Been gone too long, sorry!

'Tis the season...retail that is.  I worked 6 days last week and it was super busy.  In addition to that I had "other duties" nearly every night, I wasn't home before 9:00 once.  Needless to say, some things didn't get done and my blog was one of them.

I haven't been shooting that much, but there are some fun days ahead in the next few weeks.  So, here is an experiment I did last year with my then brand new Fuji X Pro 1 camera.  I wanted to see how the lenses looked at various apertures, so I nailed it down on a tripod and shot away.

All images are taken with the Fuji 60mm Macro lens.  This first one is f8

I opened up a stop at a time, so 5.6 is next

Then, f4

Finally a shot at f2.4, wide open

What's the "take away" from these images?  Depending on your focus distance, and the aperture, you can get some interesting effects by just controlling or altering your lens opening!  Look at how the overall image changes.  Take a look at the lights on the tree how they seem to get larger, yet nothing has changed but the aperture.  You will also see in the top image, you can make out the ornaments on the tree, at least their shapes.  On the last files, they are invisible.

I hope this encourages you to play with your settings and get to know your camera as best you can.  These settings are the way to spice up your images and make them look the way YOU want them to!