e-510 215mm 1/250 f/5.6 iso 400

One of the biggest rules in photography is only ever show your best work. Once again, I’ve broken it above, but the flaws in this photo are more than made up for by how I feel about the photograph itself. Oh, yes, there’s news. But first, the photo I should have lead off with.

e-510 300mm 1/640 f/10 iso 400

Mount Olympus, wow, that’s apt. Not the famous Greek version, rather the local one, the crown of Washington state’s Olympic mountain chain. At least I hope like heck this is Olympus, Martin correct me if I remember it wrong. Oh, apt…

...Apt because today I came home from downtown with a bit of new glass, the longest reaching lens I’ve ever owned. Twisted the whole way out, the Zuiko 70-300mm is 600mm effective focal length, a mere 4.1° angle of view. That’s superzoom territory, something which before a month or so ago, without a t-con was also $7000 territory in Zuiko digital. And honestly, I’d never planned to get this lens, regardless of its status as a relative bargain, I had instead in mind the 50-200mm because of its pro status and its utility in wedding, portrait and event work.

But then I got to thinking, the single biggest moneymaker for me this past year has been fine art prints of wildlife. Truth be told, I made a lot more money off of a single duck photo last year than any other job, even weddings, and that was without the 20-25 hours of post-production event jobs require – in fine art, the whole thing is bagging the shot, after that, bit o’ photoshop, format for print, make prints, sell. Yeah, it’s hard to shoot a big seller, but I can tell you for sure it’s a lot less hard than what goes into shooting a wedding, and there’s little risk – the only person you’re ever worried you’ll let down is yourself, and even then, you can try over and over for, if necessary, years. And I can handle that.

So, today I brought home a lens for shooting nature and such, I bought a lens for taking the pictures I really want to take, I bought a lens I can take my time with and try over and over to get those perfect shots. And It’s an uberzoom instead of an ultra wide-angle, a length I’m much more fascinated with these days, because the UWA, the 7-14mm that fits my cameras is, umm, well it’s probably the best UWA zoom ever there was, and it costs like that too, almost four times today’s new lens.

e-510 300mm 1/400 f/8 iso 400

1:1 crop, the sliver of the moon in the sky at 3:51pm, still quite bright outside. Hand-held, thank goodness for image stabilization, and I can’t wait to share my first truly good superzoom moon shot with you here.