
This is one of those photos that’s part experiment, part education, part abstract, and part just messing around. It was also a good reminder of how effective it is to just focus on the fundamentals of photography, practice the basics of exposure, and do just a tiny bit of editing in order to produce an interesting image. I didn’t have any grand designs on this one or a bigger picture in mind, and even though the title might suggest some kind of deeper meaning or implication, it’s really just a Star Trek TNG reference. I mean, if you squint real hard and hold your phone in just such a way, you could maybe mistake this for…um…a stick-dude holding his arms out? I dunno. Look, sometimes I just need a title :)
Anyway, the basic idea here was pretty simple. I wanted to get a shot of these tiny branches sticking out from a larger branch, but show the little ones receding into the background while the image gets progressively blurrier. The two main things I had to consider were aperture and angle, and I spent a few minutes experimenting with both to get the shot. For the aperture I ended up using f/11 since it gave me just the right amount of falloff between the subject and the background: f/8 was too blurry, and f/16 wasn’t blurry enough. F/4 was just a disaster–the entire image was basically a grey mess with some spots of red, and a good reminder that when it comes to depth of field sometimes more is more. The angle was a little tricky because I had to kind of stand on my tiptoes to get the shot, but I really wanted the two small branches on the right to be bisected by the large branch…and it worked.
What didn’t work so well, as I discovered in the process of taking this picture, was nailing the focus. Since the focusing target was so small, and the depth of field so shallow, I couldn’t trust my D750’s autofocus to get it exactly right. It did a good job, to be sure, but I took several shots that were just a bit front- or back-focused, and didn’t quite land the shot how I wanted. I ended up just firing off a burst while I slowly rotated the focusing ring on my lens, and while this approach was somewhat crude it definitely worked. Out of a dozen photos all I needed was a single image that was focused correctly, and I got it.
This is, then, perhaps an illustration of one of the not-insignificant weak points of my aging camera system. Aside from my Fuji X100F, I shoot with a small slew of Nikon DSLRs: D750, D500, and occasionally a D7100. My favorite, the D750, is over a decade old and easily eclipsed by virtually any modern full-frame camera when you compare features on a bulleted list. However, in terms of image quality the D750 still holds up against modern mirrorless cameras like the Nikon Z6iii–it’s astonishing, really. Would I like the convenience of a modern mirrorless camera for a photo like today’s? Absolutely. I would definitely not turn it down. But while a Z6iii (or something similar) would be nice to have, I don’t really need it and in the meantime I continue to find ways to enjoy and appreciate my old gear :)