His Chocolate Majesty

by Keith E. Hollenberg
(York, PA)

Comments - This picture was pure luck. Shortly after buying the s9000, I purchased a 1.5x extender, with hopes of extending the 10x optical zoom on the camera. I soon found out the extender was mostly useless beyond 4x zoom.

Experimenting with the extender, I snapped this photo of Toby, our Chocolate Lab. What is most intriguing about this photo is the blurring of the outer portions of the image, while the center of the image - Toby's face - is really sharp. Combined with the intense look on his face makes this picture one of my favorites of Toby.

The blur is not your typical soft background from using a large aperture, and the blur extends the entire way around the image, including Toby's body. It almost gives the effect of slow shutter speed while zooming, but that is not how I got this effect.

Camera - Fujifilm s9000
Shutter - 1/512 sec.
Aperture - f/4.9
Focal Length - 67 mm
ISO - 400
Metering - Spot