Today I bought a gently used Sigma 70-200 f2.8 II (Nikon mount) off of Craigslist for $575. Seemed like a great deal, so I decided "what the heck?" and went 3rd party. I'd really rather have the Nikkor 70-200 VR II, but it costs more than the GDP of some small countries......
Anyway, by the time I got it home, it was dark outside. So I was messing around with it in the house, not really thinking anything of interest would present itself to photograph. But then I noticed my daughter was coloring with her pencils, and I thought they'd make a great subject!
So I arranged the pencils, and sharpened them up a bit. Can't have sharp pictures of dull pencils! Or is it dull pictures of sharp pencils? Hmmmm....
Anyway, here are the shots I took. All are at f2.8, with most at the maximum 200mm. I used my SB-600 off-camera to provide some light, firing it remotely with my D300's built-in flash as the commander.
I just took the RAW images, opened them in PS4 Extended and saved them as maximum quality JPEGs to upload to Flickr. I didn't touch up the images at all in PS. These are just the medium sized images from Flickr, not the originals that I uploaded....
So, what do you guys think? Did I get a good deal on a good lens?
I was thinking I should call these "Sharp Colors".
