Happy Father's Day

Ok, two months since my last post is completely unacceptable.  But, it's been a busy couple of months (aren't they all?) and the summer is in full stride here in Northeast Kansas.  I've been doing a ton of shooting, but the majority has been around the house chasing kids.  In fact, I'm fairly close to eclipsing 10,000 pictures on my new camera, which is a cool little milestone.  I can only imagine how many images pro photographers take because I take a lot!

As much as I love shooting my children (they change so quickly!), I look forward to every opportunity to get outdoors to shoot the world around me.  It's even more exciting to see the world through a new lens, which is just what I've been doing the last couple days.  All praise be to Father's Day!

Nikon recently introduced it's newest 50mm lens, the AF-S Nikkor f/1.8G, but that's not the lens I got.  I am the happy new owner of the 50mm AF Nikkor f/1.8D, which is about $100 less than the new lens.  I jumped on the f/1.8D due to it's excellent price and outstanding optical performance.  My assumption is that the f/1.8D will be phased out with the introduction of the new AF-S version, so I wanted to get one while they were still available.

So, over the last couple days I've put the new lens through it's paces.  Again, mostly pictures of my kids, but I managed to turn the lens to one of my cats and got the capture you see here.  Everything about this picture I absolutely love: the sharpness, the color, the contrast, the depth-of-field, the composition.  It just works.  And, here's the kicker, this was shot through our living room window while my cat, Paris, napped on the bench that sits on our front porch.  Pretty impressive lens!

I will be adding some more photos captured with this lens in the next couple of days.  I went out this evening for about an hour and got several more photos that I'm very happy with and eager to share.  This lens will definitely be getting a lot of playing time in the future!

To finish, here are some photos I've captured with other lenses that I recently posted to my photo website.  Click on any picture and it will redirect you to the image on my photo website.  I hope you enjoy them.