Monday, 27 August 2012

90mm

I know it's been a while but I finally have an update for you all! I recently bought the Tamron 90mm lens for my Nikon D7000. The reason I didn't buy the Nikon lens was because I was told that they are pretty similar and for a couple of hundred pounds cheaper I was happy to settle for the Tamron alternative.  Most of you probably know but, for those who don't, the 90mm lens is a 1:1 macro lens but also a portrait lens too, which is exactly what I wanted. 
I've had my lens a week and I love it, it takes beautifully clear images and I have cropped a few in photoshop to zoom in closer, and they enlarge to a very high quality.

So I just thought I would include a couple of shots I have taken this week when testing out my lens. They are, like I said, just tests so they are not perfect, but they should give you a good idea of what this lens can do and I'm sure I will post more photos taken on this lens very soon.


The first examples were taken super quickly in my Nan's Garden. It was really bright outside and I couldn't see that a couple were not quite in sharp focus, but it's all a learning curve.

 

I'm not a flower expert, but I think they were two roses and the last one is definitely Lavender.
 
I just thought I'd include a photo that I took on my way home from the camera shop, you can see just how close this lens can get and I'm sure it goes closer!
 
I think I need to clean my phone though...kinda embarassing!
 
I also wanted to show you how it works on other subjects slightly further away.
 
So as you can hopefully see, it's a pretty nice lens and I'd definitely recommend it if you don't want to fork out for the Nikon just yet. I'm sure I'll upgrade to that one day, but for now...this will do me perfectly :)
 
Bye for now
 
 
 

Friday, 3 August 2012

Portraiture

I'm sure you're all aware that I haven't done a post in ages and I keep making excuses as to why I haven't done one.
At the moment I am studying portrait photography, and I am taking thousands of photos, but I can't use them because understandably my models don't want their faces all over the Internet, so I haven't got a lot to update you all with.

I was going to do a photoshop tutorial to do with how I edited the portraits, but I've just tried to get onto photoshop and I can't open it because apparently it has a virus, so I now need to update my virus protection and pay about seventy pounds, which is just what I wanted to hear.

I can't seem to open another Internet tab either, because the Internet is also now a virus according to my laptop, so I doubt this blog post will save at all but we shall see.

I was looking back through my old files trying to find some images I could talk about. I found some silhouette images I took last summer. My old camera had a sunset setting, which basically enhanced the vibrancy of the sky and made all the red and orange shades a lot more intense. I took these photos using this setting, but if you don't have a setting like this, just take the photo and you can always boost the contrast a little in photoshop. The sky here was a really lovely shade of orange, and in front of it was a huge tree. I didn't want to photograph the whole tree, because when I did, the image just wasn't that interesting. So, instead I zoomed in on smaller sections of branches and leaves. The shadowy black tones of the leaves worked well against the orange sky I think.

As it is summer, make the most of the long evenings and go out and try some sun set shots! If you live in the west you can photograph the sun setting over the sea, in the east we only have sun rise on the sea which is nice but different. If you want to try some long shutter speeds by the sea, I recommend investing in a ND filter which cuts the light so your photos aren't over exposed. They are not too expensive either.

Here are my sunset photos-



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