Pictures, Rants and Going's on...: October 2009

I'm pretty sure the last time i went to the Indianapolis Zoo i was in middle school. There a few new tricks these days. Some new features, animals, buildings...you get the drift.

Tamron sponsored a nature shooting seminar through Roberts Distributor's on the 9th/10th. Terry Livingston was the featured speaker during Friday evening's workshop and led the shooting at the zoo on Saturday. Terry is a very talented photographer with a calming, simple approach to photography which makes his work shine.

The Tamron 200-500mm lens was indispensable for many shots where shooting through a fence or glass was the only option. The extreme focal distance allows great depth of field compression to minimalize the visual obstruction.

Here's a sampling of my shots from the day:

Green Tree Python. SB800 with Honl 5" Snoot slaved from below camera left.
Nikon CLS from SU800. Tamron 90mm 2.8 Macro/Nikon D700

Tamron 200-500mm f/5-6.3/Nikon D700

The remaining shots are captured with a homemade closeup lens from parts of a Nikkor 70-300G lens. The lens AF failed and the zoom barrel jammed when it was dropped. I disassembled the lens and started placing the elements back together in various concoctions. Finally realizing that i could achieve stunning magnification with a fixed focus and fixed focal length. Maintaining the aperture lever allows for depth of field control, but, in practice, this is almost negligible as the DOF is piercingly shallow at any aperture except stopped all the way down. The following images are from the D700 and the homemade lens (minimum aperture). With the exception of the berries (shot using only ambient light), a single, off-camera SB800 provides illumination with a HonlPhoto 5" Snoot as a reflector. This combo provides a light source to subject size ratio of better than 20:1, thus providing very diffused light with excellent color value throughout. For a lens that originally retailed for around $150.00, i am very impressed by its resolving of detail and contrast.

The next post will show the lens itself and hopefully some rough specifications about it. I am looking for a way to set values for its available apertures, close focus distance, field of view and focal distance. More to come...