Compressing perspective

There's a bit of serves-me-right with this new lens in that just as I was getting interested in wide-angle shots, my new lens only goes down to 80mm. This 1) finds me backpedaling quite a bit for many shots that don't require zo[ooooo]ming, and 2) takes away the wide angle option. I did find today one situation where the compressed perspective of a narrow-angle lens actually did do something interesting:



I know, I know, it's the textbook example used in every tutorial/explanation of perspective and wide-vs-narrow-angle focal lengths where they line up a row of trees/posts/tall, uniform objects. It just took finding an instantiated example to convince me. It'd be more difficult to get that sense of uniformity and linearity with a wider angle.

Also, I've not been living up to this blog's title, so bokeh test:


Turns out you can get quite a good deal of it at f4.5 when you take a few steps back, zoom in, and let distance work its magic.