The pictures in this post were taken during the summer when I was visiting my family in Hungary. This was the second time I visited the “Fűvészkert”, an arboretum in Budapest. It’s a wonderful place for plant and flower lovers, with or without a camera. I spent a few hours walking around and capturing flowers with three of my Lensbaby lenses: the Twist 60, the Sol 45 and the Velvet 56. I hope you’ll enjoy the photos of the flora of the arboretum as much as I enjoyed seeing them in live.
Flower Photography
In mid-August I grew my Lensbaby family with a Fisheye lens, which was then on sale (September 1st is the last day to get a nice $100 off of the lens). Due to a nasty backache I haven’t been able to shoot much lately, but I did take the new lens on two shorter walks with me. The first one was in a nearby park on an overcast day, and the second one was to Descanso Gardens near Los Angeles. Using the Fisheye lens certainly has a learning curve.
Since I own both a crop sensor (Nikon d7000) and a full frame (Nikon d750) camera, per request of a fellow Lensbaby lens user I took some comparison photos. She wanted to decide if she should get the Twist or the Burnside lens for her camera. I didn’t do post-processing on the images to show how the lenses capture the subject naturally.
1. In the first comparison I photographed the subject from the closest distance possible, which was about 19 inches.
Full Frame at F2.5
Crop Sensor at 2.5
In the past few weeks I haven’t used my Lensbaby lenses as much, because I attended nature programs in groups, where an automatic lens was more useful. If I wanted to take pictures while hiking, I had to do it fast and not hold up the group.
Last week I spent a brief time at a pretty place in San Clemente, California. Casa Romantica is a beautiful venue for weddings and parties, and it is open to the public when no events are going on.
I walked around the garden three times, using a different lens each time while approaching the same subjects. I used the Sol 45, the Twist 60 and the Velvet 56. After comparing the images I chose the ones to post that I liked the most. One subject worked very well with all three lenses, I’ll save that for last. A few subjects didn’t work for me at all. So here are the winners:
The only image of the view from the gardens I liked was taken with the Twist 60. It was a dark, overcast day, but this is the lens I would use again for this view on a sunny day.
A couple of months ago I signed up for a 6 hour long truck tour in the mountains right behind us. It’s an area that is not open to the public, but the Irvine Ranch Conservancy organizes programs there that you can attend. I was very excited about this truck tour, but unfortunately it had to be cancelled due to rainy weather. Luckily, I was able to sign up for a different day for a 4-hour long tour on June 8th.
The group met Donna, our driver, and the other 4 volunteers at the Augustine Staging area, where we started our trip on this truck:
