I had a chance to play with my Rokinon 500mm f/6.3 lens on the weekend, and I took some test shots of the sunset from my deck.  It’s definitely a difficult lens to use, but you can get some pretty cool shots if you keep at it.

Sunset Over Kelly Creek

For this shot, I used the 2x teleconverter for an effective focal length of 1500mm (I have a D80 with a crop sensor).  The hardest part of taking this shot wasn’t actually the focus, although as you can see, I didn’t quite nail that either.  The most difficult thing was positioning the camera on the tripod so that the sunset was in the frame correctly.  Even the slightest movement caused the sun to jump out of frame, and as we all know the sun sets very fast.  So, that’s why I only got the tail end of this one.

I think I had to take about 20 shots to get this, and even then I had to straighten it because I couldn’t get the camera positioned properly before the sun went down.

Sunset Behind Tower

I wasn’t going to attempt another shot like this so soon, but I took this one yesterday because the clouds were just breaking at sunset and the way they were sitting before the sun was awesome.  I had to give it a try, but I knew from the other day that I didn’t have time to mess with the tripod.

Normally the rule of thumb is that you can hand-hold the camera if your shutter speed is greater than your focal length.  So in my case where the focal length was 1000mm I would need to use a 1/1000th sec shutter speed.  At sunset, with an aperture of f/6.3 – 2 stops for the 2x teleconverter, that wasn’t going to do me any good.  Because this is a mirror lens, I was able to get away with 1/200th of a second if I held my breath while shooting.

I really can’t wait for the snow to melt so I can get out there and experiment a little more with this lens.  Knowing that I can hand hold it is giving me an itchy shutter release finger.

There was absolutely nothing wrong with the Nikon D60 that I got a couple of weeks ago, but at that time, I really didn’t even know what to look for in a digital SLR. After playing around with the D60, and talking to some friends I gradually got the feeling that I should have gotten the Nikon D80 instead.

I think one of the main reasons I chose to upgrade to the D80 was the focusing motor. The D60 can only auto-focus with AF-S lenses (those that have the built in focus motor), and those lenses are ridiculously expensive. Also, I’m thinking of getting a 50mm f1.8 lens, and there is no AF-S version of that as of yet, and when/if there is one, I doubt it’ll be $150.

Some other reasons I chose the D80 were

• Increased battery life
• Bracketing
• The larger body (My hand would cramp after a while with the D60’s smaller body)

Also, to offset the cost of the upgrade, I traded down from the Nikkor AF-S 70-300mm VR lens to a Nikkor AF-S 55-200mm VR lens. That trade paid for the upgrade and then some.

Now, how do I take pictures with this thing again?