finding that I no longer need the quick tools for editing photos.  I used to used Nik Software’s Color Efex Pro 3 and Silver Efex Pro within Photoshop to help me curve and balance my shots, tone map, or slam into B&W.  But the controls are so much better in Cs5 that I no longer have the need to use these quick little plugins.  I am able to generate any one of the effects they offered (for $300) very easily with the CS5 tools.  Yes, even tone mapping through the pseudo HDR tools built into CS5.

It doesn’t get better than this.  I could live a happy and full rest of my life with just these three items.  Well, of course I need my Mac Pro to do my edits, but that’s a given.

Rainbow Finch @ 85mm

Did I mention I picked up the Nikon 85mm f/1.8 prime this week?  This is simply a stunning piece of glass and a fraction of the price of the f/1.4.  Though I have never shot the 1.4 and can’t give valid comparative data (and won’t make up facts like the US government would) I can tell you that this is a fast, sharp and brilliant lens.  It takes stunning portraits that require little or no post-work.  Hell, this lens could even make Rosie O’Donnell sexy.

The shot above is of the Rainbow Finch, also known as the Lady Gouldian Finch or Gould’s Finch, taken from the Buttery Place in Weston, MA.  This shot was taken with fairly good lighting through frosted skylights at f/2 from about 2 feet away.  Luckily, the bird was used to people and didn’t flutter off at the site of my D700 in it’s face.  Not much had to be done with this shot in terms of clarity and color.  I did a slight curve in the new Photoshop CS5 to balance the light, but that’s about it for this one.  The lens and camera did all the rest.

See?  Who needs a D700x or D700s when the plain old everyday D700 can do this?

You can comment on the photo itself at my Flickr account if you care.  It’s actually doing well on Explore today – not that I give a crap about Explore.