'Cyclops' Matt!

This morning was Stonehenge Winter Solstice. I chickened out as it is very rainy and blowy and no chance of any sunrise. The walk there from Amesbury and back, with camera gear would have been ridiculous.

Here Is Stonehenge Winter Solstice 2012

And Winter Solstice 2011

Never use a fisheye lens to take portraits!

Unless you want to include the entire camera shop and a Canon L 500mm f4 lens, that is....

I’d been wanting some form of portrait of Matt for a while. He is my favourite photographic salesman of all time, in my favourite camera shop, Castle Cameras of Salisbury. I often pop in and chat about allsorts, photographic and otherwise and undoubtedly provide a certain amount of amusement and entertainment for them! I have, of course, bought much of my gear from them, over the past 15 years, or so.

One of our chats has been about them having this monster lens in and for sale, secondhand, a snip at a mere £5299!! They also have a Nikkor 400mm f2.8, but that was shut up in its aluminium case, looking very much like a large item of holiday luggage! That’s a true bargain at £2999. In their main Bournemouth store there’s a Canon L 200-400mm f4 at even more of a bargain - £9499. I’m sure you can buy a new car for that amount!

So, thinking of an offbeat, humorous snap that will actually be used by the shop for their own newsletter, as well as for my Blip, I thought of using the Nikkor 16mm full-frame fisheye and getting in close. I focussed manually on Matt, the deep inherent depth of field rendered most of the image quite sharp. I had to use quite a high iso so that I could use a fast enough shutter speed to counteract Matt shaking under the weight of this beast, at 3.19kgs!! The lens is even longer, if the lenshood is fitted...

You can see also, on LARGE that they do have quite a mouth-watering stock. So, if you’re ever in Salisbury and want a friendly photo store, go to Castle Cameras!

Castle Cameras website.