Yesterday when we made an afternoon trip through Carinthia, yesterday when we went to explore another road untraveled yet, I first began with the 85/1.4, but when I took an image of this church in Brückl, I gave in and switched to the Tamron 17-50/2.8.
It’s incredible what a perfect travel lens this is. And though I used the 70-300 VR for a shot in between, I never got back to the 85/1.4. This did not mean no creamy bokeh though, because while the Tamron only opens up to f2.8, being only 50 mm at its longest, it can focus much, much nearer.
All Nikon 85/1.4 lenses focus to 85 cm, while the Tamron focuses to 29 cm. At 50mm the lens extends, and the front element is about 16 cm in front of the sensor plane. Thus the “true” focusing distance is 18 cm (29-16 = 13, 13+5 = 18), and this really opens the door to dreamland.
I have shown the lovely and poisonous fruits of this shrub in “1449 - Early Autumn”, now I know that it’s called the European spindle, around here better known as Pfaffenhütchen. On the left, for your reference, you see how the shrub looks and how small these fruits really are.
The creamy bokeh, that this lens is capable of, won’t help you with portraits though, because an image of a single eye or a tip of a nose is no portrait, thus there certainly is a place for lenses like the 85/1.4. They are only not nearly as versatile.
I have processed the image of the church, mainly to remove a cable, that went right across the middle. The other three images are straight out of the camera.
The Song of the Day is “Dreamland” from Joni Mitchell’s 1980 live album “Shadows And Light”. Hear it on YouTube.