Night Lights in the Rain.

For the first time in my memory the city I grew up in has decorated some trees in the city park. And as usual I have been dying to take pictures of the lights. I have not had an opportunity to go to Temple Square in Salt Lake City yet so this is as close as I have been to anything fun in the snow.

It was actually raining, it had snowed for most of the day then warmed up and changed over to rain, light but enough to make it more difficult to keep things dry than I would have liked.

The light was hard to balance for color, needed to use a Tungsten WB in the RAW converter to get it looking even decent, otherwise it was a orangey/yellow.

The bridge is new and the stream used to be buried, amazing was has happened since I was a kid.

I thought to use my 8mm Fisheye, but it didn't give me the crazy distortion I was looking for, plus that huge front element collected a lot of moisture, I had to spend a fair amount of time cloning out water drops from the image.

These trees on the East side of the park were also well done, but less photogenic with powerlines and cars in the background.

A couple of parting shots on the way out, enjoyed getting wet and cold.

Whoa! I think the tree exploded! Well... actually I just zoomed during the exposure. Kinda like it though!

More Thoughts on the DA-L 35mm f2.4

Having shot just a little more with this lens I am still not even close to making judgments regarding how good it really is, this I can say, it is a really good lens. Had I not bought my beloved 30+ year old SMC (K) 35mm f3.5 Manual Focus lens, I would be hankering for this to be my first autofocus prime. Seeing as the K is pretty decent I am more than willing to wait until one day buying the DA 35mm f2.8 Limited Macro (a 1:1) macro though you have to get REALLY close to get that.

Anyway here are some photos to give y'all an idea of the size of these lenses.
(L to R: DA-L 35mm f2.4, FA 35mm f2.0, K 35mm f3.5)

Front View same order


And a few outdoor shots just for grins, all with the DA-L, it is not the closest focusing lens around but it does OK, and it is REALLY quick to focus, The only problem is that is focuses slightly behind the focus point (BackFocusing) which is a problem at f2.4.

I simply couldn't get the AF to focus on the front of the weed patch on the front R, it blurs the front of it just a bit, could be the older AF on my K200d....

This was shot on tripod at near closest focus distance, and Post Processed a bit, just trying to create a more dreamy shot rather then totally hard edged reality. Kinda like it though.