Can of SPAM

As a photographer who is very discriminating on how his equipment will meet my needs, I did an experiment after work. I noticed when I take pictures with my 75 to 300 MM zoom lens, the pictures are not as sharp as with the regular 18 to 70 MM lens. Thought I would put both lenses to the test and do a little comparing. I used a can of SPAM as my subject. It is a simple fact of life, that you can't expect something more than what limitations are given to you or whatever situation or person you are with. Gotta take what we get and can't expect to get blood from a stone, as the old expression goes. So true with photography and did this little experiment to learn the limitations of my equipment. I set up the can of SPAM on my outside yard table. Then took a few pictures at various distances, keeping the size of the subject the same in all the pictures. Mom and Nate, if you are reading this, will be sending you both an e mail in more detail. I've already determined that the "steady shot" feature of my camera is inconsistent. The camera was mounted on a tripod and it took four shots to get a sharp image (with my lens set at 300 MM and with my 2X teleconverter added) before I got one that showed little camera shake. Each of the other three, showed camera shake to various degrees.

A white balance test is in the future. Did an experiment like that before when using a "neutral gray card" and using backgrounds of different colors with construction paper back in my 35 MM film days. The results were cool and showed why people who took pictures of white horses in an all grren fiels of green and why the horse ended up looking pink. There is a very simple explanation as to why and plan to do this same experiment with digital and see if I come up with the same conclusion. I'm one who enjoys digging into the "hows and whys" of things and even though it can get a bit complicated at the time, what I learn makes things so much easier late when it counts the most.

I'm off to load in my pictures from today and see how things look.

Take care.