Jim's previous post about self assignments caught my eye because I have been remiss about doing the work necessary to become proficient with my new digital equipment since returning to SLR Photography. I have been telling myself for quite some time that making up assignments for myself is exactly what I need to do to get back into some kind of creative form. Otherwise, I'll just end up with more expensive vacation snapshots.

When I saw this thread, I decided that now was a good time to do it. So, I pulled out the only 50 mm prime lens I own -- an f/1.4 SMC Takumar lens from my old film days, slapped it on my Olympus Evolt 510 dSLR, and trotted off to Saguaro National Park (East) to capture some images. (Its only about 15 minutes away from my house.) Like Jim, I left the two kit lenses (14-42mm & 40-150mm) and my 50-200mm zoom behind.

I had a very frustrating afternoon, but it was a lot of fun and I learned a lot. I had a lot of trouble focusing accurately and eventually gave up trying to use low f/stops for selective focus. (The sun was too bright to use the live view magnification to focus with.) I ended up setting the lens on f/8 and focusing about 1/3 into the scene in order to come up with some useable images.

The second thing I noticed was that I had to think more about composition on each each shot, and of course I had to zoom with my feet instead of the lens.

When I first started doing photography in the mid-sixties, almost nobody had a zoom lens, and most folks thought of them as almost like cheating somehow. Now that I think back on it, I did do a lot more running around for each shot back then.

These images are not very good composition wise, but at least two of them are in focus.