I had to pul the battery from my car for this shot, but I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.
Lessons learned:
The Sigma lens struggles with autofocus in low light. This is to be expected. The unexpected (and frustrating) part, is that it lies about autofocus in low light. I had to toss a whole bunch of pictures because the autofocus beeped along just fine, but when I reviewed them later they were clearly not focused.
Also, when your camera is on a tripod and you're unscrewing a filter over a cement floor, make sure you hold onto it. Luckily it was just the $10 UV filter.
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Hey Justin, excellent idea for the challenge. Really nice DOF with your 1.4. Perhaps it's a little on the yellowish side from the incandescent bulb. After reading your comments I'd like to make a suggestion. As long as you were using a tripod you should have set the lens function to manual focus. Then switch on the live view function on the LCD of your camera, zoom in to the detail you want in focus, manually focus to that spot, and voila. Are you using a cable release as well? You can always go with the timer instead if you don't have one.
Thanks Frank, it is yellow from the incandescent bulb, I was shooting with just this bulb and one other of the same style for fill lighting. If I had it to do over again, I'd shoot with a nice bright bulb (these are 40W and very inefficient, so they don't really throw much light at all) with a cardboard gobo to keep the light from overfilling the background and shoot it in B/W. I tried going B/W in post, but the contrast just wasn't there between the wall and the lamp.
I am using a cable release for these, and I have a loupe that I'll start using for focus after reading your suggestion. Thanks for the advice, and thanks everyone for the kind comments and votes!
Hey Justin, excellent idea for the challenge. Really nice DOF with your 1.4. Perhaps it's a little on the yellowish side from the incandescent bulb. After reading your comments I'd like to make a suggestion. As long as you were using a tripod you should have set the lens function to manual focus. Then switch on the live view function on the LCD of your camera, zoom in to the detail you want in focus, manually focus to that spot, and voila. Are you using a cable release as well? You can always go with the timer instead if you don't have one.
love the background in this, the brick wall, the old door with paint peeling, the window it all works! especially with the sepia....your subject is great - I really like this image
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