The late night post bus waiting to ferry people out of town - me included.

An old photo I found while trawling my hard drive.

Today I was back on the same cafe seat where I took the original photo, this time with the G11, so I decided to investigate his suggestion.

First, here is the original image shot with the Pentax 200mm on a K7 APS-C body, no cropping this time and no adjustments

Now here is the full frame shot taken with the G11 from the same spot, at full telephoto zoom. The ashtray seems to have moved during the intervening period but I didn't bother rearranging it.

There are two immediate differences. The field of view is much wider, and the DOF is much deeper. This is because the G11's 140mm can't compete with the Pentax's 300mm (35mm full frame equivalents), the max aperture on the G11 at full telephoto is only f4.5 as opposed to f2.8 and, tellingly, the physically small sensor you get on cameras like the G11 inherently gives much less apparent DOF than larger ones at the same aperture.

You could achieve a similar effect by moving closer with the G11, and shooting at a wider angle at f2.8, but you would include much more of the background and still wouldn't get the same narrow depth of field. Meaning that you couldn't achieve the desired effect of isolating the subject.

So why use a fast telephoto? To isolate the subject, both with shallow depth of field and limiting the background. To "get close" to objects that are otherwise inaccessible - not necessarily far away. (not here of course, but we're just doing a for-example).

Before anyone suggests that I'm knocking the G11, far from it. I love the little camera and carry it all the time. Image quality is excellent and operation provides many of the options expected from a dSLR in an intuitive, un-fussy interface. (buttons and dials - not menus). We can crop that full frame image to a similar field of view as the Pentax, and although the DOF is still not as shallow (you can for example see the handles on the far away box) the clarity is impressive for such a small crop.

I don't normally talk about the camera equipment I use for the photos on this blog, mainly because I personally don't like photos where the first question you ask is "oh, what did you use for that?" - where the characteristics of the lens are the first thing you notice. However if you want a particular type of shot, then you often need a particular piece of equipment.

I bought a second-hand 200mm Pentax FA F2.8 telephoto recently. At 300mm in old money on my K-7 it's quite a long lens, and some people might be surprised to know that one of the things I intend to use it for is landscapes. The other is sports, or action photography. However I quite like exploiting its narrow DOF, and its ability to reach otherwise inaccessible objects. (The statue of Queen Victoria recently is a case in point). It's an old auto focus lens designed for film cameras, but very well regarded, and the in-camera anti-shake system of the Pentax helps counter balance the problems of hand-held telephoto shots.

I was in Edinburgh for a couple of days recently, so expect a few more un-Zurich photos.

Enjoying the view.

Rigi website

So - enough of Venice for the moment. Here are some Italian girls enjoying a cold Zürich during winter 2006.

Why do baby angels always look like little thugs in the making?

Might have shown this view before....

At left, you can see the photographer that I was apparently stalking that day