This week I brought a new lens and after trying it out thought I’d post a “lens review”.  I’ve never really done this before as most of my readers are really here to see family pictures or the odd landscape shot.  Most aren’t really interested in the gear I own or how I use it.  But I thought what the heck, how hard can it be to write a review!

Well it appears the answer is VERY HARD.

As I started to type I figured there were somethings I needed to explain first and before I realized it I’d written a huge posting and hadn’t even got to the bit about the lens!  So I figured I’m not ready just yet for a full lens review, I should probable start with a few postings about general photography then I can refer to those when I tell you how wonderful my new lens is – and why.

So this means (I guess) I’m going to write up an “Intro to Photography” section in my blog.  For some I’m sure this will not be of interest, but I’m often asked how to do stuff and what to buy etc., so this new section (when I get round to it) will be more to answer those kind of questions.

So dropping the review here, let me tell you about this picture.

The new lens is a portrait lens and enables me to take pictures with a very narrow depth of field.  This means that I can photography a subject (Abi in this case) and only Abi is in focus.  Everything behind her (or in front) is softly out of focus.  In the image below you can see the garden behind Abi is all blurry this is called bokeh and a good lens can make this look natural and pleasing to the eye.

So why do this?  Well the idea is the viewer isn’t distracted by background objects and can enjoy the subject you wanted them to look at.  You’d think this was pretty simple, but the depth of field (amount of the subject in focus) can be tricky to manage.  It’s easy to make the depth too small or too big.

This was my first attempt with this lens and if you are super observant, you will note that Abi’s left eye (the one nearest the camera) is nicely sharp and in focus, but her right eye is slightly out of focus and a little blurry.  That said the image is sharp enough to post and with more practice I should get better at controlling the lens.

Abi kindly let me shoot her in the garden and went through numerous funny poses (most with goofy faces) until we got this one.

Needless to say I’m very happy with the lens and can’t wait to shoot some more portrait’s to really put it though it’s paces.

Hope you like the pic – thanks Abi for playing along.