Hiking with my toddler (Nikon 55-200mm lens)

Played with my 55-200mm telescope lens while hiking with my hubby in Madera Canyon and fell in love with telescope lenses right away. 

This lens came with my Nikon D5000 that I bought from Costco. It was a kit lens, so I thought it should be pretty lame and barely took it out of my camera bag. Ok, I was wrong. Telescope lenses are the perfect lens for portrait photography, which I just learned from the internet last night as I was googling to understand why the photos below look more amazing than those I took with my 35mm/f1.8 or 28mm/f1.8 lens. 

It turned out that when the focal length is larger than 70mm (the 85mm lens is the most favored portrait lens), you can keep the facial features look more natural and its compression effect makes the background flat and blurry and the subject stand out. Although with larger aperture a short focal length lens also allows you to get a great bokeh (circle of confusion, out of focus area), the bokeh looks very different from what telescope lenses create. From my personal observation, the 35mm lens has greater distance among the objects in the background than a 70mm lens does. The greater distance the objects are, the more dimensions and perspectives you get, which may visually distract you from the real subject.

Here are the pictures.

 Yeah, hiking with a toddler is a tough mission. We ended up carrying her around in turns.

"Mommy, I am tired..." "What?! You barely walked."

education time

 p.s. My husband collects some water beetles for his PhD research. We didn't catch them for fun. We love and respect all living creatures. Just so you know. :P