Dreamy Diana Lens Fun

I bought a Diana lens with adapter for dSLRs several months ago and of course forgot about it.  While on an organizing binge, I rediscovered it in our office storage closet, and thought I should try it out again for fun.  Experimenting both indoors and outdoors, I found that it takes very pretty, dreamy, soft focus pictures. 

It's not the easiest lens to play with - I didn't realize when I first bought it that you can only use the manual setting when using this lens, and the only thing you can adjust is the shutter speed to produce unique effects.  That's probably why I lost interest when I first purchased this lens.  Since then, I've taken a beginners photography class and now actually know how to use my camera on manual setting.

Photo experimentation

With summer approaching and daylight hours growing longer, I came home from work and played around with taking some pictures as the sun was setting. 

I love the look of shooting into the sun and capturing flare, so I tried replicating it:

(this was the best I could do!)

I've been too chicken to venture out of my backyard with my camera for some reason. 

(morning glory growing wild)

Sophie was watching me quizzically during the entire process.  My favorite subject graciously allowed me to capture one nice photo of her before she went to chase some squirrels.

Fun with the Nikon D90

This past week, I've spent my spare time learning as much as possible about the Nikon D90 and the tricks to using an SLR in general.  Currently, just trying to get used to all the different functionalities of the camera is a big learning curve, but the vast improvement in the quality of phots I can take is really gratifying to see!  Some examples are below:

Went to the Montrose farmer's market and took some pictures of scrumptious produce and pretty flowers:

I love strolling down the flea market section and perusing the housewares displayed:

Our family dogs are my favorite subjects to shoot, and I never get tired of their funny poses that guarantee to crack me up:

my dog Sophie, always looking so serious

gazing pensively off into the distance (or looking maybe scanning the trees for possums to kill)

My sister's always hilarious dog Bender is full of personality and mischief, as you can see:

Hopefully, my photography skills will continue to improve over the next few months.  I must admit that this camera is so user friendly, especially for SLR beginners like me, that getting some great shots didn't take a whole lot of effort.  Note that all pics above were taken using the 50mm 1.8f lens - a lens I HIGHLY recommend!