Easing Back Into Photography

We are headed east for yet another family get together. It is getting harder and harder. We took advantage of #2 being in Washington D.C. before heading off to her next assignment in the Ukraine as the excuse to get all together. So the #1's fly in from the West Coast, the #3's from Amsterdam, and we come in from Albuquerque. As the grandchildren get older (the oldest is going to college this fall!), it will only get harder. And more expensive for everyone. Might as well enjoy this one while we can. We are also using this as a time to meet up with my oldest brother and his clan. My sister will be coming down too.

As it is unlikely we will have another get together like this any time in the foreseeable future, Wife and I are bringing all the camera gear and treating it like one of our trips. So I am looking forward to taking lots of pictures of the family and hopefully halfway decent ones.

To get myself prepped, I have been going through Wife's various photo magazines. A lot of the material is for photographers that are far, far, far more serious and advanced than I. Nonetheless I get ideas from each one. And seeing the pictures, I get a better idea of composition, the dramatic, lighting and so on. Plus Wife and I now that we are on the same system are on the hunt for some more lenses. I really appreciate the clear and simple language used to describe them. Here is the description of a wide angle lens that we could use on our cameras.

"It's sort of a wide-angle ens while offering travel shooters a fast f/1.2 aperture for after the sun goes down. Its design uses 15 elements in 11 groups, combining  extra-low dispersion, aspherical, and high refractive index elements to reduce chromatic and spherical aberrations. A nine blade aperture achieves smooth bokeh, especially when working with shallow depth of field."

I don't know about you but I am death on chromatic aberrations and irregular bokeh, well that just sucks. This is a lens we will have to keep our eye on.