Tamron Blog: Angle of View

What A Difference A Little Snow Makes

 By Ken Hubbard

According to the calendar on my phone, laptop, iPad and even the one hanging on the door that leads to my cellar, it's spring. I think mother nature is on vacation somewhere and forgot to turn on the warm weather, and put the snowy cold conditions in the attic till next winter. With that said, this past weekend Tamron hosted a workshop at Lakota Wolf Preserve and once again we had our eye on the weather channel watching an impending snow storm. Lucky for us it dumped about 10 inches of snow on the Columbia, NJ area early enough in the week so we were able to hold our workshop with out any problems. I'll be honest, I wasn't as worried about the snowy conditions as much as being excited to photograph the wolves in a beautiful winter scene. I have been to Lakota many times and never experienced it in the snow. Snow can really play tricks on your exposure, especially if you have a very bright & sunny day. Because snow is so reflective it will sometimes fool the metering system of your camera and you end up with dark & muddy under exposed images. So to brighten up your images you will have to tell the camera to add more light, this is done by using the exposure compensation feature on your camera. Luckily for us there was a nice balance of shadow and sunlight and the matrix metering on my camera handled the conditions just fine. All three images were taken with Tamron's SP AF70-300mm VC USD lens, which is an ideal focal length for Lakota.

 
 
 

Panoramic Visions

 By Ed Heaton

The New Year has found me shooting more than my fair share of panoramic images and I have to admit I'm really enjoying it. Being able to visualize and capture the scene before me in a panoramic format can be challenging but it has enormous gratification when done correctly. Here are a few images that I wanted to share that really showcase what I was feeling and seeing at the time I captured them. I normally shoot all of my panoramic images in a vertical format with an occasional horizontal mixed in. I made these images using only two of my Tamron lenses, 28-75mm f/2.8 and the 70-200mm f/2.8. Both of these lenses have outstanding build and optical quality!

Click on images to see larger versions.

 
 
 
 
 
 

Always Have Your Camera Ready

 By Ken Hubbard

As you all know, weather forecasters are never wrong and you should always plan your days photography around what they say the weather will be like. Yeah right!!! I do have to say they were pretty much right for most of this rainy/snowy day in Zion, it did exactly what they said, until about an hour before sunset. We ended up getting one last squall which put a soft coating of snow on almost everything, then the clouds started to break and everything changed!

This 1st image is of the Court of the Patriarchs just after the snow stopped and clouds started to break. The light is really nice and soft but not too colorful yet but I decided to take some images anyway. I new right away this was not going to be an image I wanted in color, I looked at it as a B & W image right away.

 
Here is the same image in B & W. The little bit of snow that fell helped create a really nice contrast with the blackness of the tree trunks and mountain peaks. I used Silver Efx Pro and Photoshop to create this image, and it (as were all the images in the blog) was shot with the Tamron 28-300mm VC lens.

 
With the Tamron 28-300mm VC still in hand and the light getting more and more colorful, I stopped at “the Junction”. This is probably the most popular spot at sunset. It overlooks the Virgin River which leads you to The Watchman mountain in the distance. By the time I reached this point many photographers had already started gathering for what was shaping up for a great sunset. I decided to shoot the opposite direction (and the other side of the road) because there were really soft pastel colors in the sky and there was no one looking that direction. TIP: Always look behind you, there may be something better!

 
Finally, this image was taken after leaving the crowds behind at “the Junction” and heading back to Springdale for dinner at my favorite place, The Bit and Spur. As the light died on The Watchman the clouds started to explode with color! I pulled off to the side and shot this image. As I said before, all images were shot with Tamron’s 28-300mm VC lens. The reason for this, it was the only one I had with me. Since it was such a horrible day as far as weather goes I debated what camera equipment to bring with me if anything. Lucky for me I took my own advice and took something, all be it only 1 lens, at least it was one that I could shoot pretty much anything with! Moral to this story, always bring your camera and a good all around lens where ever you go.

VC in the Snow

 By André Costantini

After living in NY for 11 years, one thing that I've always wanted to do was walk over the Brooklyn Bridge during a snowfall. Well, last week I finally got the opportunity. I was able to not only shoot the bridge as a subject but also use it as a background element and even to use it to gain perspective for a few shots. I took only my Tamron 28-300 VC, which I was convinced stood for Very Cold like the temperature, but actually having the VC was a huge asset for a couple of the shots. In fact, they likely would have been impossible to take without VC. Take for example the cab zooming through the snow covered steel. It was shot hand held at 1/10 of a second at 60mm at f11. I needed to have the shutter speed slow enough to get the blur and the aperture small enough to have the foreground in focus. This combination let me go to 1/10 of a second shutter speed which would have been nearly impossible to hand hold without VC technology. The same goes for the birds flying off the bridge. It was shot at 1/125th of a second at 300mm. The shutter speed was perfect to show the movement of the birds wings but quick enough to still see that they are in fact birds. In this image the VC kept the bridge sharp even at 300mm.

 

You might expect to see cross country skiing in the snow, but this is a rare glimpse at cross city skiing.

 
I know people build snowmen all over the world, but they don't all get this view.


On the walk home, I happened upon a couple of lamp posts trying to fit in with a bunch of trees.