1418 - Goodbye Sunshine

Tamron 17-50/2.8 VC 2 Responses »
Sep 012010

Today I got a phone call. My camera was back and with it the Tamron 17-50/2.8 VC. I didn’t mean to, but I left work early nevertheless.

Uhhh … what can I say? It works. Everything works. Autofocus on my D300 works again, the Tammy works again, no, the camera wasn’t even dusty. And … my, does this lens try to impress me!

And it does. Still, I wouldn’t feel comfortable to recommend this lens any more. I’ve made my experiences and I wouldn’t want you to suffer like I did. But then, so far this particular specimen works absolutely flawlessly. No focus problems, no problems with the aperture blades not closing down, no problems at all.

I’ve tried it. I’ve tried setting the zoom to 50 mm, pointing it rapidly into one random direction, at something at a random distance, and it just worked. Yes, there were some images that were blurred, but setting the minimum shutter speed to 1/30s and/or waiting just a fraction of a second to let the stabilization lock on usually sufficed.

Do I feel fine? You bet :)

I made an excellent image of a bike rider. I tracked him, I took an image at f2.8, he looked at me, a little surprised but not hostile. The image was taken in bright sunlight, it was sharp, had dramatic shadows, and somehow it was just the place and the moment. Everything came together, fell in place. I loved that image. It was just the product of an impulse, seeing, raising the camera, focusing and releasing the shutter, all together in one moment.

Then I deleted the image. Accidentally. I mean, I’m no idiot, but every once in a while I do such outrageously stupid things. I didn’t take any more images and at home I tried to recover the file, but it was too late. I couldn’t find it. It was gone.

Some while later, when I already sat in my living room and tried to use one the files left, I saw this amazing light outside.

My living room looks to the east, and when the sun sets, when its rays come really low, they reflect in the windows of the buildings on the other side of the garden, and this reflected light fills my living room with a sudden flood of warm gold. It doesn’t last very long, only a minute or two, but during that time it is breathtaking.

The Song of the Day is “Goodbye Sunshine” from the 1993 Ceremony album “Hang Out Your Poetry”. Ceremony was a band around Chastity Bono, and they made no more than that single album. What a shame. I absolutely love the album.

I couldn’t find the song on YouTube, and so I took the liberty to upload it. Seems like I didn’t offend the copyright gods this time :D

Posted by andreas at 10:39 pm Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,

1365 - Runaway

Tamron 17-50/2.8 VC 2 Responses »
Jul 092010

Today I left home very early, at least compared to my usual habits. It was about 6:15 am, and the sun stood at an angle that I went almost the whole way in shadows. The other thing is, it’s Friday, traveling day, thus I didn’t expect to have an image at all. This one just happened at the last crossing. I saw the runner take over, saw the blinding sun, and without looking through the viewfinder, while walking even, I took two exposures.

Of course with that much light, even at f8, the shutter speed was high enough to freeze any motion, and when I looked at the image, I really liked what I saw and decided to work on it.

Regarding SoFoBoMo, I really don’t know if I can do it within the remaining week. At the moment I suppose rather not, but this does not mean that I strictly rule it out. Let’s see.

The Song of the Day is “Runaway” from the 1999 “MTV Unplugged”
album by The Corrs. Hear it on YouTube.

Posted by andreas at 5:59 pm Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,

1344 - Shine A Light

Nikon 70-300 VR 4 Responses »
Jun 192010

Today was the second day that I went down to the field and took a long series of images. I can happily say, that after around 50 images I finally got something that I like enough to put it up on the blog :D

At the moment it is relatively cool, tomorrow we’ll finally drive down to Italy. Weather is still unstable, but at least from Monday or Tuesday till the end of the week it is supposed to get really sunny.

It’s unfortunate that we had to skip Genova, because I already had a plan for how to tackle it photographically, and four days in that city would probably have given me enough material for this year’s SoFoBoMo.

The Song of the Day is “Shine A Light” from the 1972 Rolling Stones album “Exile On Main Street”. It was recently re-issued, and I can only tell you, do yourself the favor and get the “Deluxe Edition” that I have linked to, if for nothing else then at least for the wonderful ballad “Following The River”. Great stuff.

As to the Song of the Day, YouTube has it.

May the good lord shine a light on you
Warm like the evening sun

Posted by andreas at 12:45 am Tagged with: , , , , ,

1336 - Bed Of Roses

Tokina 11-16/2.8 1 Response »
Jun 112010

I took a series of images here, most with some kind of tilt. Finally I ended up straighten this one. It gave me a tight crop, about to the view that I’d have had with the Tokina 11-16 :D

The Song of the Day is “Bed Of Roses” from Bette Midler’s 1995 album “Bette Of Roses”. Hear a live version on YouTube.

Posted by andreas at 6:51 am Tagged with: , , , , , , ,

1331 - I Want To Be Straight II

Sigma 8-16 No Responses »
Jun 062010

Here’s a quick part three of my ongoing review of the new Sigma 8-16mm F4.5-5.6 DC HSM Ultra-Wide Zoom Lens for Nikon. This is about two things, distortions and flares.

As you see, both of today’s images have the sun inside of the frame. Both images have been post-processed, but in both I have left the flares and ghosts in. That’s pretty much as bad as it gets – and it is not bad at all.

I have tried to clone out the reflection of the aperture blades in the Image of the Day, but in the end I decided, that with all that symmetry, I actually liked the slightly surreal effect.

This is a lens that you can use to photograph even tall buildings without having to tip the lens upward, thus without converging vertical lines. This is something I frequently don’t care about, to the contrary, I use those lines, but in classic architectural photography, people use expensive shift lenses to get the effect.

PTLens already supports this lens, and although the barrel distortions are pretty much nil above 10 mm, at 8 mm they are pronounced enough to make an image like the Image of the Day look bad. I strongly suppose that the latest version of Adobe Camera RAW also supports it or will support it soon.

Sharpness of this lens is excellent, and chromatic aberrations are extremely well controlled. All that makes it a fantastic choice for architectural photography.

The Song of the Day is “I Want To Be Straight” by Ian Dury and The Blockheads. I have it on a collection that’s not available any more, thus I suggest you get “Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll – The Essential Collection”. Hear the song on YouTube. I have already used this song in “159 – The Prospect“, thus the numeral in the title :)

Posted by andreas at 4:21 pm Tagged with: , , , , , , ,

1318 - The Mediterranean

Tamron 17-50/2.8 VC 2 Responses »
May 242010

The olive tree is the most characteristic plant in the mediterranean. It’s the source of olive oil, one especially healthy and pleasantly tasty kind of oil, the liquid gold of the past.

I made this image after dinner in Fažana, Croatia. The sun was setting when I saw the light playing in the trees and the crops. Again I took a bracketed burst of images, and again Photoshop (and I, adjusting one layer manually) did a better job aligning the images, than my HDR programs.

I’ve got a coule of other images that I’m holding back. It’s 1:15 pm now, it’s wonderfully sunny and warm outside, I guess I’ll have to go swimming. No idea if I come back with anything usable, if not, you’ll see another image from yesterday’s trip in the evening.

The Song of the Day is “The Mediterranean” from the 2000 Beautiful South album “Painting It Red”. Hear it on YouTube.

Posted by andreas at 1:24 pm Tagged with: , , , , , , ,

1317 - We Came Along This Road

Tokina 11-16/2.8 No Responses »
May 232010

It is sunday morning and this image is from Saturday afternoon. The day began mostly cloudy, but in the afternoon the clouds dispersed and we took a short trip to a nearby valley and then a detour along a mountain ridge. This is on the road winding up.

Contrasts seemed so harsh, that I took a bracketed burst of five images, but foliage of that amount is obviously the point where HDR programs can’t handle variation any more. Both Photomatix Pro and HDR Essentials failed miserably, and so I took two exposures, one underexposed, one overexposed, into Photoshop, let it align them, put the darker to the bottom and blended the lighter one into the shadows. Look at the image: the shadows are mostly static. Things that don’t move, or at least unnoticably so at that focal length. We are at 11 mm after all.

It worked immaculately. Even at 100% I can see no obvious ghosting. I fully expected it, but no. Of course the two exposures that I used are only two apart in the burst, but then, when leaves move, they move extremely fast.

Anyway. The Tokina 11-16/2.8 is definitely prone to ghosts when you shoot directly into the sun, but it really depends on the exact position of the sun in the frame. Here I had no problem at all.

The Song of the Day is “We Came Along This Road” by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds. It’s on their 2001 album “No More Shall We Part”. YouTube has at least a live version.

Posted by andreas at 9:31 am Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,

1309 - Come Rain Or Come Shine II

Tamron 17-50/2.8 VC No Responses »
May 142010

Before I head for the train, instead of a genuine image of today, here is one more image of Tuesday. In case you wonder, it’s a car :)

The Song of the Day is “Come Rain Or Come Shine“. Of course we had the song, but interestingly enough only once (I count 15 versions in my collection), and then, in “204 – After the Rain“, it was by B.B. King and Eric Clapton. Today it is Ray Charles on his 1959 album “The Genius Of Ray Charles”. Enjoy it on YouTube.

Posted by andreas at 1:16 pm Tagged with: , , , , , ,

1301 - Here Comes Sunshine

Tamron 17-50/2.8 VC No Responses »
May 072010

One of the beautiful things in Spring is, how easily it takes you from rainy despair to sunny exaltation. Of course it can also go the other way round :D

Remember that I dropped my bag with the camera in it, the Tamron 17-50/2.8 VC mounted? Remember that the lens barrel broke and I sent it in for repair? Remember the tiny flaw of this lens, making the autofocus sometimes not reacting, needing a switch off/on of the camera?

Well, it’s gone! Obviously you have to drop it :)

Nope. Don’t drop it. Unfortunately I did not write down the original serial number. They may have not repaired the lens at all but instead exchanged it (that’s not what the shop said, though), or along with repairing the lens, they have made a firmware update. Fact is, I have used this lens for more than a week now and I have had no single problem with autofocus. It just works. Reliably. Precisely.

The Song of the Day is “Here Comes Sunshine” from the 1973 Grateful Dead album “Wake Of The Flood”. Hear a live version on YouTube.

Posted by andreas at 7:28 am Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,

1295 - Skateaway

Tamron 17-50/2.8 VC No Responses »
Apr 302010

Just a morning image. More Photoshop than anything else, but what can I do, it’s Friday :)

I needed to be at work early and therefore took the tramway, but then it had a problem with a door that did not close, and instead of waiting on the train, I went the rest of the way.

At the moment I’m on the train, trying to get this post done, in order to begin working on my JEE6 cookbook again. Oh dear, Andreas, I tell you, this is not a job, this is a hobby :)

Last night Ubuntu 10.04 came out, today I have it already running in a VirtualBox on my laptop. Well, actually it’s Xubuntu, the XFCE variant. Small, lean, elegant, works like a charm. And if you’ve no idea what I’m talking about, why not have a look?

The Song of the Day is “Skateaway” from the 1981 Dire Straits album “Making Movies”. Hear it on YouTube.

Posted by andreas at 6:14 pm Tagged with: , , , , , , ,
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