Amami Superman Photography

A Place to Share My Photos

Feb 21, 2010

Sumomo Season 2010

Posted by Amami Superman

Nikon D60, Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 @ 55mm, 1/400 sec, f/5.6, ISO 200 -- EXIF
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Today's photos are of sumomo (plum blossoms). Sumomo season starts just as sakura season ends here in Amami. My previous posts of sakura were posted about a week after I took the photos but, due to bad weather, I haven't been able to get out and take more sakura photos for over a week now. We had some great weather yesterday and as I was out driving around looking for sakura, I noticed that most of the sumomo trees have started to blossom so I took photos of them instead.

To say it simply, yesterday just clicked for me. You'll laugh at this but, I focused on focusing. Using my Sigma 30mm f/1.4 at f/1.4 has taught me a lot of things about focusing. One of those things is not relying on the Auto Focus when taking photos like these. For some of these shots, I used the Auto Focus to get a soft focus and then switched to Manual Focus and did the fine tuning focus. I had a load of semi close up photos like these first three that turned out very nice.

In all honesty, the D60 has a pretty small viewfinder and it's pretty tough to focus manually. I've been thinking of buying a Katz Eye to help with that, but I don't think it will help with photos like these. What I really need is a full frame format camera with a larger view finder but, they're just a bit to expensive for me.

These first three photos were cropped from the originals a bit. Other than that, post editing to all the photos pretty much only consisted of adjusting Exposure just a bit along with Vibrancy and Saturation. I was going to try and give them a soft glow as I did in my previous posts of sakura, but it just didn't seem to do justice to these photos. Crisp seemed the way to go.


Nikon D60, Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 @ 55mm, 1/500 sec, f/5.6, ISO 200 -- EXIF
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Nikon D60, Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 @ 55mm, 1/40 sec, f/5.6, ISO 200 -- EXIF
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Nikon D60, Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 @ 55mm, 1/1000 sec, f/5.6, ISO 200 -- EXIF
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Nikon D60, Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 @ 55mm, 1/800 sec, f/5.6, ISO 200 -- EXIF
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Nikon D60, Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 @ 1/800 sec, f/5.6, ISO 200 -- EXIF
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Nikon D60, Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 @ 55mm, 1/800 sec, f/5.6, ISO 200 -- EXIF
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Nikon D60, Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 @ 52mm, 1/800 sec, f/5.6, ISO 200 -- EXIF
8.

This last photo is of some very yellow flowers that were blooming near the sumomo trees I was photographing. They were so completely yellow, it was almost unreal.

I'm so happy with how these photos turned out. Photos like these help me stifle the feeling I get when I take bad photos, blame it on my camera or lenses, and want to buy a new camera and new lenses. I will buy a new camera in the long run and some new lenses, but not for a while. I still have a lot to learn with what I have.


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Keep the language clean please. I have family that see this. Tell us what part of the world you're in.