F/4 and be there

 

I was walking from the kitchen to the sofa with a cup of coffee this morning when I spotted a pleasing composition out of the corner of my eye. I enjoyed noticing how the line formed by the stem of the daffodil continued on to the top edge of the red chair in the background. There's more about the composition that I am fond of, but that was the trigger. So, after setting down the mug, I grabbed my camera and framed up this shot. The widest aperture available to me was f/4 so I used an ISO of 1000. I wanted to separate the foreground flower from the background without obliterating it entirely. The modest aperture allowed the natural properties of the lens to express themselves, so to speak. This is a pleasing still life shot, and years hence, it will remind me of a fine early Spring morning back in 2021 when I felt a twinge of optimism, despite everything.

Another, more pragmatic, thought popped into my head... Just how fast does a lens have to be now that we are living in the age of five figure ISOs? I went for an evening walk recently and, just for grins, shot a set of images at an ISO of 40K. The thing is, they looked really good to me, no more offensive in terms of graininess from film images on P3200 exposed at EI = 1000. I used the Pentax KP and the 20-40mm zoom lens here. It is a real sweet set up.