Since May this year, pretty much all the photos I’ve taken have been with the TTArtisan AF 27mm F2.8 (40mm full-frame equivalent) lens. And while this isn’t the a super high-quality lens, I’ve really enjoyed using it.
So when the TTArtisan AF 56mm F1.8 (85mm full-frame equivalent) lens went on sale a couple of weeks ago, I went ahead and bought it :)
Photo of a black camera lens. (Source)
Here are some of the photos I took during the only photo walk I’ve managed to take since buying this lens.
A bunch of these are repeats from earlier photo walks, but that’s fine because the main point of this walk was to practice using the new lens and composing all my shots at a fixed, 85mm focal length.
Good choice of corner furniture on the top floor
Black-and-white photo of a multi-storey office building with a sharp corner at one end. On the very top floor there is a small drinks table/trolley placed in the very corner of the building.
Five layers of buildings across three streets in one photo
A photo showing the gap between two tall-ish buildings. Behind the building on the left are four other building, each one getting successively taller.
Lovely meeting rooms in the NAB Building at 800 Bourke Street
Photo of a section of a colourful office building that’s jutting out from the main building. This multi-storey section, which itself is two storeys above ground level, has floor-to-ceiling windows on all three sides. Through the windows you can make out office tables and chairs arranged inside the rooms.
Cow Up a Tree — John Kelly (2000)
Photo looking up at a large bronze sculpture of a black-and-white square-ish cow with a tiny head that is stuck, upside-down, on top of a bare tree.
Reflections of a photographer on Harbour Esplanade
Photo of a large, convex, traffic safety mirror installed on a pole next to a construction site along a wide esplanade. The photographer has captured his own distorted reflection in this mirror.
Photographer in a convex traffic safety mirror on Harbour Esplanade
Close-up photo of a large, convex, traffic safety mirror installed on a pole next to a construction site along a wide esplanade. The photographer has captured his own distorted reflection in this mirror.
Top-floor mini balcony at the Federal Court of Australia building in Melbourne
Photo looking up at the top of a tall, light-brown and slate-grey building. A small balcony is jutting out from the top floor. The building is otherwise completely flat on this side.
A drastically different way of looking
40mm is my favourite focal length, so switching suddenly to 85mm was quite the challenge!
This difference in focal lengths is large enough that you can’t just “take a few steps backwards” to successfully capture the 40mm-friendly composition that initially popped into your head.
A fact that my creative brain completely forgot when I saw a woman walking two adorable dogs on my photo walk and, without thinking, I asked if I could take their photo. The woman said “yes” the instant the rational part of my brain remembered that I was too close to get an even halfway-decent shot with the lens I had on. *sigh*
I took the photo anyway, of course, but I barely even managed to get one of the two dogs in frame :) Oh well. At least that’s not a lesson I’ll forget anytime soon!
Photo of two small dogs on a split-leash, with one dog out of focus and the dog that is in focus facing the dog walker so you can only see the back of its head.
It’ll take a few more photo walks before I get the hang of this focal length. Especially when it comes to taking photos of people and animals.
The 85mm focal length is particularly good for shooting portraits because you can (a) isolate your subject in the frame and (b) get a nice blurry background behind them if you use an open enough aperture. This lens is capable of taking great portrait shots, it’s just me that needs the practice :)
So here’s to more photo walks and many more opportunities to use this focal length in the coming weeks and months.