RV Travels With Huggy

Last weekend I ordered a Tokina 12-24mm F/4.0 AF DX extreme wide angle zoom lens to use on my Nikon D200 Digital SLR camera. It came yesterday from the store in New York and I couldn't wait to test it, so took it outside for a few photos, then a few inside photos including the one here from the sunroom. I didn't have a lot of time to play with it as yesterday was also Pat's birthday and we did have some activities planned.

I love this lens! I didn't realize how much difference I would see between the other lens I have that goes to a wide angle view at 18mm focal length and this one. It doesn't sound like a lot, just 6mm less, but it is a big jump when you look at it from the point of view of percentage change. Anyway, here are three test photos from that short experimental shooting session:


For this photo I was only about two feet from the back of the VW Bug. The view shows from all the way on the left side of the house clear over to the right edge and has most of the Bug in the photo, too. And the vertical lines at the sides are pretty straight up and down. I could have bought a lens that is 2mm wider but it is a Fisheye lens and the verticals at the edges curve. By the time you crop it to fit into a standard view you do not have much more of a wide angle than I have here but you have given up a fair percentage of the pixels in the original image, thus limiting how large you can go with that photo. So, I thought this lens would work better for me and the way I like to take photos. My friend, G, in Fort Bragg, CA has the other lens and I've seen some exciting and different photos he has taken with it. I wonder if I need them both.....


This view shows another corner of the sunroom but it also shows the full length of the house from the back corner of the sunroom all the way to the front, plus the street in front! And it is all sharply in focus, from the nearest thing in the photo, the corner of the sunroom that was about four feet in front of the camera, to the clouds and trees on the hills behind our town. This is another thing that wide angle lenses do, give a vast amount of depth of field where everything is sharp.


This view inside the sunroom is somewhat similar to others I have posted earlier, taken from the door into the house, but this shows the full left side, all the way across the back and almost up to the sliding glass door on the right side. Notice how much of the ceiling is included. This also shows how a wide angle lens exaggerates perspective, making things look farther apart than they really are. It is only 12 feet to the back of the sunroom from where I took the photo, the same distance that it is across the back of the room, but notice how the wall to the left side looks so much longer than the one across the back. They are the same length.

I think I am going to have a lot of fun with this lens and hopefully get the chance to go out and use it soon. Our weather has been great here for the last week and I hope we have turned the corner to where winter is behind and spring is actually here. But there are things still going on that demand time so I can't just go shooting with the camera. Tomorrow the electrician is coming and I hope we can get the wiring finished in the sunroom. About Monday I can put the final coat of three of Danish oil on the stained wood parts, and then we can setup to have the finished floor put in. We also will go shopping for lights when we look for the flooring. This project may actually be finished within the next two weeks or so!

I did do something else this past week and the thing I ordered should be here Tuesday. That is the same day the guy from Comcast cable TV is coming by to run the cable out to the sunroom. We will soon have HD TV on a much larger screen than the 19" unit I have for the sunroom! More on that later.

Labels: Birthdays, House, Photos, Sunroom