In the Windy City

The civic long weekend at the beginning of August seemed like the perfect time to take a trip. We booked the hotel, fueled the car, and made the 800km journey to the Windy city. Melanie and I had such a great time. Right by Michicagn and Harrison, we easily walked to many of the city's attractions. Not an easy feat, mind you, in the sweltering heat that has been sweeping much of North America. We visited the Shedd Aquarium, the Abbott Planetarium, and the Willis (nee Sears) Tower to name a few. The City Pass certainly made it easy to skip the lines and head straight in to all of the attractions we visited.

I decided to challenge myself a little bit for this trip. Seeing as I am not yet able to afford - or get my hands on yet, for that matter - a Fuji X100, I figured I'd might as well go the closest route. Yes, I made a makeshift X100. Ok, not really, but I just needed an excuse to use the word makeshift. I actually used my D700 with a 35mm F/1.8 DX lens. For those of you paying attention, the D700 is an FX - or full frame - body, which means that the lens I chose is not technically made for my camera body. Regardless, I turned off auto-DX crop mode, and slapped the lens in place.

The great thing about using this lens on a full frame body, aside from the fact that prime lenses are just awesome, is that the smaller the aperture, the more noticeable the vignetting becomes, which you'll definitely see in the photos below. I could have cropped or otherwise adjusted to remove the vignetting, but I rather like the effect. Enjoy!