My new lens is here!!!

Even more exciting then our Matilda Jane box is what came in the mail yesterday afternoon...my new camera lens!!! Thanks to David's Grandpa and Grandma for the Christmas money that bought it, I hope you enjoy the photos I take with it! I ordered the 50mm f/1.8 lens online last week. It's my first prime lens which means it doesn't zoom, I have to move myself back and forth instead. The main reason I wanted this particular lens is that it's relatively cheap and is supposed to be great for portraiture photography and faster in low light situations. I really enjoy portraiture photography and pretty much all of my indoor photos are taken in low light situations so it seemed like a no-brainer to me.

I played with it immediately, having fun experimenting with the bokeh (background blur) and appreciating how it magically makes all those piles of toys seem to disappear. If only there was a device to do that in real life. Notice in the photo above of Grace that the background just seems to melt away.

After the kids were bathed and Ethan tucked in asleep I picked my camera up again and started playing with my new lens with the Auto focus turned off. Talk about scary! I did get some fairly blurry pictures but some turned out pretty cool. I like that I can choose what part of the photo is in focus, like in photos of Grace's little feet. On Auto Focus the camera chooses to focus her face and blur her feet but I like the feet in focus better.
Auto Focus:

Manual Focus:

And of course as excited as I was to get my new lens Grace was just as excited about the box it came in. All hail the amazing cardboard box.