May 24, Faces of Xinjiang, Yining 伊寧

After the first two days journey moving between mountains, over night at freezing wood cabin, and last night at the primitive but warm yurt, we moved to our destination today, Yining 伊寧, and tonight we will be staying at a hotel that I can finally organize the CF cards and back up to my portable hard drive - more on this later.
This afternoon, we were walking on the "Han Street" 漢人街, although most of the people and merchants, vendors are Uygur 維吾爾族人, afterall Xinjiang is Uygur Autonomous Region.
Took a lot of portrait of the Uygurs, and my choice of camera and lens is Nikon D3X and the AF-S Micro VR 105/2.8ED. Why? And why not! Micro lens in general is optically well corrected, overall better sharpness from corner to corner, and of high constrast, compare to nomal lens. And the most important factor is the the micro lens allow you to shoot almost in any distance. Yes, one can always use a telephoto lens to snap portrait from a distance, but the distance also shows on the picture, with a macro lens or macro lens, you get close, and the closeness shows on the picture. Nikon did a good job by introducing VR into this focal length, and I will without doubt to say the AF-S Micro VR 105/2.8ED is perhaps the best portrait lens available for 35mm full-frame DSLR today. Sony has similar offer with their in-camera stabilizer, while Canon, surprisingly, not an answer yet.
But now, let's focus on the faces of Xinjiang!