Tamron Blog: Angle of View

It's Only a Matter of Time

By André Costantini

Last month I stopped by Minnehaha Falls in Minneapolis, Minnesota and had a couple of minutes to make some pictures. Both images were shot with the Tamron SP 70-300 VC USD lens.

The shutter speed of the vertical was 1/6 of a second, hand held at 200mm. The VC (Vibration Compensation) feature built into the lens allowed me to hand hold this very slow shutter speed. By compensating for slight movements that can cause blur, the stabilizer makes it possible to take images at slower shutter speeds then traditionally possible without a tripod. This is important, especially with telephoto lenses. The reason is that longer focal lengths magnify (optically) what we photograph. The result is that a small movement on the part of the photographer gets recorded as a big movement in your image, creating unwanted blur.

The rule of thumb is that the slowest shutter speed you want to use is 1 over the focal length. So without the VC with a 200mm focal length one would need to shoot at no slower then 1/200 of a second. But at 1/200 of a second the water would not appear silky which results from that same longer shutter speed. The VC function gives you up to 4 more stops of light that one can effectively hand hold. In this case it makes 1/6th of a second exposure possible!

I thought it would be interesting to change the mood and look of the same subject only by changing the shutter speed. The horizontal shot was at 1/2000 of a second, freezing the water and capturing a moment that conveys more power and chaos then the longer shutter speed which makes the water smooth. The difference in the two images is only a matter of time.

Apple Surreal

By André Costantini

 

I sometimes find myself drawn to images that are seemingly surreal; ones that look as if they have been manipulated (other then by virtue of using a camera.) In a way, every image is a manipulation. But some appear to be more manipulated then others. My thoughts wander to the surrealist painter René Magritte and his use of the apple as an icon. There was one painting in particular that was simply an apple in a room, however the apple was so large that its mass was like a nightmare. The apple displacing space and it's relationship was terrifying. Sometimes, he would paint apples as if they were floating. And this leads me to the photograph above. In my yard, there are a dozen apple trees which decided to bear fruit. In past years, the blossoms were destroyed by frost or there were not enough bees to pollinate the flowers. Many of these apples look more like heirloom tomatoes in that the skins are textured and the apples are quite irregular by supermarket standards. But these peculiarities I find attractive. Between the texture of the skin and my propensity to surrealism, I wanted to see if I could create an image that might embody both. The apple appears to almost be floating, but it is simply the relationship between the background and the lighting. Normally one would expect the light to come from the top and shadow to be underneath the apple as it would usually sit. The illusion is created by placing the apple on its back and and using window light from several different sides to illuminate it while photographing it from above. The image was shot with the Tamron SP 28-75 f2.8 lens at f5.6 1/60 ISO1600.