Ahhhh..... Walking about!!!!!

 If you have been reading my stuff/looking at my blog for long you will have realized that I LOVE to just walk around and take pictures of whatever I see that interests me. Sometimes I get a lot of... eh, whatever... type of photos, even to me, but often I get a lot of stuff that I like. You may not like them, but I really don't care so much... They help me remember a happy day, one spent with a camera in hand!

I see this building every Monday, always looking for a different take on it. I had decided to use one of my favorite lenses for walk about this day: the Pentax DFA 100mm f2.8 WR. I usually like a more traditional focal length like 24-28-35mm lens for walkabout. But... yeah... I'm different. If you click through the link you will see what those look like of this same building.

Light-Rail stops here in Utah are decorated with art installations, some I like more than others. I liked the juxtaposition of shapes at this stop.

This is all about shapes and shadows of shapes.

Flowers, the Monday after Valentines Day, NOT a usual happening in Utah.

This stopped me in my tracks. It is deliberately abstract and I will leave it like that. Write a comment if you want to know what it is.

There is a joke here if you can find it. And you are familiar with German pet names.

I really liked the patterns of these plants, I struggled with depth of field and shutter speed. I think this would be an excellent subject for focus stacking.

I am always captivated by the light on my beloved mountains at the end of the day. Had to make a panorama to frame it right. Sigh... I love how putting a camera in my hand incites appreciation of the world around me.

Panoramas? YES!

Anyone who appreciates cameras in small packages (Like ME!) but with high image quality has tough choices to make. There is a compromise to be made between portability and IQ that recent cell phone camera advances cannot obviate. Now, cameras are getting smaller, and some mirrorless cameras are very very capable and small. Until you put a quality zoom lens in front of it. Then you are stuck with a body that is too small to work well ergonomically with the lens. That (besides money) is why I have stuck with a DSLR. Problem is DSLR's are not really compact, especially with a big lens stuck on the front. Enter good old fashioned non-zooming Prime Lenses. Now before you recoil in horror, let me list some good things.

1) Primes tend to have better Image Quality (i.e. sharpness, resistance to flare, contrast)

2) Primes are smaller than most zooms. Especially zoom lenses that can approach Prime quality.

3) Primes can have a faster/larger aperture, and will typically deliver critically sharp images at wider apertures than zooms.

4) Primes are usually lighter than zooms.

5) You get more exercise "Zooming with your feet"

6) You miss more shots/You have to work harder to get the shot you want.

Did I shock you? Yes #6 is a good thing! Unless you are shooting a paid event where you have to get the shot. Then I use a zoom. But I would rather use a prime.

Some people argue that you miss shots because you cannot go wide enough. I call BS. Both of these shots were taken with a 35mm Lens on an APS-C (or cropped) sensor Pentax K-5. This equates to a slightly longer than "Normal" lens yet I think these look pretty good and I didn't feel particularly limited. Plus the resolution is amazing, I could print these pretty big with no problems at all. Try that with a ultra wide angle zoom that you cropped to the same aspect ratio!