Lens love....

So I received my new Sony 24-70mm, f2.8 lens in the mail this afternoon...

And oh, I do believe I'm in love... Well, I know I am that, but let me tell you, I'm not really sure how I've lived without this lens for so long. So first, for the non-technical people reading this blog, let me give you a brief introduction to this lens. The 24-70mm part means how far it can zoom. This range is appropriate for images like portraits where the subject is fairly close. This is a pretty standard zoom range for a lot of lenses, so that alone doesn't make this particular lens special. What does do that is the Carl Zeiss glass (which I won't cover here but suffice it to say that Zeiss glass is the BEST you can get. period.) and the ability to open the aperture up to f2.8.  So what does that mean? That means in lower light, I can shoot faster shutter speeds which means less blur because of motion and less grain because of changing my ISO. It also means that wide open, I get a lovely bokeh (a basic definition of that here).... 

So of course I had to play a bit.... First, two images taken with my "kit" lens, a 18-70mm f3.5-5.6:

Notice that a fair amount of the foreground is in focus in most of these shots, while the background is slightly blurred.

Now, with the new lens (taken on a different day, which accounts for the change in light/color temp/grass in some of these):

Notice how less of the foreground is in focus? And if you look really closely, you can see better bokeh in the background? It's a bit tricky to see on these photos, due to their lighting. 

All in all, I'm super excited to try this lens during my maternity shoot this weekend. Can't wait to see the possibilities! And not to leave Bella out, I took a few of her this afternoon too: