Photo 150 - Phil Wood

Week 8 - Theme 1 - Lens Extravaganza.

Next up from the Mk II zooms is the 75-300, Dyxum rating of 4.08 - so it falls into the range of fair to middling. Like the 28-80 it was a pleasant experience using the lens, but it is a more capable lens.

I've chosen a shot taken at 90mm (the only processing is RAW to scaled down JPG), which shows that it works well in the mid-range. By 200mm it's not quite so sharp, I didn't use it beyond 230mm by which time sharpness has fallen a lot - shooting handheld may be the reason, but I don't think that it's the whole reason.

I was happy enough to use a shot I took with it as my landscape shot for the week.

Tie a red & white ribbon round the old oak tree..

Sony A99ii + Minolta AF 75-300mm f4.5-5.6 II @ 90mm. ISO 200, f75 1/30s

Edited by Phil Wood - 23 February 2021 at 00:57

ADub128 wrote: Wow, daytime long exposures. Yes, something creative for sure!

I recently bought a variable ND filter having found the use of fixed filters a bit of a pain and hence seldom used. I know the variable ones aren't supposed to be so good, but Fred_S posted a couple of shots using one which looked pretty good - it seemed worth £20 to try it out. It doesn't seem to have too much effect on sharpness or colour and it's really convenient to have the ND adjustment. It gives a weird interference pattern with wide apertures, but I guess narrow DOF is a rare requirement for long exposure shots.