Now I have a D80 in my grubby little mitts, the first thing I wanted to muck about with was the 50mm prime I got with it and crank the aperture open to play with narrow depths of field.

Here's what I've done in the couple of hours I've had to play with the beast. I'm too lazy to muck about with uploading to flickr or whatever (there will be plenty of time for that later) so I'll just shove one pic per post in here so that they all show up instead of being links.

None of these are probably all that great. Sure, the subject of most (little Kamali'o) is cute enough, but some are underexposed, some are overexposed, and some are just plain badly composed. Still, the difference between this setup and the compacts I've used in the past is like night and day.

Oh, and I should probably mention that all these are completely unmessed with. other than a bicubic resize with Gimp 2, they're exactly what came from the camera. I wanted to see what the camera can do, and to be honest I don't have any time to mess with any post-processing right now.



First, I tried out a target that wasn't going to move on me. Wide open, I pointed the camera at the focal length scale on the 18-70mm. Since the camera wasn't perpendicular to the lens on the table, the plane of focus was tilted a bit and as a result neither the gold blurb about the 18-700mm below nor the white dot above are quite in focus.

This is crazy stuff when you're used to compacts that have a huge depth of field.

Since this was taken last night, this was one of the first shots I took with the SB-400 flash in the hotshote. I pointed it straight up and bounced it off the ceiling.

Wide open at f/1.8, ISO 100, 1/60s, 0 exposure comp..

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Next, I figured I would try and capture what I see when I get out of bed pretty much every morning. I've taken the same shot a bunch of times with our TZ1 because she's just so cute waiting for one of us to come get her like that. However, because her room is a little bit dark, using the flash is a necessity and that always looks like crud from the Panny.

With the D80, I got this handheld without having to use the flash. I love the fact that although this was taken at ISO 1600, it's still less noisy than my bleedin' TZ1 is at 100! If anything, +1 exposure has overdone things a little, but it's not horrendously overexposed or anything like that.

I remember aiming between the bars on her crib, but I don't remember if I let the autofocus handle it or whether this was manually focussed. I know I tried both, and I don't remember which was which.

I like this one a lot, actually. I like how the wide aperture has put both the foreground and the background out of focus. Sure, it could have been composed a little better, but this was my 18th shot with an SLR in my life. Go figure.

Stopped down just a shade at f2/2, ISO 1600, 1/15s, +1 exposure.

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Next, it's breakfast time. Yeah, I know the light through the windows behind her is totally blown out, but dropping the exposure compensation any more would have made her face too dark.

There's a rice krispie somewhere in that hand.

Wide open at f/1.8, ISO 100, 1/320s and -0.7 exposure.

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For this, I wanted to see what I could get away with in terms of in and out of focus. Kamali'o's always had this big clump of chicken hair at the back, and it was nice and visible this morning.

In the full version, you can see that I didn't quite get it right - I need more practice. I don't know if it's because I missed the focus by a little bit or if it's because she just won't sit still. The depth of field is so narrow that I was finding that small movements either by me or by her threw things off completely.

f/1.8, ISO 100, 1/100s, -2 exposure.

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OK, so this isn't really an illustration of depth of field. More rice krispie action - she's cute, huh?

I wouldn't have posted this but for one thing. Hidden in this shot is a great illustration of the detail that this camera and lens can capture without much in the way of effort. I'll show what I mean in the next post.

Stopped down a little more to f/2.8, ISO 100, 1/80s, -0.7 exposure.

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OK, like I said, there's a great demonstration of the detail that this camera and little prime can capture. Here's a 100% crop of Kamali'o's right eye from the above shot.

In the reflection, you can see yours truly (thank gawd I put a shirt on!), with my right elbow sticking out a bit. To the right is a cutout in the wall through to the kitchen, and the window there. On the left is another window. The whitish area in front of me is the tray for the chait we use when we feed Kamalio.

I'm just astonished that much detail is recorded. I couldn't have picked all that out just looking at her from that distance with my naked eye.

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Next we have another rice krispie fist, plus a couple of examples of her favourite food on the tray of her feeding chair. Because her hand was roughly above the rice krispies at the time, they're more or less in focus.

I like how the light comes in through the blinds at that time of the morning.

f/2.8, ISO 100, 1/100s, -0.7 exposure.

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Feeding time's over, so we have a little bit of playtime before I hand her off to Mum for a bit of a snooze while I shower and get ready for work. She's standing up and leaning back onto the couch. Why, I have no idea. It's just one of the many weird and wonderful things she does.

The histogram says this is underexposed by quite a long way. I say sod the histograms - I like it.

f/2.2, ISO 100, 1/50s, -0.7 exposure.

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Last one, so it's time for a round of applause. Kamali'o's hand isn't blurred because of depth of field, but because it's in mid-clap.

OK, so I could have sat back a little further to get both her hand and all of her head in frame. Bite me.

Interestingly, I was trying to capture both her hands just before they clapped, but I wasn't thinking that this camera responds a whole lot faster than my compact. I pushed the shutter in anticipation of the clap like I would have with my Panny and the D80 obliged by shooting much earlier than I'm used to.

Anyway, that's that for now. So far, I'm just blown away what a modern DSLR is capable of. I think I'm also going to love this little cheapo prime, even if and when I've spent several times its cost on others.

f/2.2, ISO 100, 1/50s, -0.7 exposure.

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Those are some great shoots.

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