Salisbury Cathedral Nativity

I have quite a few religious Blip followers and on a Sunday where it is so dull, cold and miserable, that those very words have now been re-written, with double-meaning, an hour in Salisbury Cathedral seemed to be the only option today.

If you thought, like me, that Christmas was over and that included scenes of Nativity, well, I am kindly informed that it will stay on until Epiphany, which is the 6th January. 

I can always while away time in this wonderful building and always find new photographic subjects and angles. As tripods are not allowed, I do tend to only take one fast prime lens in each time now and concentrate on finding subjects for that particular optic.

Today, it was the turn of the lovely sharp and fast Nikkor G 85mm f1.8, this time on the full-frame D700. Whereas, say my most used standard zoom, the 16-85mm VR (OK, that's for DX only but it goes up to 85mm), the max aperture is a lowly and slow f5.6.

Here, at just f2, I am getting much better sharpness than I could at f5.6 with the zoom. I have not sharpened this image (I usually do sharpen a bit in edit) as this increases the noise often quite considerably. As the fine and subtle detail is OK as it is, I didn't want to destroy it with grain, as I have had to use an iso of 2000 here.

Nowhere near as much Photoshop editing as in yesterday's Bath Abbey Blip, I still did a fair bit to it, mainly to balance out quite extreme shadow/highlight differences, despite the dull light coming in from outside, which always helps maintain an even exposure.