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: , , , , , , , , ,

1351 - Darkness, Darkness

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

The two villages down along the coast from Sestri Levante, Moneglia and Fornaci, are only accessible from the north via two long tunnels.

Each of those tunnels is actually a succession of tunnels, with the longest one maybe four kilometers long, and the interesting thing is, that they have only one lane. There are semaphores on each side and fixed times when they go green.

Here you see the entrance to the first tunnel in Riva, a part of Sestri Levante with a long beach and some ugly industry, most likely wharves. There is a minimum speed of 40 km/h in the tunnels and a maximum of 60 km/h.

After having arrived in Moneglia, I thought that it was a shame that I had no images of the tunnel itself, so I set the camera to manual focus, high speed continuous mode, speed priority with 1/250s, f2.8 and hoped for the best.

In the next long tunnel I was prepared. I only had to raise the camera through the car’s open roof, press the shutter and see what I get. It was not even distracting from driving. But then, I probably wouldn’t do it with a policeman in sight :)

The image with the boats was taken in Sestri Levante, after sundown on our last evening there.

The Song of the Day is “Darkness, Darkness” from the Cowboy Junkies’ 2004 album “One Soul Now”. This is some more music that I learned to know via Bill Birtch’s blog. Thank you Bill :)

YouTube has the song.

Posted by andreas at 8:53 am 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: , , , , , , ,

1209 - When Sunny Gets Blue

Tamron 17-50/2.8 VC 1 Response »
Feb 052010

It’s Friday night by now. No, I haven’t fallen into a hole and I didn’t vanish from the face of the planet. I was just a little busy.

Remember that I came back to Carinthia on Wednesday? Well, this is an image from Wednesday afternoon. When I arrived in Villach, it was a wonderfully clear, sunny day, and I just checked what the most likely cause of the computer problems would be, decided to buy a new system disk and a copy of Windows 7 Home 64bit, and then spent two hours drivinng around and photographing. What you see here is another HDR, the image was processed today, already on the new system.

The Song of the Day is “When Sunny Gets Blue“. Among other versions I have it as part two of a medley on Sheena Easton’s 1993 album “No Strings”. Of course it’s not available on YouTube, but maybe Anita O’Day’s version can console you. I don’t have it, but it’s, well, Anita :)

On the other hand, I wouldn’t easily dismiss Sheena Easton. She is not usually associated with Jazz standards, but this album is different. Very different. And not bad at all.

Posted by andreas at 10:52 pm Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,

1206 - River

Tamron 17-50/2.8 VC 5 Responses »
Jan 312010

OK, here’s the second post of today’s series. After the plain modesty of the last post, here’s some pompous HDR for a change.

In fact, this image is not without some serious imperfections. I had made the seven bracketed images in high-speed continuous mode, meaning in only a fraction more than a second, but if you look at 100% (which I won’t let you), you see that Photomatix Pro can’t eliminate the subtle displacements of the twigs’ reflections in the water. The program has a box that you can check, and it’s supposed to be able to cope with water, but in fact it can’t. It’s easy to understand why, because the problem is insolvable in general. There may be cases where it works, but in general it does not.

Anyway, I’d say for web presentation it’s good enough, in fact it is good enough when viewed on screen at 50%, so I prefer to ignore the fact. Still, it’s important to know that you still can’t really depend on such algorithms. They invariably let you down at times.

The Song of the Day is “River” from Natalie Merchant’s 1995 album “Tigerlily”. Funny, I always thought that gal sounded like the singer of the 10000 Maniacs :D

Hear the song on YouTube.

Posted by andreas at 10:23 pm Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,

1143 - Sun Goes Down

Tamron 17-50/2.8 VC 5 Responses »
Nov 292009

Here is another HDR image from this afternoon. It’s again been tone-mapped with Essential HDR. I like the snappy look that this program produces.

I have labeled this post to be part of my review of the Tamron SP AF 17-50mm 2.8 XR Di II VC LD Asp IF, the lens that I have bought three weeks ago and that I use exclusively at the moment. I have no interesting sample images, but I thought I should relate another problem of this lens, a problem that I ran into just yesterday and that could influence your buying decision.

Lens flares, ghosts, all sorts of fancy colored things will haunt you when you point this lens towards the sun. It is as if light bounces around and gets reflected back to the sensor by every single element in this lens. In fact, I think that’s just what’s happening :)

This is no lens to shoot into the sun. Never. It’s not bad, it’s disastrous. Don’t do it.

I will look into this deeper, and I will give you samples. This will most likely not happen before next weekend. I need bright sun and some time for this. On the other hand, whatever my attempts at a more exact method may unearth, it won’t change the result substantially.

How does this change my verdict? Hmm … not really. I have bought this lens for two purposes, as a travel zoom and as a low light lens. I have not yet used it on any trip, especially not in bright sunlight, but from the sunny days so far I can say that it performs very well as long as you don’t have the sun in your frame. I guess I can live with that. And the low light part is just perfect.

Let me put it this way: Each lens is a compromise. The cheaper the lens, the bigger the compromises. By and large you tend to get what you pay for. If you look at it this way, and if you account for the fantastic low-light capability, the excellent sharpness and the stabilization, then this lens is certainly a fine purchase. It is a good overall performer, it is a low light wonder, the occasional autofocus hiccups are too rare to make much effect, distortions are so-so, and finally flares are a problem. OK, my advice is very simple: just use this lens for what it is best at. Use it, don’t abuse it. Avoid shooting into the sun and you’re OK. There are other lenses better suited for that. It’s a compromise.

The Song of the Day is “Sun Goes Down” from the 2003 Deep Purple album “Bananas”. Hear it on YouTube.

Posted by andreas at 10:34 pm Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,

1111 - I'm So Free

Sigma 28/1.8 6 Responses »
Oct 292009

That’s a pretty funny number, when you think of it :)

Today’s picture was taken, well, today!!! I’m back in the game. I already feel pretty well, and I have decided to take off for the rest of the week, to stay in Carinthia, relax, and be able to photograph again. Wow, that feels much better now!

As you can see from the file name, this image is an HDR, combined and tone mapped in Photomatix Pro, and then taken over to Photoshop. There I’ve used some combination of Topaz Detail, my neutral blur, my saturation layers, a cooling filter, levels and contrast adjustments, some of them localized via masks, much of that modified by blend-if sliders to work mostly on the highlights or on the shadows, in other words, this image was quite some work.

Does it look like it looked while I was there? Nope. It looks better :)

The Song of the Day is “I’m So Free” from Lou Reed’s 1972 album “Transformer”, one of the best albums ever made.

Uhhm … this is not lightly said. I mean it. Let’s put it like this: When asked for the 20 best albums of all times, I may produce different lists on different days, no question, but I can hardly imagine a day when “Transformer” would not be on my list. And that’s pretty remarkable.

Hear the song in very good quality on YouTube.

Posted by andreas at 1:32 am Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,

1105 - Night Ride Home

Sigma 50/1.4 6 Responses »
Oct 222009

This morning I made some images that could probably have been usable, but then, in the afternoon, on my way back home, in the middle of a slight drizzle, I got pleasantly surprised by an enormous sunset.

It didn’t last longer than maybe 5 minutes, and all the while I made image after image, constantly hampered by the traffic. Finally I decided on this one, embracing the traffic instead of trying to avoid it.

Btw, you may have found my blog to be unreachable today and part of yesterday, and that’s because it was every once in a while. JustHost, my hosting company, had some trouble with my machine. It must have affected quite a lot of people, at least that’s what my stats say. I’m sorry for that, I hope it’s a singular event. If not, well, I’m really not inclined to pay more for something that I’ve bought anyway and that should simply work. But let’s see how it goes on.

It’s far from being the fourth of July, but the Song of the Day still is “Night Ride Home” from Joni Mitchell’s 1991 album of the same name. Great album, great song, hear it on YouTube.

Posted by andreas at 11:48 pm Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,

1093 - Dream River

Tokina 11-16/2.8 10 Responses »
Oct 112009

I took this image yesterday evening, on my way back from swimming. This is one of the three or four possible roads, one avoiding the highway.

I know this place. This is a sundown place. I don’t use it very often, but yesterday I didn’t have anything compelling, so I tried my luck. The Tokina 11-16 was still mounted and two test images confirmed, that I best would use a sequence of bracketed images, or otherwise I would have to choose between detail in the sky and detail in the landscape.

My soft edge split neutral density filters would not have helped me here. Through this ultra-wide lens, the transition would have been much too soft. They would at most have darkend the top too much, doing almost nothing to the sun. The right traditional tool for the job are Singh-Ray’s reverse graduated ND filters. Maybe I should get one, I suppose it would have worked very well.

With no filter available, I resorted to HDR. This is an image made of four out of a sequence of nine exposures. I tried Essential HDR first, and when it had problems aligning the images, I switched to Photomatix Pro. Both are excellent programs, none is perfect, but normally one of the two works fine. I don’t care that much which it is, I go to Photoshop anyway. Of the two tone mapping modes in Photomatix Pro, this is the more conservative, called “Tone Compressor”.

In fact I can imagine very different ways to process the image, with this one just one possibility. The “Detail Enhancer” tone mapping made the scene much less peaceful, more dramatic, and even in Photoshop there are so many different ways to go. There is no single right way and on another day I probably would have produced a very different result.

The Song of the Day is “Dream River“, again by the Mavericks, but this time from the 1998 album “Trampoline”. Hear it on YouTube.

Posted by andreas at 9:41 am Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

1066 - No Place Like Home

Sigma 28/1.8 3 Responses »
Sep 152009



1066: Battle of Hastings. Uhhh … damn those associations :)

This is an image of Sunday. I took it in the early evening, just minutes before we arrived in Villach after 9.5 hours of driving. Most of the way from Kraków to the Slovak border it just did not rain, most of the way through Slovakia we had sunshine, but then in Austria we came into some of the worst rains that I’ve ever had to endure on a highway. Still, everything went well.

The Song of the Day is “No Place Like Home” from the 1992 4 Non Blondes album “Bigger, Better, Faster, More!”. They had one or two hits then, made this album and were never heard of. It’s not their best song, YouTube has it, but I suggest you hear into the biggest hit “What’s Up?” as well. Much better for my retarded taste :)

Posted by andreas at 6:37 pm Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,
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