Intro

Once again, welcome to f1point4.net.  Let me try to briefly outline my goal for this site.  Essentially, I intend for this to serve as a record of my journey in photography from this point forward.  So I’ll be posting my thoughts about various aspects of photography as it applies to me.  I’ll post some of my photos.  And I may even post some “reviews” of various photography gear I use.  And I will probably also fill in some backstory – history – of my journey in photography as a hobby and activity prior to the start of this blog/site.

Speaking of backstory, I chose the name f1point4 for its connection to one of the more popular “fast”, wide-open aperture values for interchangeable lenses used in photography today.  The number 1.414213562373095, truncated to 1.4, is the square root of 2.  And it is sort of the base level measurement for the focal length to aperture ratio that we call the f/stop. Each successive higher (slower) full f/stop number is a power of 1.4:  1.4^2 = 2, 1.4^3 = 2.8, 1.4^4 = 4, 1.4^5 = 5.6, 1.4^6 = 8, and so on.  And for each full f/stop higher, your lens lets in one half the light.  So an f/1.4 lens aperture lets in twice the light – all other things being equal – as a f/2.0 aperture, and 4 times the light as an f/2.8 aperture, and 8 times the light as a f/8 aperture, and so on.  Math.

That, and I like to shoot my lenses wide open if possible.  Part of my driving motivation to get deeper into photography in the last few years was to be able to get better photos in low light situations.  And that meant cameras with bigger sensors and “faster” lenses.  One of my favorite lenses in the past couple years has been an old Minolta MC Rokkor-X PG 50mm f/1.4 that I bought used and adapted to my Sony E-mount camera.  I instantly loved the rendering it lent to photos in ambient light.  I’ve only picked one additional f/1.4 lens since, but I like the capability these fast “prime” lenses offer.

Oh, and f1point4.net was, amazingly, available until I grabbed it last month.