Tamron 18-270:Competent
Sweetgum Spring
Using a lens, a camera, or any other piece of equipment is a relationship, so to speak. I’ve had my Tamron 18-270mm lens since about December 18th. So, it’s been just over 3 months. With it I have shot approximately 2000 photos, I would guess. I cannot be sure because this year I have been doing a lot of deleting of photos that I didn’t like, etc. Clean up, if you will.
During the first month, it was constantly on my camera. After that, it was on my camera most of the time. Now, just slightly more than 50% of the time. The novelty is wearing off. Like in any relationship, you are first attracted, perhaps, for physical reasons. I mean, what’s not to like? It’s somewhat compact, has a range of 18-270mm, and is not all that heavy. As the relationshihp progressed, I noticed that it had a huge amount of lens creep and it was somewhat sticky between the 100mm and 200mm zoom ranges. No problem. I just got used to holding the barrel, lens creep gone, and twisting slightly harder when I felt resistance. These were minor annoyances.
Chromatic Aberration
Most recently, I noticed that the lens has a large amount of chromatic aberration at the long end of the zoom. This is readily apparent if you focus on an object against the sky, as in the above picture. If zoomed to 100%, before the correction, you could see both red/cyan and blue/yellow CA. It was VERY visible. I noticed that CA causes the photo to look less sharp. Correcting it using Lightroom’s tools takes away the CA and restores some of the sharpness.
Lacking “Wow” factor
I tried to judge this lens on its own merits, but it’s hard not to compare. After taking quite a few shots, I started to notice that the images coming forth lacked a certain punch. They had decent contrast and saturation, but something was missing. Sharpness. Each photo had to be sharpened, sometimes quite a bit to look sharp. At first, I blamed the user, thinking that I walk around with the lens a lot and rarely use a tripod with it. Also, I take advantage of the VR and shoot at shutter speeds lower than I would normally shoot.
I had a feeling about it for a while, but didn’t do anything to dispel nor confirm that ‘feeling’. Yesterday, when I was taking pictures of Hobbs, I was using my 90mm Tamron macro lens. When I loaded the photos into Lightroom, my first thought was: “Wow! Those pictures are sharp!”. That is what the 18-270mm lens is lacking. That out of the ‘box’ razor sharpness. The photos of Hobbs, I didn’t have to sharpen at all. I compared them to some of the shots that I had taken with the 18-270mm that I had taken on a tripod, and the 90mm was still sharper off the tripod. Not really scientific, but it works for me as a comparison.
Overall, this is a very competent lens. You will get the shot. It will be of acceptable quality, but you will have to spend some time with the sharpening tools.
Just visiting
These are strange days. I don’t think that since I’ve been married, nearly 17 years, that we as a family have been so distant from each other. I, of course, am in Summerville, SC. My wife had to travel to Brazil because of her mother’s surgery. My son, Pedro, is still in Ohio. Tony is in Dallas, NC, staying with friend that he goes to school with.
My wife will be gone for 3 weeks and will return on April 20th. Hopefully, Pedro will make it down from Ohio by the end of this week so that at least he and Tony can be together at home. In the mean time, Hobbs is with me. The folks at my apartment were very kind and said that I need not put down a deposit or anything since he is just visiting. I just could not see boarding him for 3 weeks. It would kill me!
Hobbs is not very much a traveler. He starts to whine a lot when you get him into the car. I think that this is because, formerly, when he got into the car, it meant that he was going to get boarded or go to the vet. Sunday, he had to ride with me down to Charleston, about 3.5 hours. I tried to make it as pleasant for him as possible by placing his crate in the backseat and letting him ride in there. For the most part, he was cool with that. After a restroom break and some water, he came to the front seat, sat there, looked out of the window, finally laid down and went to sleep briefly. Some minutes later, he climbed into the backseat, went into his crate and slept for the next 2 hours.
When we arrived, I took him for a short walk of about 30 minutes. On Monday morning, we had another 30 minute walk. Last evening, Monday evening, we started our training. Hobbs is a great dog with a cool personality, but sometimes he thinks that he is the boss. My fault for not playing the role of Alpha dog religiously/consistently. After a very brief time on the leash and the training collar, he got the message and was very pleasant indeed. We walked for about and hour, then came back for some off-leash time, which he really deserved. Of course, I had to get my camera and take some pictures of my student!
The sun was shining through a very thin layer of clouds and made such a beautiful diffuse light that I couldn’t resist. As he was in a very attentive mode/mood, the photos were pretty easy to take. All I had to do was tell him to “sit” and then walk away and shoot. Rarely did he get up. I’m very proud of him.
I had to laugh because I remember seeing people stop along the highway to pose their children and dogs in the Bluebonnets when I lived in Texas and I remember thinking: “How cliche’”. Well, these aren’t Bluebonnets, but … LOL!
It’s nice having him here, even if he is just visiting!
SoFoBoMo:Story first
Last year, my approach to SoFoBoMo was rather haphazard. I chose my theme at the last minute, then I went and did my shooting, learned the tool (Scribus) while putting the book together, and just meandered about until I had a finished product. Certainly, this methodology, if you could call it that, has some serious drawbacks.
This year’s project will be different. Last year, I didn’t even read the instructions on how to use Scribus. This made my work even more difficult. Desktop publishing software is so much different than a word processor. There are terms to learn and understand. What the heck is a Drop Cap? How can I get those big initial capital letters in my text like I see in the books? Oh! Those are Drop Caps?!!! Who knew?! 
There is a completely different way of doing things. This year, I’ve already started reading the instructions, following online tutorials, and have started a practice book, tentatively entitled: In praise of spring. This practice book will illustrate the joys of shooting in the rain. I’ve taken to it, as they say, like a duck takes to water! I hope to finish it in the coming days. No. Make that I will finish by Sunday, April 5th! Gotta have a hard deadline to work towards!
In doing the upfront work, in other words, understanding my tool and how a publishing work flow works, I am learning how to make a production ready book. Last year, I used fairly low resolution JPEG images. This year, I’ll use 300 DPI TIFF images, just in case I really want to have the book printed. Last year, I didn’t choose my fonts and styles ahead of time. This year I will. Last year, as mentioned, I meandered about as I put the book together. This year, I will sketch the story / layout first, take the pictures, write/spell check/proof read the text, then I will use the tool to assemble all of them. Scribus, by design, encourages you to use text files and import your already marked-up, proofed text into the editor. There is no spell checking or grammar checking built in. It’s built, I think, to allow different parties to do different things, such as photography, graphics, writing text, doing layout, and then having someone assemble all of those pieces into a finished product. It helps to understand that.
By doing a lot of upfront work with fonts and styles, etc. It should shave a lot of time off of the finished product. Also, by having a road map, knowing where I’m going, it will help to avoid those dead-ends that I encountered at times.
I’m still collecting ideas for a theme and soon I’ll have to decide.
Almost crossing paths … again
Steven takes in the view
Now that Earl has shown me his not-so-secret waterfall, I am quite attracted to it and will visit it as often as possible. Waterfalls are one of the things that I absolutely love about North Carolina. Not many waterfalls to be had here in the lowcountry, as everything is at sea level, just about.
A couple of weeks ago, my friend, Steven, of Two Black Guys in a Ditch fame, called me and said: “Man! I thought that you told me that we were going to get together when you were in town!”. Well, that was true, but I hadn’t had a lot of time to go shooting, so I decided that we should go out to the Bull Hole, Earl’s stomping ground, and do some shooting. We arranged to meet at Concord Mills Mall at 7:00 AM. A little late for me, but I figured that it would be cloudy and overcast, according to the weather report. Also, I didn’t want it to be too early for Steven!
We met promptly at 7:00 AM and drove over to ‘falls’. When we got out of the car, I could hear the roar of the falls. Steven asked: What’s that sound, is there and expressway near hear? I said, no! That’s the sound of the water! He remarked: No way!
As we approached the end of the short path, all that Steven could say was: Awesome! It truly was awesome. The water was coming over the spillway at full force. Usually, there are rocks that allow you to walk most of the way across the river. Those rocks were not to be seen today! No way! Had you attempted to cross today, there was either a fast-water rescue ‘attempt’ in your future, or death.
I kept expecting to see Earl around, but no dice. This evening I read that he had been there! I’m just not sure when. I have a feeling that we were not too far apart. It would have been very nice to see him!
Steven and I photographed for about 90 minutes, then had a nice breakfast at Cracker Barrel, and then headed back to our respective homes; however, before we parted, he asked: Hey, did you bring that lens thing that you were talking about? I thought for a few moments, then remembered: “Oh! The Lensbaby! Yes, I have right here!!!”. I reached into my bag, grabbed it, put it on his camera, showed him how the aperture disks worked, then told him to take it with him and use it for as long as he wants! I meant it too! After looking through it for a while, his only comment was: “This thing is weird!”
We’ll see what he thinks about it, later! I’ll report back on it.
A bit of chromatic aberration
According to Wikipedia, Chromatic Abberation is:
In optics, chromatic aberration (also called achromatism) is the failure of a lens to focus all colors to the same point. It occurs because lenses have a different refractive index for different wavelengths of light (the dispersion of the lens). The refractive index decreases with increasing wavelength.
Chromatic aberration manifests itself as “fringes” of color along boundaries that separate dark and bright parts of the image, because each color in the optical spectrum cannot be focused at a single common point on the optical axis.
It is rare that I notice CA. I guess that it is because it usually only shows in areas of high contrasts. I only noticed it today because I was doing a bit of sharpening and zoomed in to 100%, then it became fairly obvious, as seen in the above picture, which was taken at the airport this morning.
Some weeks ago, Robert Wong asked about my longer term impressions of my Tamron 18-270. I’ve not written more about it because I don’t really have much more to say. I like the lens, though I am about to make a comparison, at some time, between it and my Nikon 80-200mm f/2.8. I don’t really think that it will be a fair comparison. I think that the 80-200mm will pretty much win hands down, though.
Back to CA. It’s not such a big deal anymore because it is quite simple to remove. I simply moved the red/cyan Chromatic Aberration slider to the left to -42 and it all disappeared. Simple as that.
A small bit of humor
As I was looking at Joan’s blog, Charleston Daily Photo, I noticed a sign on one of her posts, here. It’s nearly incomprehensible, but if you take time to read it, it’s pretty funny.
Then, I remembered a sign that I saw:
No Trespassing! Beware of dogs. They will bite ye butt!
Here’s the picture, along the with formidable foe that you would have faced should you venture to the other side of the gate. I would imagine that he’d have to jump a bit to do any butt biting!
Exploration
As part of American history, we all learned about Christopher Columbus and his epic voyage to “The New World”. So what. Done. Gone. Completed. Yeah, that’s nice! The other day, walking around Capital Square in Columbus, OH, I came upon a statue of Christopher Columbus, sat upon a bench, and looked up at the statue. Immediately, I connected with Christopher Columbus. What an extremely courageous man he must have been, I thought. Here is where I tie my photography with my experience. Notice that in the picture, he holds a globe, not a flat disk. He believed the world to be round.
Imagine, at that time, everyone ‘knew’ that the world was flat and to sail off to the horizon meant certain death. You would fall off of the edge, and that was that. You’d be killed by the dragons that lived there. Maps were even marked, at the edges of the ‘known world’, with “Here be dragons”. Yet, Christopher Columbus had faith that the accepted ‘truth’ of the time, was not necessarily true. He was an explorer. I would imagine that he interviewed a great number of potential sailors before getting his crew. Many probably were afraid to face their death. Those that did accept the challenge were rewarded handsomely with the new discovery. The New World.
One of the authors that you’ve heard me mention periodically is Byron Katie. Byron Katie asks:
Who would you be without your story?
–Bryron Katie
What exactly is your story? Quite simply, your unquestioned thoughts. Those thoughts that you believe to be the truth, without question. Your story is that which you believe about yourself, those around you, and your particular view of reality. We all have limitless potential, yet, we are shaped, molded, enslaved if you will, by the thoughts and words of others that we believe to be true, but mostly by our own thoughts. Growing up, your parents said that you should do this, that, the other, be this religion, be this certain person. Society imposes lots of expectations on us as well. Further, we create great amounts of suffering, which is distinctly different from pain, when we continuously deny reality. Suffering is caused by thoughts. Pain can be physical or emotional.
For example, I could feel a little stab of pain at being away from family for so long, yet I do not suffer. I do not suffer because, well, it’s reality, and that’s just what it is right now. I have come to accept it. I do not think about when I will return home because I do not know, therefore, no anxiety. Living in the moment cleans up all sorts of heartache and suffering. Depression comes from thoughts of the past. Anxiety, from thoughts of the future. Both robbing one of the happiness of the moment. I still dance a bit too much with anxiety, but it’s getting better.
Little by little, I am stripping away my story. I am stripping away my self-imposed, and other, labels about who I am. The truth is, I can be many different people in a given day. We constantly change and to hold on to all of those old labels/requirements does nothing but invite anxiety. Mind you, this journey to the ‘new world’ initially invites lots of anxiety, which comes from trying to see the future. I am stripping of layers of varnish to try to find the true Paul, but I have no idea what it will look like. I’m getting rid of the familiar and embracing the unfamiliar. Why? Because I must grow. I’ve lived the old story for too long. It’s time to let go.
This growth has been scary, indeed, but when I look back and see what I have embraced thus far, it is nothing short of miraculous. I’m looking forward to continue my journey towards the new world and I do not fear the dragons.