I am trying out a new lens. It’s a fast lens – and I am trying to learn to use it wide open. Not that every picture should be shot wide open – but it is not that easy to make nice pictures with an aperture around 1.4…so I have to learn it by doing it. Just look at the picture above. The focus plane is veeery narrow….

Of course a fast lens like this is perfect to use in the night. When used in a wide scenery like this, it is easier to handle the focus plane. It can make objects stand out in a nice way.

Another example where I think the isolation of the subject is nice. This is exactly the kind of pictures I want to be able to shoot, as a complement to pictures with more depth of field.

But now we come to the things I have to learn. When shooting portraits and pictures of people I would like to have a shallow deapth of field. But in this case I used a far to wide aperture. My wife (on the left) is totally out of focus. I could easily have used f4 and still got a good separation from the background – and both girls would have been in focus.

A fast lens is not the answer to everything. Even a fast lens can be stopped down – and it should be…