Tag: Tamron

Textbook

I am not a fan of manuals and how-to books.  My preference would be to just know everything and not have to learn it.  Osmosis.

That, however, is not something to be done.  For some reason, a painting book is more interesting to me, by far, than a textbook on the camera or software.  It is just not interesting.  But, I am forcing myself to read a text on the D7000, and truthfully, the one I am reading is far more readable than I thought it would be.  I actually am enjoying it, much to my surprise!

The author is pretty good, and besides not being an illustrated repeat of the Nikon manual, it also has little forays into subjects like focus stacking or HDR.  And opinions.  That surprised me.

Today I learned – not in any particular order – about:

  • Interval shooting
  • Setting the camera up to bracket
  • Different kinds of bracketing
  • Various buttons (refresher for some, new for others)
  • Ways in which to use the remote exposure – 3 ways!  (Didn’t always work, though – wonder if I need a new battery.)

Oh, and other things, but that is going to get dull.

On the other hand, I did get an Adaptall-2 mount in the mail yesterday, for a Nikon.  I have a Tamron Adaptall-2 lens, specifically the 80-210, model 103A.  It has constant aperture, and does macro at a about 1:2.  I bought it back in the 1980s sometime, and as I had a Canon then, it came with a Canon mount.  Luckily for me, I have a clever husband, and with some instructions, he dismounted the Canon Adaptall, and put on the Nikon.  It works rather nicely.  The colors are good, and it was easy enough to use.

This was shot outdoors, bright light, ISO 100.  The petals below were shot indoors, handheld, at ISO 2000, and using the macro portion of the lens.

I think I will enjoy using this lens – it’s really pristine, which rather surprised me after sitting around in various boxes for the past 30 years.

I also did a bit of photostacking with mixed exposures – bracketed exposures – which produced good results.  This is a bowl filled with yellow grapefruit, lemons, and bananas.

And I also just enjoyed shooting a box of tomatoes as I was putzing with the camera while I was reading the book.

I was just playing with the focal points, seeing how the camera responded to my choices.  I kind of liked this one.

So, not an enthralling weekend for learning things, but productive and useful.  And all because I read a textbook!

Discernment

Well . . . I think I am past the point where every picture I take has to be trotted out and uploaded.  Yesterday the Photo Troupe went out to the beach behind the Ventura Marina, late in the afternoon (3:30 pm to be specific), parked itself at a jetty, and got to work.  I took gobs of photos, but only a few were any good, or worth editing.  Some pictures I edited in different ways, from subtle color movement, to dramatic HDR, and finally black and white.  My main focus was composition of ocean and rocks; for the birds, I just ran around chasing them with a long lens.

My first attempts at really long exposures on water, using an ND10 filter, ended with my camera toppling into the sand – luckily not the ocean! – and getting a lot of sand on the filter.  The filter was saved, set aside, gently brushed off, and cleaned with lens cleaner.  However, the one picture I did get, while not particularly dramatic in contrast with the roughness of the rocks and the smoothness of the sea, was worth saving.  The lens I used was the Tokina 11-16mm, which is wonderful for taking dramatic shots – but hard to use with refinement, simply because it is so wide.

One thing I totally forgot was I can change my iso settings on the Nikon!  It does a really good jobs at high iso, so as the sun went down, I pushed the iso from the 100 I used earlier in the day, to 1600 toward sunset, and using a Tamron 70-300mm lens at that – but it was a grrr moment that made me remember that, when all my pictures were horribly dark.

Although I live in Southern California, the coast is damp and chilly, oftentimes very windy.  The salt air clings to everything, and I end up feeling sticky and damp, even if I am not.  All of us were shivery, with fingers capable of doing very little.  Luckily, there is a rather nice cafe that serves excellent hot chocolate, so we ended up there before returning to our lives elsewhere.