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.
New telephoto lens
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.
Touring Charleston Breweries
You might be surprised to learn that there’s a lot of beer brewing going on in the Charleston area. Today I joined a bunch of people on Lowcountry Local First‘s Brewery tour, hitting three breweries.
The tour started off at Palmetto Brewing, then the SCLEEP bus took us to Coast Brewery and finally to the brand spanking new Westbrook Brewing. The even more brand spanking new Holy City Brewing wasn’t on the tour today, but maybe it will be for the next one.
You might think that since they all brew beer, once you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all. You’d be partly right, but mostly wrong. All of them have more or less the same type of brewing hardware and follow more or less the same process, but each of them take different approaches to the craft of brewing.
Palmetto was the largest, most automated and produces the highest volume of the three. That doesn’t keep them from coming up with some tasty brews though. I sampled the Charleston Lager, Pale Ale and Espresso Porter. The lager was a nice light beer while the Pale Ale was a little too much on the hoppy side for my liking. The Porter was my favourite, with the espresso providing a nice smooth coffee flavour (courtesy of Charleston Coffee Roasters next door).
Coast is the smallest, brewing a volume of around 1/10 that of Palmetto. Coast is kind of my default favourite because they’re the first of the local microbreweries I started with. Coast prides themselves on being small and keeping as organic as they can, and it shows in the beers they put out. They had their usual four offerings, but I only had the 32/50 Kolsch. It’s a hard one to say no to on a hot day. The Boy King Double IPA is a favourite with most of my friends and although I’m not generally a fan of IPAs, Boy King is one I don’t mind drinking.
Westbrook is new and shiny. Compared to Palmetto and Coast, which are both located in old warehouses, Westbrook Brewing is fancy. New building, shiny new equipment and pretty landscaping.
You’ll even find a few hops vines growing outside, which I’m told produces enough to be used for a couple casks of beer. If you’ve never seen real hops, stop by and check it out.
Westbrook likes to play with their brewing, adding flavours that you wouldn’t normally expect in beer. Here I sampled the White Thai and the Cowboy meets Farmer. Both were pretty hoppy brews that I’m not too sure I liked. I could probably drink the Cowboy though.
Perhaps most interesting was the beer they had aging in oak barrels.
There was beer aging in a variety of different types of oak barrels: Jack Daniels whisky barrels, pinot noir barrels, French oak, American oak. Wouldn’t mind having a chance to taste some of them when they’re ready to be tapped.
The tour was a great time, and it was pretty cool to get to see the different perspectives and approaches to brewing beer. I think Coast still remains my favourite though.
Smiley breakfast
RAM anyone?
I now have 12GB of DDR3 available if anybody is interested in buying them.
They are ADATA Gaming Series 2GB DDR3 1600 sticks (6 of them) that have been running in my desktop for just over a year now (up until today).
Currently retailing on Amazon.com for $33 and on Newegg.com for $24. $20/stick or $100 for all 6 of them. Also willing to entertain reasonable offers.