A bit of an experiment for the day.

Most of the photos I take are done with my phone’s camera; for the most part, I leave the DSLR on the tripod at the living room window, with our 70-300mm lens on it, to take pictures of the deer and birds.  Things are quiet out there this time of year, so it’s been sitting idle.

This morning, I decided to grab it and get some flower photos. I put on an 18-55mm lens, then took a few more shots with the 70-300mm lens back on.

Much to my surprise, there is quite a noticeable difference in the pictures, with the big lens looking much better.  Part of the surprise is that, with the big lens, I had to step quite far back from the subject, just for the camera to be able to focus (another time, I’ll break out the macro lens).  My hands tend to shake, which can really affect photos taken with a bigger lens.  So I fully expected the photos with the smaller lens to be clearer.

Here is a comparison.  Aside from resizing the photos and adding the text and frame, they are untouched.  No post processing.

This one was taken with the 18-55mm lens.

It’s certainly a pretty photo (that lilac tree is just a mass of flowers right now!).  I would have preferred crisper focus; that softness was not deliberate, but the result of my hand shake.  Still, the softness is nice, too.

Here is the one taken with the 70-300mm lens.

The focal points are much sharper.  Even though I had to stand further back and zoom in more to get photos, it was unaffected by my hand shake.  The 70-300mm is a newer, faster, lens than the 18-55mm that we have.

I’m happy with both, but it was interesting to see the differences.

The Re-Farmer