Category: Photos

Near the end of the Shem Creek Park boardwalk is a concrete boat dock where I snapped the images that went into this nearly 360° panorama of the creek.

The “reduced” version is 13603×640 pixels while the full size image is 42681×2008 pixels and comes in at about 13MB for the JPEG version. Shem Creek in 85.7Mpx. I like the way it turned out

Note: It seems like Chrome and Firefox are unable to render the full size panorama (too big perhaps?). If you want to see the full size image in all its glory, you’ll probably need to Right click/save link as to download it and view locally.

Went out to the new Shem Creek Park over in Mt. Pleasant yesterday to see what it was all about. It’s a nice place to walk around. The boardwalk takes you along Shem Creek where you can watch shrimp boats going in and out, birds following the shrimp boats, and some nice views of the harbour and marshes.

The 4th edition of the Scott Kelby World Wide Photo Walk is coming! Now with twice the photowalking goodness!
This year’s event has been pushed back to the first weekend of October, which is a good thing for those of us dealing with summer heat. It has also been expanded to two days, either October 1 or 2.
There are currently two photo walks set up for Charleston, both on October 1. The first one is lead by Adam Barrett and starts at 9:45AM at the Charleston Visitor’s Center on Meeting St.

The second one (lead by yours truly) will be an evening walk starting at at 6PM Waterfront Park. Afterwards we can celebrate with drinks at the Griffon Pub.

Feel free to sign up for either one or both by going to the World Wide Photo Walk site. Click or scan the QR codes above to go to the respective photo walk page.

After yesterday’s so-so results with the new lens, I went out to try it in the daylight and found myself at Demetre Park (aka Sunrise Park). The park has changed quite a a bit since I was last there, and there’s a lot more going on now. There’s a new fishing pier/boat dock, new signs, a new beach and benches. Still pretty rocky but more interesting.
When you don’t have to worry about light, the Tamron lens performs pretty well. Focus was pretty quick with less seeking. Long shots turned out reasonably well even being hand held thanks to being able to use a fast shutter speed. I was able to get a few shots of pelicans diving into the water to turn out pretty well at 200 mm.

Got a nice view of Fort Sumter resting the camera on the rail of the fishing pier

There were a few ibises that let me photograph them too

Perhaps the only complaint I have about the Tamron lens is that to go to longer focal lengths, you rotate the barrel to the right, which is the opposite of the kit lens (but the same direction as my Panasonic FZ-50).
So now I have two lenses that perform pretty well in daylight: the kit 18-55 mm and the Tamron. Now I need something for low light. I may have to splurge sooner rather than later on that 50 mm f/1.4 prime I’ve had my eye on.
Actually what I really need to splurge on is a flash.

Picked up a gently used second hand telephoto lens yesterday, a Tamron 18-200 mm f/3.5-6.3. It’s a pretty basic no-frills telephoto lens. Takes some reasonably decent photos although I haven’t played too much with it yet.
At 200 mm, the barrel extends out to a whopping 15 cm (around 6″) from the base, so you’re going to want to be careful swinging it around. The f/6.3 aperture at 200 mm also means it’s going to need a lot of light to get good exposures. Best bet is to use it with a tripod.
The zoom barrel is a little on the loose side. If you hold it pointing down, it doesn’t take too much shaking to make the barrel creep out. It seems pretty stable if it’s not moved around though.
Focusing is a little on the slow side and there’s a bit of a tendency for it to seek a bit. Not sure if that’s because of the lens or the camera. It’s also a little noisy but not offensively so.
200 mm gets you pretty close to things. This is a shot taken from the Aquarium of the container port on the other side of the Ravenel bridge.

The noise in the image is just because I’d forgotten I had the camera set to ISO 800 from using it the previous night. It was a hazy day so the image has been enhanced a little bit to bring out the colours.
This is a shot of the Yorktown at 200 mm, taken from across the river at the Aquarium. There’s some chromatic aberration but it’s not too bad.

It’s an entry level lens and not perfect, but for the moment it does what I want it to do. I’ll be heading off to a friend’s wedding later on this afternoon, so it will be a good chance to work with the lens and see what it will do.