After coming across several beautiful pictures by Gheorghe Chesler—shot with various Nikons and featuring his Sigma 150mm f/2.8 Macro—over on Google Plus yesterday evening, I found myself lusting after a proper macro lens… But I reminded myself: no new gear until I finish the 365.
So I looked over the gear I do have, and pulled out the Vivitar 70-210, which is the closest thing to a 150mm macro that I have, despite being not particularly close, given that it’s a fully manual zoom lens, without OS or fancy 21st century coatings, that gets to 1:2.2 at best.
But the Vivitar is a fabulous performer, especially since it cost me a whopping $36, shipped, and I don’t use it near enough. Sure, it’s heavy (but ~250g lighter than the Sigma 150). Sure, the focus is backwards (I get used to it after about 3 minutes, once I remember that it’s backwards…). But it’s sharp (not that you can tell from this, as it’s defocused deliberately), and has good color rendition and contrast, with a warmth or something that seems to be missing from many modern lenses with their fancy coatings and all.
So here we have the strangely dented doorknob to the apartment’s front door, showing the fantastic color rendition and brilliant bokeh provided by the Vivitar, the rather nice grain from the D7000, and my ability to handhold long, heavy lenses…
D7000. Vivitar 70-210mm f/3.5 Series 1 (Kiron), in Macro Mode, at pretty close to maximum. ISO1600, 1/40th (APmode), f/3.5. Post processing included Aperture’s built-in RAW conversion and a resize/export to jpeg, so this is not quite Comin’ Straight Outta Camera, but pretty much as close as I’m going to get.
^and I do get out some, but never without a purpose: going to work, going to the grocer, going to visit someone, etc., and I really want to work on breaking this anxiety I feel about venturing out into the world without an explicit reason or purpose. I’m not sure why I can’t just go for a walk, but I can’t, unless I have a buddy (and then there’s a purpose: going for a walk with a buddy). I doubt this makes much sense to you; it makes no sense to me.
