After the Rains and a Micro Lens

I have a Nikkor 40mm Micro/Macro lens. I had put it aside for a while and decided to just shoot with the nifty 50 and the 85mm prime lenses. Now I don't have the pro lenses, but these nice primes are my go to lenses.
I tried shooting again with the 18-55mm lens but I just wasn't happy with the clarity compared to the primes.

With these fixed lenses, you can't just zoom in or out to 'get that shot'. You have to move your feet. I've found that I enjoy the challenge and now have a hard time going back to any other type of lens. I do however lust after a nice zoom.  I bought the Tamron 18-200mm last year thinking I had the bomb. Nope cheap lens, ... it does the trick in bright light but should only be used in mid range. And it is heavy. --- Edit on 10 17 17...eeks gads I took it out today and was able to make the Tamron work very well! ... Samples later!]

All right, with all of that garbeldy gook out of the way. What did I do? I put the 40mm on my Nikon and packed up my little old backpack and decided to go enjoy the fall colors. I planned on just hiking the 'bowl' up to the pine trees. This means a bit of brush busting through some deer trails.

Now as the name of the lens implies, it is great for close up work. And yes, you have to get 'close' up. Not so great when or if you are trying to shoot a bee for example.
However, it is great for the following.

Water droplets, leaves, and fungi. All such tiny things. I did have to kneel on the ground for the maidenhair fern. I had to get down close to the maple leaf and I got close and personal for the coral fungi. [That was a pure bonus!]

I kept walking down the trail wondering if I was going to regret this self challenge.

The woods were so incredibly beautiful. The colors were popping in the subtle light. The skies were overcast and letting in just enough diffused light to make the yellow leaves appear to glow.

I decided to explore this stump on the trail. Wow, I am glad I did.

I got a few of these droplets. All shots were hand held. I did get damp from kneeling and scrunching down in the leaves or leaning against the stump itself.

The light kept changing as there were breaks in the clouds once in a while.
I kept walking.

I cursed myself for not having a 'landscape' lens and then thought. Well, here is the challenge.
Go for it.

And I did.

Did I do okay? I think so. Did I satisfy my challenge? Yes I believe so.

It was a beautiful day to challenge myself. No tripod, nothing extra. Just a backpack with extra water and a pair of gloves.

I ended the hike at the soybean field at the top of the 'bowl'. I thought I'd try a hand held panoramic shot of the trees below me. The lone red tree was blazing away.

Yes, this worked! I can say with confidence that I can get landscape and micro/macro out of the same lens with nothing fancy.
Color me happy.
Color me satisfied.

Oh. And for the rest of the week the sun will shine brightly so I look forward to some fall adventures with Morris on some well groomed trails as well as a visit to the winter ice cave.
Fall is glorious.

Hopefully you can go out and enjoy it.

A bit more on the FujiFilm FinePix HS 30 EXR

First let me begin with some more 'likes' about this camera.

One very nifty and cool feature I found that I really love a lot is the Auto Panoramic Mode.

Really?  Gosh, it should not be so easy!  Put the camera in Panoramic mode, follow the instructions, and simply hand hold the camera and slowly turn until the camera stops and processes the shot.

Here are 2 shots I did as experiments in the Pano mode at 120 degrees.

Clouds and pasture:

River sunset:

The flip screen.  Some other cameras like the Canon version of this same camera, the Canon SX40 HS 12.1MP Digital Camera has a flip and rotating screen to use.  Nifty, but I wasn't impressed by some of the reviews.

However the FujiFilm camera will flip up to 90 degrees like so [this one was edited for an artistic value]:

And you can tilt it to shoot up.  I like that feature as I can take shots with the camera literally laying on the ground if I want to.

Example of the flip screen in use:

Note the Gorilla Pod underneath, I was doing a 3 exposure shot of the rocks and let the self timer of 10 seconds open the shutter so that I wouldn't 'shake' it in low light.

You can also see the dial on top of the camera.  You have Manual, Aperature, Shutter, Program.  EXR allows some more type of shooting, Full Auto, and two Advanced, Sp1, Sp2, Panoramic, and C.  C lets you customize the settings.  That can be a good feature if you want to set the camera up for a particular kind of shoot.

I'm not going to go through each of the menus as I am still exploring them. 

These are the HDR shots I took in this setting in Manual Mode, Fine JPEG, ISO 100, Auto Bracketing Exposure of 1 step.  I used Photomatix 3 to put the exposures together.

 

Video is one touch.  I haven't tried the video yet, but expect to do it soon.

I used the continuous mode to 'shoot' my dog ... it takes multiple frames and then you can pick the best one.

This feature doesn't impress me.  The time to record data takes way too long.  My Olympus E-420 can rapid fire and save much faster.  However, I expect I can work with this feature.

The zoom.  Well a good zoom lens costs a lot of $.  These two shots should speak for themselves.

Lastly...to be able to go from Zoom to macro is a real bonus.

No swapping of lenses.

Cons.

The processor takes to long in Continous Mode, AEB Mode, and it seems forever to pull data while shooting an AEB series with RAW + JPEG.

That said, I really can learn to be patient.  But if I am going to do some real hard action, I'll grab either my Nikon D40 [yes old!] or my Olympus E-420.

All around this camera so far is fun and inspiring.

Not having to lug around extra lenses and being able to take bracketed photos while handheld really makes me a happy person.

HDR from the river with zoom ... hand held.  Processed in Photomatix and touched up with Topaz plug-ins.

Happy Shooting!