Paintball

Now that I've been back for a couple weeks I'm trying to get back into the swing of things and remain creative.  As many know, I love the sport of paintball and just his past Wed my friends and I were at out field across the river Near Hokah (check out the river rats facebook page if you are interested).  I wasn't there to play, instead, I went to trade a part w/ a friend, and to do some photos.

This shoot was exciting for two reasons; I just got a 55 mm macro AIS lens in the mail, and I just installed lightroom on my computer which is what I used to process these.  the lens is real nice and makes me want to sell my zoom in favor of other prime lenses.  The new lens is interesting; I was able to pick it up fairly cheaply (around $70) b/c it is an old fully manual lens.  Since it is fully manual, and for some god-awful reason the d90 doesn't have a lens-controlled-aperture setting, I cannot use my in-camera meter which means I have to guess at exposure.  As annoying as the guess and check method is, digital makes it real easy, and my guesses have not been too far off, which makes me feel like a real photographer :).

As far as the lens itself is concerned, I really like having a fixed focal length.  not only is the image quality much sharper, but not being able to zoom in and out makes one think about image composition more; I am strongly considering sellingm y zoom lens all together and switching over to primes entirely.  I have also noticed a tendency for it to not focus well when cranked out to "infinity" even when things are relatively far away, I have to pull it back just a tad to get stuff in focus w/ it...not fun when trying to shoot through a paintball mask...