Tamron Blog: Angle of View

Stalking Ghosts

By Jeff Allen

I travel a lot for work. My travels often take me through Chicago’s O’Hare International airport. It’s a large, usually crowded building. Connecting the B and C concourses is a long underground walkway complete with moving sidewalks. Long ago, it was changed into a bit of an oasis. Instead of a long sterile corridor, whimsical abstract neon and other lighting effects were installed. A variation of a familiar Gershwin tune is usually playing softly in the background. In spite of the large groups of travelers constantly passing through, this corridor is my favorite part of my voyages through ORD. It is also ripe for making interesting images, especially long exposures.

Chances are, your tripod is safely and inconveniently stashed in your checked bag. Mine too…

So I got a little creative to find camera support for the long exposures I was planning. At one end of the corridor is a shoeshine stand. At the times of day I usually pass through, it’s usually not staffed, so I don’t have to interrupt anyone. It’s solid and makes a great impromptu camera stand. Also, there are numerous other spots to steadily support your camera, such as some very sturdy trashcans.

My lens of choice for this challenge is the Tamron SP 10-24mm Di-II. The lens is designed for use on APS-C sensor size cameras.

So, why long exposures, you ask. Simply to make the crowds of people disappear from the image.

 
Tamron SP 10-24 at 19mm, 5 sec. @ f29, ISO 100, camera placed on the shoe shine stand

I found after a couple of test shots that I liked the effect of making people disappear at a shutter speed of 5 seconds. Then it was just a matter of choosing aperture to set the mood and choosing a location. The variation of “Rhapsody In Blue” playing also helped set my mood. It was an unusual version that I can best describe as “Peanuts” character Linus’ plinking at the piano, meets Mike Oldfield’s “Tubular Bells”. Different and definitely haunting. PERFECT!

 
Tamron SP 10-24 at 10mm, 5 sec. @ f10, ISO 100, camera placed atop a trashcan

 
Tamron SP 10-24 at 10mm, 5 sec. @ f11, ISO 100, camera placed atop trashcan on opposite side of walkway from picture above

Abstracts, strong leading lines, great reflections, ghosts. These scenes have everything.

Also remember, zoom lenses zoom and feet move. Remember to do both if you need to, in this or similar locations. Experiment with exposure times, apertures, and ISO sensitivities to find what works best for you.

The long exposure time of 5 seconds makes nearby people walking past, or riding on the moving walkway virtually disappear. People in motion at greater distances appear as ghostlike objects, and those in the far distance have some form but appear so small in the frame as to be almost unnoticeable.

To save time, rather than digging out my release cable to ensure sharp pictures, I simply set the camera self-timer to fire the shutter, allowing any vibrations to fade away.

My inspiration came from a friend, and fellow photographer, after he showed me prints of images he had made from a similar trip through O’Hare. I asked if he minded if I used his idea. He was happy to allow me to share.

Get out, experiment, and create some ghosts. You can always do it in your neighborhood, if your plans don’t take you out of town.

Good shooting.

Traveling Lite

By Ed Heaton

Greetings,

I wanted to share a few images from my recent trip to Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia.  It was a quick trip and I packed light bringing with me only a few essentials (camera, tripod and one lens).  I guess I should clarify why I was traveling light.  We took my wife’s Mini Cooper and to be honest there’s not a lot of room for gear.  If any of you have been to Harper’s Ferry you know that the terrain is quite hilly and you don’t want to be carrying a lot of extra weight so having a lens that will cover a large focal range is idea. Whenever I’m traveling light I always make sure that I have my Tamron AF 28-300mm XR Di VC lens with me.  For my full frame camera this is by far my most used "all-in-one" travel lens.

I’ll do my best to keep my posts a little more regular in the future and thanks for tuning in :-)

Best of Light,

Ed

Governor’s Fish Ohio Day

Guest Post by Mike Mainhart

 

Port Clinton, Oh - The 18-270mm proves to be a versatile lens on the annual Governor’s Fish Ohio Day, held in mid-July. The event takes place in Port Clinton, Ohio and features a day of walleye fishing on Lake Erie. The invited guests include media and politicians. The goal of the event is to promote tourism.

 
I boarded a charter boat with a full bag of lenses on the morning of the feature event. As we cleared the break wall, it was obvious that the photo shoot was going to be limited. The 3-5 foot waves made it difficult to stand at times, let alone shoot photos. I chose the 18-270mm from my bag and stayed with it.

 
Normally I try to get creative shots. Hanging over the side or standing on the fly bridge, anything to make the photos stand out. Not this day. I had to rely on keeping both feet on the floor which limited the shots. The high sun helped to keep the lens fast considering both the subject and the camera were rocking back and forth. The wide angle proved to be helpful in the confines of the boat. Given the conditions and the few shots taken the 18-270mm performed great.

 
Back on solid ground, after the fishing, all the participants gather for lunch and speeches from the politicians. It’s difficult to get an interesting shot in a crowd of people. Always think out of the box. The key speaker at the event was Ohio’s Governor Kasich.

 
In somewhat of a surprise he decided to sign an executive order in front of the crowd of media. As all the cameras lined up in front of the action I decided to take a different angle. An over the shoulder photo proved to be much more interesting. The shot was taken with no flash. I had just enough time to bump the ISO up to 1600 in order to get good exposure under a shaded tent.

After the media event ended I decided to shoot some of the local scenery. The Marblehead lighthouse was a short trip from the hotel and the late-afternoon light was perfect. Again, traveling with a full bag of lenses I chose to stay with the 18-270mm.

When photographing something that has been well documented by thousands of others before me, my approach is to do something different. It only took a few minutes of watching others taking photos to realize, all I needed to do was back up. The late afternoon light was interesting. Backing away from the lighthouse and having the full 18-270mm range of the lens gave me several options for composition.

 

As the light faded towards sunset I changed position to capture the waves crashing onto the glacier carved bedrock. All sunsets are beautiful but some are better than others. This evening was average. The goal was to incorporate the scenery to get an appealing shot.

 

Sometimes a photo will present itself. After several minutes, camera on tripod, trying to find an interesting composition, something happened to make the shot. A fisherman jumped on a rock to make a cast. That one brief moment turned an average shot into a story telling photo.

 

Mike Mainhart Bio: He is a freelance photographer in northeast Ohio specializing in wildlife and outdoor activity photography. I'm honored to have received several awards photos published in several publications not only in Ohio but around the country including a Tamron sponsored (People's Choice Award). I am a member of Outdoor Writers of Ohio and the Kentucky Outdoor Press Association. Outdoor Writers website http://outdoorwritersofohio.org/

Focus on Clouds

By André Costantini

The thing about sunsets is that light changes quickly. Just moments apart can appear to be worlds of difference. What can be interesting about that time of day is what the light does and how it's severe angle can create dimension and depth to things like clouds, not to mention the intense colors.

I have always found it fascinating when your eyes try and watch clouds and you get lost in the softness of the texture, not quite being able to focus. And your camera's lens is not unlike your eyes.

Auto focus of your camera works by detecting contrast, if there is little or none, the auto focus may have trouble locking in on the subject. To avoid having to worry about focus and being able to concentrate on composition, all of these images were taken using manual focus.

Have you ever heard of the term infinity when it is referred to focusing? Every lens has an infinity focus point. This distance varies depending on the focal length of the lens you are using. This is the point where everything far away will be in focus. And clouds are generally far away. Far enough away that they are at infinity for our lens focusing purposes.

Because the focus point is tied to depth of field, if I focus my lens (in this case the Tamron 28-300) on infinity and my subject is entirely located at that distance, everything would always be in focus at any aperture. Then all I have to do is make sure my shutter speed is quick enough to get crisp images (somewhere between 250th and 500th of a second in this case.)

Once I have all of these technical things out of the way the "focus" can be on taking images, trying different compositions and catching the quickly ever-changing light. All of these images where taken over a span of only 10 minutes using various focal lengths with the Tamron 28-300mm.

300mm f6.3 1/500 ISO 400

154mm f5.6 1/500 ISO 400

300mm f6.3 1/320 ISO 400

300mm f6.3 1/250 ISO 400

42mm f4.0 1/250 ISO 400

A Little Post Production Goes A Long Way

By Ken Hubbard

Isn't it amazing how sometimes the image you are envisioning in your head doesn't always translate into the image you end up seeing on your computer screen when you go back to review your days shoot? You did everything correctly (or maybe you thought you did everything correctly) like, using your lens filters, custom white balance, reading your histogram to created a good exposure, and so on... Still, when you go back to review, something went a little wrong and the image looks not quite like what you thought you created. This is where a little help in post can be your best friend. I know, I always preach "do it correctly in the field" and I never make these types of mistakes myself (yeah right, I've made more than my share for sure!), but with today's software you can very easily fix some of those so so images.

When I was at the Grand Canyon taking this image, I didn't have the classic colorful sunset and there was a little bit of haze in the air. I sat there for a few minutes hoping for something better, which I got by way of a nice beam of light when the sun came out from the clouds. The beam reached across the giant expanse highlighting the tips of the canyon wall. I used a Graduated Neutral Density Filter to balance out the highlights in the sky with the shadows of the canyon, to keep detail in both. After checking my histogram and making a few adjustments I started firing away. Unfortunately, the one thing I forgot to do is manual white balance, and I left the camera in AWB! At the time I wasn't too worried, I figured it would be pretty close. As you can see, it ended up turning out kind of green and kind of flat. I was disappointed to say the least, but not ready to give up on the image.

I knew with a little work in post, I could clean up the image and make it look a bit closer to what I saw. This is where Nik Software comes in, and within a few minutes and adjustments using Nik Vivezia 2 & Color Efex Pro 4 (Pro Contrast), I go from a flat off-color image to one with good color, contrast and depth. Using the software as a plug in for Photoshop, I first open it up in Vivezia 2, and make my contrast, color and saturation changes using the global corrections. Then I go in and fine tune all the little details with control points, bringing out the highlights and layers of the canyon's spires, contrast in the clouds and fine tuning the reds, yellows and blues throughout the image. Then next step I go into Color Efex Pro 4's Pro Contrast I make final color corrections and contrast corrections, resulting in the image below.

Image was shot using Tamron's SP 28-75mm F/2.8 Di Lens