It is now middle of november, and trees are shedding leaves as winter nears. The trees in Seoul are no exactly the ones that are giving the red coloured leaves, more likely brown then red, but there are some maple trees around too. The weather is starting to dip down below freezing in the early morning, so there is not too much more time to go around looking for something to take pictures of before having to wait for the next autumn.
I have two favourite macro lens. Today I have my Nikkor 70-180 and this situation is where it shines. This versatile lens allows me to crop close, or to zoom out to 70mm for more coverage. When zooming using that lens, you do not lose focus at all, the only thing is that you change the cropping on the picture. Nice. Too bad this lens is not that easy to find either new on the second hand market. When used properly it is sharp at infinity and as a macro lens. For someone who doesn’t bother with shooting sports or models, the 70-180 is my lens that cover the 70-200 range.
When shooting leaves in autumn, look around for contrast in colours. Look also possibilities to isolate foreground and the background. When the leaves are close enough to the camera, even at f5.6 you will be able to get nice enough blur in the background for isolation. And it is lucky I have the option to crank up the ISO on the D3s, and typically I will be using ISO1000+ up to ISO12800 when the skies turned dark. Normally I would use up to ISO 1600 only for critical shots where noise free photos and maximum detail is required, but today I wouldn’t call it a critical day, so for cases lke this, I’d go up to ISO12,800. I can remove some of the noise later when I get into Lightroom.
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