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Test Pictures

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My father-in-law wanted to make sure that I got some good pictures of the new baby, so he gave me a camera body that he wasn’t using anymore and a lens to use. I took it out for a test shoot on an uncooperative subject a few days ago, but got nothing worth displaying. I brought it out again and got a little better material.


This picture was taken bouncing the flash off of the ceiling. The camera did a great job with getting the flash level correct. I was so impressed that I took another shot with the flash aimed directly at the subject.


The camera, again, performed excellently at getting the flash level just right. No hard shadows behind her nose or on the couch.

I then switched to my fast 50mm prime lens. I discovered that this new camera body cannot autofocus with this lens. That was disappointing as I really like narrow depth of field and blurry background shots. I tried manually focusing on a couple of shots and discovered that it is really hard on modern bodies that don’t have a split prism focus screen, or other focus assist method. I did get one shot that I really like.


If you look closely you might notice that her eyelashes are in focus but her nose and the hair in the foreground are out of focus. The background is very blurry. If I were not testing the camera and lens combination and my ability to manually focus, I would have closed down the aperture a bit more so that more of Marydalene would be in focus. The camera again performed very well with the flash.

I think I’ll bring this camera (Nikon D40x if you’re dying to know) with a lens that will autofocus with it for the pictures immediately after the delivery. Then bring the camera body that will autofocus with the 50mm prime lens later for the blurry background shots that I like.

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