Posts Tagged Tamron 28-300
March 10, 2010 – Shi Shi Beach
Posted by Dave in - Best of Dave's POTD -, Picture of the Day, Tropical/Beaches, Washington State on March 10, 2010
Shi Shi Beach, Olympic National Park
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
http://davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=1004
It’s been quite awhile since I put up a shot from Shi Shi Beach, so we’re all about due, right? Yeah, I think so. So here we go. Shi Shi Beach, Olympic National Park. You’ve all heard the story before. If not, go searching through the archives, there’s about a hundred pictures from here that I’ve posted already, and they’re all just incredibly awesome.
You may have noticed over there on the right that I added a “most popular posts” widget. It’s not based totally on post views, it uses other metrics too, like number of comments and incoming links and stuff. You can change all the values for how strongly it weights each thing, and I think I need to tweak it some. But, definitely check it out, and then go through and click on your favorite posts a bunch of times so they end up at the top of the list. Remember, hold down shift and hit refresh. Woooo!
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Tamron 28-300 mm lens. 1/125s, f/8.0, ISO 100. Focal length: 46mm.
Subscribe to the Picture of the Day via: Popularity: 22%
March 3, 2010 – Pollination
Posted by Dave in - Best of Dave's POTD -, Flowers, Macro, Picture of the Day, Washington State on March 3, 2010
Insect and Flower
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
http://www.davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=985
Whoa, not sure what happened there, I completely missed yesterday. I guess I was just.. kind of busy, so I sort of.. completely forgot to post a picture. Sorry about that! I’d say “I won’t let it happen again”, but obviously I will.
I realized today that it’s been almost a month and a half since I posted a picture of a bug. How could I let this happen?? Clearly, I had to remedy that situation immediately. I don’t really know what kind of bug this is (my first guess is always “bee”, but that’s based only on the fact that it’s standing on a flower, so clearly I’m not the authority), but it was willing to hang around for pictures, so it hardly matters.
As I’ve mentioned in the past, taking pictures of bugs like this is purely an exercise in patience. Obviously, they move. A LOT. Also, you’re dealing with microscopic depths of field, so if you tend to sway back and forth when you take pictures like I do, you might think you got the perfect shot only to find out later that you accidentally got the hindquarters of the bug in focus instead of it’s head. Depending on what macro method you’re using – as in, super-expensive-macro-lens, ordinary macro lens, macro kit (like this one), reverse-mounted lens, etc – you may get a larger or smaller depth of field, but it’ll always be super small. So, to counter both of those issues, you end up just needing to take a TON of shots, and hopefully a handful of them will turn out okay. (When I got this picture, for example, I took about 40 frames, and got 5 or 6 that were decent enough to hold on to.) So don’t get discouraged, just keep shooting, and be ready to dig through piles and piles of crappy ones to get what you want.
Notes: Camera: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Tamron 28-300 mm lens with Hoya Macro Kit. 1/200s, f/5.6, ISO 200. Focal length: 109mm.
Popularity: 11%
February 17, 2010 – Strange Vine revisited
Posted by Dave in Macro, Picture of the Day on February 17, 2010
Strange vine revisited
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
http://www.davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=1030
Hey again everyone, sorry for the late post today. It’s been a tough day trying to catch up on everything that I missed from yesterday (the hockey game was AWESOME! Maybe I’ll make a special post sometime with some of the results from me playing sports photographer for the day), so I’m only getting a chance to post something now. I promise, tomorrow we’ll be back on our regular schedule.
This is another take on the crazy curly vine thing that you last saw back in December. To sort of paraphrase what I said about it back then: I don’t know what it is, but I thought it was kind of cool looking. So, I took a picture. Actually, I took a lot of pictures. But this may be the last picture of it you see. Maybe not, we’ll see how I feel in April.
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Tamron 28-300 mm lens with Hoya Macro Kit. 1/250s, f/4.0, ISO 800. Focal length: 35mm.
Popularity: 5%
February 1, 2010 – Salal Bush
Posted by Dave in Fall Color, Macro, Picture of the Day, Washington State on February 1, 2010
Salal Bush
Monday, February 1, 2010
http://www.davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=983
Hey everyone, welcome back! I hope you all had a fantastic weekend. Mine was not too bad. I spent a surprisingly large amount of time out in the snow (skiing one day, snowshoeing the next), hoping to get a decent number of potd-worthy shots. Sadly, I wasn’t as successful as I was hoping. I got a couple that have potential, we’ll see how they turn out when I look at them on the big screen.
In the meantime, here’s a picture of a salal bush from this fall. I actually had no idea what a salal bush was, but it had these little berries that were EVERYWHERE, so I asked somebody what they were, and that’s what they said. This shot (obviously) doesn’t have any berries in it, but it’s from the same bush. Mostly it’s only here because I was playing around with my macro kit (that little set of magnifying glass type things that you put on your lens like a filter), and it was handy. But as you can see, they really do work as advertised, and they can be a lot of fun to play around with. I’d post a link here to Amazon like usual, but I’ve done that a lot of times before and nobody’s every bought one. I’m feeling a bit lazy today, so I’m going to leave out that little detail.
I’ve decided that Tuesday and Thursday this week I’m going to toss up some crappy pictures just to get them out of the way, so don’t get your hopes up too much for those. I’ll try to put up something reasonably interesting on Wednesday, and I’ve got a nice one picked out for Friday. I don’t really know why I feel like Friday is the day to post nice ones, but I’ve kind of settled on that. So whatever. See you tomorrow!
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Tamron 28-300 mm lens with Hoya macro kit. 1/400s, f/5.6, ISO 200. Focal length: 30mm.
Popularity: 10%
January 5, 2010 – Vernazza, Cinque Terre, Italy
Posted by Dave in Europe, Picture of the Day, Tropical/Beaches on January 5, 2010
Vernazza, Cinque Terre, Italy
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
http://www.davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=737
Today’s shot is a view down over Vernazza, one of the five villages that make up Cinque Terre in northwestern-ish Italy. I’ve covered this ground before, so I won’t do that here. But, this is the town where Julie and I stayed when Trevor and Heather got married over there. This picture was taken along the trail between Vernazza (the 2nd of the 5) and Monterosso al Mare (the 1st). The little tiny beach was nice enough, and the water is *amazingly* clear. It looked like the boats were just floating in the air, suspended 10 or 20 feet or whatever over the sandy bottom. That’s the second revision for that sentence. The first revision said something like “…looked like the boats were just floating there.” which seems like a somewhat stupid thing to say.
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel XT, Tamron 28-300 mm lens. 1/125s, f/7.1, ISO 100. Focal length: 28mm.
Popularity: 41%
December 21, 2009 – Strange Vine
Posted by Dave in Macro, Picture of the Day, Washington State on December 21, 2009
Strange Vine
Monday, December 21, 2009
http://www.davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=1033
Welcome back everyone! As you can tell by the very fact that I did indeed post something today, my traffic looks to be improved. Still not sure what happened at the end of the last week, but it sure seemed like most of you decided to go outside and play instead of sitting inside reading my stuff like you should. But since I did kind of already mentally check out for the holidays, I’ve decided to compromise, and use this week and next week (I’ll probably only post 2 or 3 times next week) to post some pictures from the backlog that are either not really that great, or just.. kind of weird.
This one definitely falls into the weird category. I saw this vine thing on a hike one day (I’m not going to say which one, due to my aforementioned hesitation at admitting to yet another picture from the Shi Shi Beach trail – although to be fair, it’s been a month since I posted one. Well, posted one that I actually identified as being from that hike anyway.) I thought it was really cool how those two strands danced and curled around each other, but the resulting pictures were still a bit weird. As in, I felt like when I looked at the picture I started by noticing the cool, playful pattern, but then right at that moment where you’d say “Oh, cool, that’s a [whatever]! Awesome!” I instead found myself saying “Oh, cool, that’s a …. umm… uhh.. what the hell is that?”. So it felt like it had a great build up, but then a crappy, poorly thought out, meaningless ending. But this and the other couple of pictures I got of this.. thing.. are both somewhat interesting photos in my opinion, so it fit perfectly with this week’s theme. (Oh, we’re doing weekly themes now, are we?)
So, there it is. Be sure to check back tomorrow to see what crappy and/or weird picture I decide to use to take up the dead-space between now and the end of the year!
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Tamron 28-300 mm lens with Hoya Macro Kit. 1/250s, f/5.0, ISO 800. Focal length: 50mm.
Popularity: 9%
December 17, 2009 – Insect and Flower
Posted by Dave in Macro, Picture of the Day, Washington State on December 17, 2009
Insect and Flower
Thursday, December 17, 2009
http://www.davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=986
See? A bug and a flower, just like I said. Man, I’m really good at predicting stuff. It’s almost like my today self somehow sent a message back through time to my yesterday self saying exactly which picture would be posted. Almost eerie, really.
Those of you who were with me earlier this year, you know that this summer I went on a mini-odyssey of sorts, exploring several different cheapskate methods of macro photography. The extreme case was of course the reverse-mount adapter that I used to get that picture of the fly a few days ago. That one, while extremely powerful, is also extremely difficult to use. Today’s solution, while it won’t get you nearly as close, is in a lot of ways more pleasant to use. It’s a Macro Kit, which consists of a set of these magnifying-lens type filters that you attach to the front of your lens. They magnify a bit and allow you to focus more closely than you would be able to otherwise. So they get you closer than you would be able to otherwise, but with a whole new set of limitations. (Your depth of field is very small as you would expect, although not as drastic as with the reverse-mount. Also, the area outside of the in-focus range gets blurry in a weird way. I guess I’d describe it by saying it gets “foggy” rather than “blurry”. And, the longer your focal length (distance from the front of your lens to your sensor) the foggier it gets, to the point where, if you’re using a superzoom lens, and your lens is way extended, the whole frame will be foggy, even the stuff that’s in focus. It’s weird, really.)
As with any accessory though, they are well worth playing around with, despite their limitations, especially given their really low price (20-30 bucks.) Again, you’ll definitely get better results with a true macro lens, but you’ll also be paying a heck of a lot more than most of us can afford to spend on such a niche-use lens. So, if macro seems fun (it totally is), go buy one, using that link above, so that I get a kickback from Amazon. We all win! Woooo!
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Tamron 28-300 mm lens with Hoya Macro Kit. 1/200s, f/5.6, ISO 200. Focal length: 168mm.
Popularity: 7%
November 18, 2009 – Valnontey Valley
Posted by Dave in - Best of Dave's POTD -, Europe, Fall Color, Mountains, Picture of the Day on November 18, 2009
Valnontey Valley, Northwestern Italy
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
http://davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=804
Today takes us back to Parco Nazionale Gran Paradiso, a national park in the far northwestern corner of Italy. For a full story of where we were and why, it’s probably best to go digging around the earlier entries ( like this one, this one, or this one), but a quick summary is: we were there, and we saw stuff. And the stuff we saw is totally worth going there to see.
This is probably true everywhere in the world, but one thing that really struck me on our little trip through northern Italy (with a quick jaunt through southern Switzerland) was how warm and friendly everyone was once we got away from the cities. And I’m not even just talking about the folks working at the restaurants and hotels, even the other tourists seemed more willing to come out of their shell. Just as an example, when we were having dinner and breakfast in our hotel in the national park, (a total of 4 meals – 2 dinners and 2 breakfasts) we had two sets of buddies that I don’t know if we would have even interacted with in any other circumstances. One set was made up of two mildly older gentlemen (that’s my new term for folks that are my parents age – “mildly older”. Meaning, they’re older (than me), but they’re not what you’d call “old”) who were down from Britain for a couple weeks just to go “walking”. They were trying out different trails around the park each day, returning to the hotel every evening. I mean, man, what a trip that would be! I’d love to have the vacation time to be able to do that. The other set was two French-speaking ladies from… Quebec City, as it turns out. They were happy to practice their English on us, and we were happy to practice our “speaking more slowly and loudly so that non-English speakers will understand you”. Good times! Also, they had homemade yogurt. I’m glad I was able to work that in there.
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel XT, Tamron 28-300 mm lens. 1/200s, f/6.3, ISO 100. Focal length: 28mm.
Popularity: 24%
October 5, 2009 – Mont Blanc
Posted by Dave in Europe, Mountains, Picture of the Day, Winter/Snow on October 5, 2009
View from Pointe Helbronner - Mont Blanc
Monday, October 5, 2009
http://www.davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=761
Welcome to yet another Monday, everyone! Here’s a picture to help ease the pain. This is the view from Pointe Helbronner, which is the highest gondola station on the Italian side of Mont Blanc / Monte Bianco, which is the highest peak in the Alps. Julie and I ended up there after riding the gondola (well, series of gondolas) up from near Courmayeur. I’m still kicking myself today that we didn’t take the extra time to keep going from there, on the French (Chamonix) gondola, all the way down to the French side of the mountain. I’m not really sure why we didn’t. Some combination of not realizing we could, and not having enough coffee that day. Oh well. Sadly, this was as far as we made it.
Mont Blanc sits right on the Italy/France border. They’ve actually cut a tunnel all the way through the mountain, although I remember it being pretty expensive, and besides, we didn’t have the time, nor did that fit in with our itinerary. This is looking toward the French side. In fact, down that canyon is the Mer de Glace (sea of ice), which is a big huge river-like glacier that’s one of the big tourist draws at Chamonix. The thing that struck me the most when we were hanging out up there (and, everywhere we went in the Alps, really) was how rugged and sharp the terrain is. When you see how razor-sharp those ridgelines are, it’s painfully apparent how young the Alps really are, that nature hasn’t had a chance yet to wear them down into something resembling the Rockies or the Appalachians. Amazing, really.
I asked for some requests last week, so thanks to all of you who sent those in. I’ll be posting an animal picture tomorrow, something from Colorado on Wednesday, and some kind of mountain/water scene on Thursday. I’ll have to dig into the archives and see what I can come up with. That leaves Friday open for a special surprise! Which means that I have no clue what I’m going to toss up on the wall that day. I’ll be as shocked as all of you, I’m sure.
Map: http://bit.ly/gAIjx
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel XT, Tamron 28-300 mm lens. 1/250s, f/13.0, ISO 100. Focal length: 32mm.
Popularity: 21%
September 22, 2009 – Grand Canal, Venice
Posted by Dave in Europe, Picture of the Day on September 22, 2009
Grand Canal, Venice
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
http://davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=849
Hello everyone, welcome back. It’s getting harder and harder to come up with little quips to put at the beginning of my Picture of the Day entries. I’ll probably just start recycling them. People like my wife who remember every story I’ve ever even thought about telling will probably notice, except that people like my wife don’t actually read this crap anyway, they just look at the pictures. So everybody wins!
This is the Grand Canal in Venice. I’ll be honest, it’s not really one of my favorite pictures. But, it’s apparently one of the most viewed images on http://davefry.net/rate . I’ve started putting in little links that say “Read more about this picture” on the pictures that I’ve posted on Picture of the Day, so this is really just a lame attempt at getting some of those folks to head over this way. Don’t you all just feel used?
This picture is good for something though. It’s great for illustrating one of my huge pet peeves, that I’ve already mentioned at least a couple times in the past. When you have things like buildings in your picture (or trees, but buildings are worse), it’s painfully obvious (to my eye, anyway) when it’s not perfectly straight. And, I’m notorious for being a bit lazy and taking pictures that are cockeyed by a couple degrees. So taking pictures of things like buildings (or views where you can see the horizon) is a very frustrating activity for me. On top of that, most lenses introduce a little bit of barrel distortion, meaning they bend things around a little bit, especially near the edges. (Try getting a picture to look level when stuff in the middle is straight up and down, but stuff on the left side is leaning to the right, and stuff on the right side is leaning to the left. Arrrghhh!!) Then, just to put the icing on the cake, in some cases the buildings themselves aren’t even consistently straight! (And, depending on your perspective, having the lines be perfectly vertical or horizontal isn’t always “right”). I swear that was the case here, but that could just be me making excuses.
Regardless, these pictures of Venice drove me bonkers. Taking a picture straight is of course the most preferable option, but even when using software to straighten it out later (which sucks because it degrades the image – although I’m not going to go into why here) is really frustrating. Take a look at this image. The stuff near the middle looks pretty true. But that building on the far right is most definitely leaning toward the edge of the frame. And, as expected, the stuff on the far left is also off-kilter, although this time leaning toward the left. That’s actually kind of weird, it’s the opposite from what I’d usually expect (barrel distortion usually bends things as if it’s trying to turn them into a giant donut), but it’s still annoying. Sigh.
Whatever, enjoy your picture, and hopefully I can convince a few of those folks looking at the picture on davefry.net to check out this entry. Have a great rest of your day. 
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel XT, Tamron 28-300 mm lens. 1/250s, f/7.1, ISO 100. Focal length: 28mm.
Popularity: 21%
September 16, 2009 – The Matterhorn
Posted by Dave in - Best of Dave's POTD -, Europe, Mountains, Picture of the Day on September 16, 2009
The Matterhorn, Switzerland
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
http://www.davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=839
For those keeping track, yes, this is the second photo I’ve posted of the Matterhorn. And yes, it was also taken from near one of the stops of the Gornergrat Bahn (the train that takes you from Zermatt way up into the ski resort), on the same day even. Although this one was taken from a couple stops further down, I believe Riffelberg was the name of the stop.
Not sure why any of you would care, but this is the picture that I use as the wallpaper on my phone. I figured that was as good as any other reason to pick a photo for the picture of the day. Now you know, right?
When I was in Colorado a couple weeks ago, my dad and I watched a show about the geology of the Alps. Among the many factoids absorbed during that time was a little nugget about the layers of rock that make up the mountain chain. I’m almost certainly not remembering this correctly, but I’m pretty sure the main three layers, from bottom to top, are: European rock, then rock from the bottom of the sea, then rock that was once part of North Africa. So, when you look at the peak of the Matterhorn, you can ignore any arguments about whether it’s Italian or Swiss, it’s actually Moroccan, Algerian, Libyan, and Egyptian. Now you know.
Map: http://bit.ly/2k4jGL
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel XT, Tamron 28-300 mm lens. 1/200s, f/6.3, ISO 100. Focal length: 39mm.
Popularity: 13%
September 15, 2009 – Spider
Posted by Dave in Animals, Macro, Picture of the Day on September 15, 2009
Spider
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
http://davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=1063
I’ll be the first to admit. Today’s picture is creeeeeepy. It’s bad enough when you see a spider at normal size. You start imagining what it would be like to have it crawling slowly up your arm and.. ugh, shivers. But now, you can add a little bit of detail to your vivid imaginings. Just imagine all of those little spindly things on its legs gently brushing against your skin. Those 15 or whatever little eyeballs checking you out. Yummy.
This little guy was backlit when I took the picture, that’s why he looks like he’s glowing. I was using the Hoya Macro Kit (Link to Amazon: http://bit.ly/2l96oL ), rather than the reverse mount lens, because that’s what I had on me at the time. It works great for most purposes, but if you’re using a big telephoto lens, as I was, and it’s at the zoomed-in side, and thus extended way out, you sort of get that weird glowy fogginess that you can kind of see. Not necessarily a bad thing, it is what it is. And, I suppose I should mention that I did cheat a tiny bit: when I took the picture, he was actually upside-down. So I rotated him right around, because I felt like I was allowed.
So, sorry in advance for any nightmares or additional reliance on other people to take care of spiders that you find in your living space. I’m sure you’ll get over it eventually.
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Tamron 28-300 mm lens with Hoya macro kit. 1/200s, f/5.6, ISO 400. Focal length: 183mm.
Popularity: 5%