the ice-cube-lamp © Lilly Schwartz

In the little extra room in my mum’s flat there is a set of lamps that creates fascinating patterns on the wall. You can agree with me that the name ice-cube-lamp is quite fitting for it. Yesterday I used it to test my new lens. As you can see with the picture yesterday it can have quite a softening effect if you focus on something far away with a wide aperture. For some purposes that can be quite an interesting effect. I however prefer images with quite a crisp foreground, so I was playing around with a wide aperture and focusing on the part of the lamp that was closest to me. It had a great effect throwing the rest of the lamp out of focus with the moody patterns on the wall. And what’s really cool is that the unsharp mask which I use to sharpen pictures taken with my other two lenses has almost no effect here, since the lens already produces really crisp pictures by itself. Sure, it’s the photographer and not the camera, but good gear really helps.