Winter Rose

My neighbor's roses are struggling with the warmer temps during the day and months with no rain. They bloom and dry on the stem. I thought this group was particularly pretty in their own right.

The past couple of days I've been offering a bit of discussion on lenses. Mostly, basic stuff, but I thought I'd show you what you can do with a modern zoom lens. The lens I used to shoot this image is a Nikkor 28-300mm f3.5-5.6G. It isn't fast and was fairly inexpensive. By using it on a subject like these roses, and using the medium to long zoom, I can produce Bokeh almost as good as a prime lens. This setting (see metadata below) gave me the ability to keep most of the blooms in focus and keep the background and farther blossom out of focus. It takes a bit of practice. Good news is you don't have to spend a $1000 or more on a really fast prime to get close to the same results. This lens is very versatile and is on my camera most of the time.

Happy New Year Everyone!!!!