skunkworks

^^ gonna' have to tell me what the top two photos consist of. You must be the Lord Baron of Barbeque.

gary

MsPerky

Oh, that all looks yummy!

Love the ice and water pic!!

fltsfshr

I'm working on it. I can't say enough good things about a kamado. I've had a lot of fun with it.

The top one is really good. It's a patty made from fresh ground pork tenderloin and ham 60/40 along with a little bourbon sauce. Pineapple is fresh from my garden. It's grilled with a sprinkle of brown sugar and fresh mango on the flipped side. The white stuff is pineapple, fresh basil and light cream cheese.

The second one is a volcano burger. Two patties, one formed in a funnel and filled with goat cheese, caramelized onions and asst mushrooms marinated and sauteed in soy and Madeira. Put the flat one on top, flip it, give it a bacon wrap and a little hot bourbon bbq sauce on top.


fltsfshr

Lainey

A lemony beverage (with alcohol) and a spring of rosemary on the 4th of July. Yes I indulged. I took this with the 50 mm lens...given that I need to often use a larger # Fstop to get the depth of field I want,(can't recall the f stop on this photo) I'm not quite appreciating the difference between using the 50 mm at say f5.6 or my more convenient 18-200 at 50 mm f5.6. I guess if I took the same picture with the two lenses, the sujbect might be sharper and the bokeh, better??



Still workin' the macro lens...not quite where I want to be yet...but getting there, I think.


Begonias....a different view.




PS grabbed pics from facebook, resolution may be lacking.

Heyitsgary

Lainey-

I don't believe lens choice matters for DOF. It does matter for bokeh. DOF at a certain focal length/aperture/distance to subject should be constant for the same camera body.

Bokeh is variable, I'd assume based on the dimensions of the lens, it's design and the element structure.

A good experiment at home would be to use a tripod or stable, consistent location for the camera. Use a yardstick or even a tape measure down the length of that railing.
Pick a length to shoot from, a consistent subject (say the 2 ft marker), and change the aperture from F1.8 (for the 50?) up to F22 or so. Look at the difference. Using manual focus to remove any variability would be good too - or single focus point at worse.

Then, move the camera so it's further from the subject, and repeat.

You can then do the same for different lenses. I'd expect that you'd find that from the same location/aperture/different lenses, the images to be very similar/identical for DOF, yet bokeh would vary.

Lainey

Thanks Gary. I get the difference between the Bokeh on the lenses. Just not sure how often I will use the lower fstop on the 50mm and if the difference in the Bokeh will mean that much to this amateur. People tell me I will love having the nifty 50. I'm not feeling the love yet

PS I know I don't always adequately describe my photography woes...

Some of what I'm saying is that I just am not getting my subject in focus using the lower fstop number. Shot this at f2. It looked in focus when I took the pic...would have liked the lower part of the cake to be in focus as well. I think I was using a center focal point..... I'll keep practicing, using manual focus more.......appreciate the feedback.

Heyitsgary

Using a larger aperture (lower #) gets interesting results, particularly as you move closer. It can really help to isolate a single word/line in some text or a facial feature in a portrait, or just a single leaf or part of a flower in the other pictures you posted.

I'm not a huge fan of razor thin DOF myself. You'll have to experiment with what you like. You'll also have to figure out if the bokeh on either lens is what you expect/want.

I guess if I read your question again " I guess if I took the same picture with the two lenses, the sujbect might be sharper and the bokeh, better?" My answer could be YES, but remember, bokeh is subjective to your liking.

Lainey

Thanks! Oh wasn't that cake cool? I don't know how the woman who baked it got the blue square!

Heyitsgary

Lainey- if you use center focus only, then the middle of the picture (and anything else at the same distance) will be in focus. In the cake picture, it 'looks' to me like: part of the blue portion of the cake, a little of the red, and a 'horizontal slice' of the fork are in focus.

Change the center focus to the manual focus point, and put the focus 'box' on what you want in focus.

If you took this with a 50 at f/2- it appears that you're standing maybe 12 or 18 inches from the subject. At that distance, the focus is probably just a small fraction, as little as 1/3 or 1/4 or less of an inch.

The basic geometry of shooting a flat object means that things further from the focus point on that plane are also further from the camera on an arc. I didn't explain that well I don't think... Example- if you put a 12 inch string at the end of a pencil and hold the pencil in one spot so that the string is just touching a table- the 12" distance will only touch the table at one spot - everywhere else it will be off the table, and the further from the original spot the further from the table it will be.

If you want the center to be in focus with other parts, you need a larger DOF, so you have to reduce the aperture. If you want only one part of the picture in focus, you need to focus on that spot directly.

Lainey

Thanks again. Lots to think about before pushing that shutter button. More often than not, I forget something. .. The woman who made the cake, took a pic of the cake along with the drink with her cellphone....her pic was way better than mine.