Tamron Blog: Angle of View

Adventures with Tamron : Holidazzle

by Jillian Bell

This post is a little late for the holidays, but still worth sharing.

Celebrating it's 20th season this winter, the Holidazzle Parade brings a festive reason to venture out into the cold. It is sponsored by local businesses and is made up of about 15 floats, choirs singing, marching bands, and of course an appearance by Santa Clause to finish off the night. It runs Thursday - Sunday the weekend after Thanksgiving until the weekend before Christmas. Holidazzle is rather unique in the fact that each float, and those walking in the parade are completely covered by lights, glitter, and costumes. The excessive light displays are essential because here in MN the sun is setting by 5:00pm. It has a family friendly atmosphere, all of the floats have storybook themes and if it's too cold, there is plenty of hot cocoa, or a sky way system to watch from above. Personally, I am a fan of holiday light displays. There is a challenge to get good exposure having high contrast, and moving subjects, but I think these turned out well. The exposure for these images floated right around F6.3 @ 1/60th of a second, with my ISO ranging from 1000-3000. For best results, keep your camera on manual mode and under expose by a full stop. Once you figure out what exposure the scene is, setting the camera in Manual over Aperture, Shutter priority, or another mode will keep your exposure consistent. Keep the same rule of thumb for photographing holiday lights on your home. Underexpose slightly, but in this case, you can use a very low ISO to reduce noise, and achieve better detail. Tripods are a must for this application. My favorite part of all these photos, is how vivid the colors are. I don't decorate much at my house, so being able to celebrate the season by other means is appreciated. Wishing you well, whichever season you are celebrating. Thank you for reading.

"Tis the Season"

 By Ed Heaton

It's that time of year when the mood of our country becomes joyful and festive. Along with this joyful atmosphere comes holiday decorations and lights which are always good for photo opportunities. For me the holiday season wouldn’t be complete without a visit to Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania to see the amazing holiday display of lights and flowers.

 
Now, working in a controlled public area such as a conservatory or greenhouse always presents equipment challenges because there are limited space and sometime company regulations prohibiting a lot of gear. You need to select your equipment carefully and be prepared for the variety of images you'll have a chance to capture. A good choice for an all-inclusive lens would be the Tamron 18-270mm (for the APS-C sensor cameras) or the Tamron 28-300mm (for the full frame/ FX cameras).

  
Now let's not forget about making a few macro or close-up images, and for this I'd bring along either my Tamron 60mm, Tamron 90mm or my Tamron 180mm macro lens. This has me traveling light and still being able to cover a large range of focal lengths with just two lenses and my tripod which is very manageable inside close quarters.

  
Happy Holidays!

Best of Light,

Ed

 
 
  

The Cuyahoga Valley National Park: Part 2, A family farm survives and thrives.

 By John VanSteenberg

Just a couple of miles south of Peninsula, Ohio; deep inside the Cuyahoga Valley National Park, on the corner of Bolanz and Riverview roads, close beside the river and the heavily used bike and hiking path, sits another of the main summer and fall draws for the parks millions of visitors.

Rarer than ever today, a small family farm survives deep inside the park by filling a unique niche. It grows and sells some of the world’s best corn and fresh produce: really fresh.

 

Through nearly 70 years, the Szalay family has farmed the rich bottom land of the Cuyahoga and sold corn from a road side stand. Once the Park surrounded them and the bike path ran behind the farmhouse, they expanded the produce stand they ran and created a true farm market, selling the corn and vegetables they grew in the fields nearby and hundreds of other exquisite items from around the world.

 

Today, thousands of people flock to Szalay's to pick up corn just minutes from the stalk and a wide selection of other fresh vegetables, fruits, baked goods and specialty foods. Or they come in for a lemonade, or cider, or fresh baked corn, sausage sandwiches, baked turkey drumsticks or an ice cream cone (or two). Or they come just to take a break from the trail. They come by car. They come by bike. They hike in. They come by every way and from everywhere.

 

From the outside it all looks pretty benign. A classic farm house, a pole barn building used as an open air store. A hundred or so cars in the parking lot… with dozens of people scurrying about. The approach is outfitted with few traditional log chairs and tables and some rather unique seating arrangements (on covered farm wagons, covered swings, metal forged wagon-wheel rocking chairs with tractor seats, huge ‘family size’ swings that hold 6 people). Kids climb onto and off converted corn wagons and other unique serving areas (some think it's more fun than the circus).

 

 

Inside, and under the awning, things change fast. The place is a riot of color. The foods vary in every way: size, shape and color. The produce comes from as far away as South Africa, and as close as 100 yards from the stand. Dozens of people labor constantly restocking bins with hundreds of different items; cooking sandwiches and corn and piling soft serve into cones for the kids, big and small. Wagon loads of corn are being snapped up by shoppers and are constantly rotated and refilled.

 

The Szalays were nice enough to allow me to photograph things and in a few minutes I got an eyeful of color, shapes and sizes.

 

All of the images were made with the Tamron 18-270mm VC zoom.

Cool Carnival Sights

 By Jeff Allen

In a previous blog post, I wrote about motion in lights in amusement rides. There are still plenty of opportunities to visit a local county or state fair, traveling carnival, or amusement park before they start winding down for the year. Another technique I like to try when shooting rides or lights is to pan with the subject firing the shutter as the ride moves and attempt to match my panning motion speed with the speed the ride is moving. This effect allows for sharpness in some parts of the subject and motion blur in others.

A carousel or merry go round is a great subject to experiment with. I am told for what it’s worth that the difference is just directional. Carousels go counter clockwise, merry go rounds go clockwise. Hmm.

Anyway, remember that you will truly be shooting in three dimensions. The subject is moving toward you, in front of you and away from you, and possibly up and down on a pole. You will need to shoot lots of different images to get just the right combination of sharpness and blur, and centering of the subject in the frame.

For this subject I chose the Tamron SP AF17-50 f2.8 with VC stabilization. After some test shots I determined that the best exposures were, at this carnival, ISO 400, shutter speeds of 1/10th sec and 1/15th sec, apertures at f2.8 and 3.2. Not much difference in exposure. I just played with a slight variance in speed to try with a bit of a difference in blurred and sharp areas. I did leave the VC stabilizer turned on as it works well with panning. See the example images below. Be careful as not all brands of stabilized lenses work well while panning with the stabilizer turned on. You may need to turn yours off. Sometimes a monopod or tripod can be handy to help steady your camera. The VC stabilization helps a bit with camera shake at slow shutter speeds when panning. Also experiment with the follow focus or predictive focus mode in your camera. You may want to turn the auto focus off as it can easily be fooled in these situations and manually focus. I usually will determine my focus point and let the subject come to me, starting to shoot just before and continuing after the focus point, again to allow me the maximum possibility of getting what I want. Amusement rides are great for learning how to pan and shoot. When you are comfortable with the basics of slow shutter speed panning, it’s fun to experiment with all sorts of moving subjects, like sports and even children at play in the back yard. Notice I didn’t say “master.” There are always enough variables in exposure that you will probably always need to shoot a bunch of images to get what you like. But… that’s true of almost all photography. Shoot lots, learn what works, and improve your technique.

Have fun and good shooting.

@ 17mm, 1/10, f2.8   Great motion blur, and f2.8 subject isolation 

@19mm 1/15 sec, f2.8   Try to get the horse at the top or bottom of its travel up and down the pole. There’s a pause, so there’s one less motion action to think about.

Don't forget to zoom in or get closer and shoot vertically. Though at 1/15th sec and f2.8 here at 50mm, the background motion blur is unseen.

 

Fireworks and Epiphanies

  By Jeff Allen

I discovered a few years ago when photographing a fireworks show, the benefit of shooting RAW files in addition to, or instead of shooting just jpeg files. Actually I discovered why when I downloaded the images and opened them.

The jpeg’s were about what I was used to when viewing fireworks photos. Most shots looked ok, but typically washed out and lacking much of the brilliant color I saw through the viewfinder.

I had also decided to experiment with images shot in RAW file format, which I had captured along with the jpegs. I had played with RAW files in the past, but wasn’t convinced of their benefit, much beyond having an uncompressed file for better cropping and enlarging, and the ability in RAW to correct for mistakes made in shooting, such as fixing mistakes in settings, like fixing an incorrect color balance.

My experience with fireworks changed my mind about RAW shooting rather dramatically. I discovered that even with the basic file converter software included with my DSLR, after making a couple of quick, easy “slider” adjustments I could get the saturated color that I was never able to get when shooting jpeg’s, or even with film! Colors I saw at the event, but thought were lost due to exposure limitations of digital sensors (and film), turned out to be there. Color that was easy to reclaim!

I discovered that jpeg’s just don’t cut it for fireworks, and subsequently most subjects. I think you will, too, if you try RAW shooting.

If you rarely or never use your camera’s RAW file shooting capability, embrace your independence this year and try it for your holiday fireworks photography. I think you will be pleased with the results. You might experience an epiphany like mine, and change your shooting habits for the better.

Here are some shooting tips, plus some before and after examples of raw and jpeg images.

Shooting Basics:

Set your camera to the lowest ISO setting, usually 100 or 200. Use a sturdy tripod or something really solid to support the camera. A release cable for the camera is also helpful to get sharper shots. Experiment with a couple of hand held shots, or try zooming during the exposure. Abstracts can be interesting.

Set the camera for manual exposure. If you have not tried making these adjustments before, check your manual, or ask your favorite photo professional for help. Also set the camera lens to manual focus, and pre-focus on the area where the fireworks are being shot from as a starting point. Re-adjust as necessary once the show is underway, and check focus occasionally in case wind or the design of the show changes your focus point.

Set the aperture to f8 or 11 to start. Try exposures of a couple of bursts once you find where in the sky they are exploding. Try longer exposures with more bursts. Change to smaller or larger apertures to see what effect it has on your shots. I have found exposure times of five to 20 seconds produce my favorite results. Also, try to get the western sky at your back so ambient light is less of a problem.

Remember to shoot both horizontal and vertical images. Vertical really works well with the subject matter.

JPEG - Shot at 17mm, 11 seconds @f8

RAW - Shot at 17mm, 11 seconds @f8

JPEG - Shot at 26mm, 20 seconds @f8

RAW - Shot at 26mm, 20 seconds @f8

Zoom in to fill the frame, shot at 70mm, 10 seconds @f11

Zoom in to fill the frame, shot at 70mm, 10 seconds @f11

Fireworks from about 5 miles, shot at 200mm, 9 sec. @ f8. Avoid street light lit foreground if possible.

Fireworks from about 5 miles, shot at 200mm, 9 sec. @ f8. Avoid street light lit foreground if possible.

Again, try zooming in for a vertical shot. Shot at 70mm, 8 seconds @ f11

 Again, try zooming in for a vertical shot. Shot at 70mm, 8 seconds @ f11 

A Less Flashy Holiday

 By Jeff Allen

Looking for a way to give your family gathering photos a different look? How about leaving your flash in the camera bag? With the new Tamron SP AF17-50 f2.8 VC, you can do just that. Let me show you how.

The “SP” in the model name means Super Performance, and the title is well deserved. Sharp at all apertures, plus the fast 2.8 maximum aperture of the lens allowed me great low light opportunities. Additionally in this new model Tamron has included “VC”, Vibration Compensation stabilization which gave me incredibly sharp shots even at really long shutter speeds. I was able get low light shots I wouldn’t have even considered shooting without the benefit of a fast stabilized lens.

1/6 sec @f3.5 (ISO 800)

1/10 sec @f3.2

1/10 sec @f2.8. ISO 400, artificial room light

Wow! No pet eye effect, no red eye with babies or blue-eyed adults, and no harsh flash shadows!

1/25 sec@f2.8

1/15 sec@f2.8, ISO 200, daylight through picture window

And I didn’t forget to play with abstract shots and still life’s. Easily captured hand held images, and without a need for a tripod thanks to Tamron’s VC stabilization.

1/6 sec@f4.5

1/6 sec@f2.8, ISO 400, light from subjects

Try the New Tamron SP AF 17-50 f2.8 VC for your next family shoot. Leave the flash behind once in a while.

Good Shooting.