Category Archives: Tamron 17-50mm f2.8

Architecture, Pentax K200D, Photos, Sigma 10-20mm f4.0-5.6, Tamron 17-50mm f2.8

Welcome to Old Quebec City

Leave a comment
Quebec City Gate, originally uploaded by jezza323.

In October I was lucky enough to take a trip to Quebec city. The old city is amazing, and totally worth a visit.

I spent 4 days there, but could have happily stayed for longer. The food was good, the people friendly, and the city was beautiful.

This is 1 of the remaining gates in the old city wall. It was opened up for the roadway in the 1800′s.

I will be posting more shots from the city over the next few days. For now, here is 1 more!

Quebec City, Canada, originally uploaded by jezza323.

Pentax K200D, Street Shots, Tamron 17-50mm f2.8

Good fun at the Parade

Leave a comment

Good fun at the Parade, originally uploaded by jezza323.

Another one from the summer Caribana parade in Toronto. This one is a bit more of an amusing candid than anything else.

This lovely couple were grinding their way up the street for the parade, and I just happened to catch the rather unimpressed young girl in the background, along with a great expression on the guys face!

Have a giggle and enjoy

HDR, Pentax K200D, Street Shots, Tamron 17-50mm f2.8

Caribana Parade

Leave a comment

Caribana Parade, originally uploaded by jezza323.

Here is the annual Toronto Caribana Parade, which this year ran along Lakeshore (not sure if it has always run along here?). It was relatively small in number of paraders, but there were plenty of people out for a look on what was a very warm summer day.

Most seemed to be having a great time. This was 1 of the larger groups dancing their way down the street. I just held the camera up high and took a quick snap or 2. I processed this in Photomatix as a single exposure HDR, it really made the bright, loud Caribana colours pop.

Pentax K200D, Tamron 17-50mm f2.8

Husky Cross

Leave a comment

Husky Cross, originally uploaded by jezza323.

This is a lovely dog I came across at a little espresso coffee place near Dundas West during the summer here in Toronto.

After a little chat to the owner we discovered that it was a Husky/Foxhound cross, which is quite suprising, because apart from the very obvious Husky eyes there is nothing about this dog that would have you believe it was part Husky!

A quick pat and a photo or two and we parted ways. I shot this one with the Tamron 17-50mm f2.8 lens, zoomed in to help generate some out of focus (OOF) area in the image. Unfortunately I couldn’t get an angle where the background wasn’t too blown out, but this one came out ok with a bit of tweaking in Lightroom.

HDR, Pentax K200D, Tamron 17-50mm f2.8, Urban

An Evening Walk in Koreatown

Leave a comment

Bathurst Street Theatre, originally uploaded by jezza323.

Golden Evening

Last week I was lucky enough to have some time to go for a lovely walk through Koreatown in Toronto in the late evening with the camera and take a few pictures. I haven’t been out shooting as much as I would like the last few weeks, but I am hoping to get out more soon. I haven’t even had a chance to use my newly acquired tripod yet! What about that photowalk you say? Well I may or may not have missed that due to some Jagerbomb caused, self inflicted illness…


An Evening at Bloor & Christie, originally uploaded by jezza323.

HDR

Both of these shots are HDR’s as I thought they would show off the lovely soft golden evening light the best. Both shots were taken handheld with my usual Pentax K200D, and I used a lens I haven’t used for a while, the Tamron 17-50mm f2.8. I took the 3 shots for the HDR using bracketing at +/- 2.0 EV. To process them I imported into Lightroom 3, then used the Photomatix Lightroom plugin to export the 3 base images to Photomatix for blending. I used the standard Tone Mapping method to generate the final HDR’s which the plugin automatically re-imports back into the Lightroom library for you. I made a final crop and adjustment before exporting to JPG and uploading to Flickr.

Motorsport, Panorama, Pentax K200D, Tamron 17-50mm f2.8

Grand Prix du Canada

Leave a comment
 

Grand Prix du Canada Stand 21, originally uploaded by jezza323.

The Grandstand

As I mentioned in my previous post, I recently spent the weekend in Montreal to attend the Grand Prix du Canada (Formula 1 Grand Prix). You must view this panorama in large size!

The View

I had seats in Grandstand #21, which luckily happened to be right next to the entrance to the track, as well as having a great view of the hairpin. This is the view from the edge of the stand, my seats were a bit off to the left of the photo, but the view was almost as good!

Shooting the Panorama

This panorama was shot using my Pentax K200D and Tamron 17-50mm. I took about 10 shots in portrait orientation at 17mm, with lots of overlap to give me the best chance of a successful panorama. It worked out very well considering the challenges of the image, and only the railing of the grandstand and some minor problems from moving people were encountered.

Harsh Lighting

It was a very bright sunny day which meant the shadows were quite harsh, so, once Autopano had stitched the image together for me, I loaded the single TIFF file into Photomatix and generated a low key HDR. This is the result, good view isn’t it?

Carn Webber!

To make the panorama extra special, that is my favourite driver Mark Webber in his Red Bull Racing car approaching on the right side of the image. Webber finished the race weekend 3rd, after being hit and spun in the 1st corner of the race, a good comeback! It was also a very spectacular race, Jenson Button won the race after a come from behind victory. During the race he had a drive through penalty, a flat tyre and was run into by his own team mate! What a performance.

HDR, Pentax K200D, Street Shots, Tamron 17-50mm f2.8

An Evening in Old Montreal

1 Comment

An Evening in Old Montreal, originally uploaded by jezza323.

Grand Prix Time

I was lucky enough to be able to spend last weekend in Montreal for the Formula 1 Grand Prix du Canada. Unfortunately I didn’t get to see much of Montreal itself, but I saw lots of the Grand Prix!

Old Montreal

This shot was taken on our first evening, we caught the Metro into Old Montreal to have a look around, as everyone had recommended we go there. Old Montreal had a very European feel about it; it has cobblestone streets lined with old buildings full of restaurants, pubs and gift shops. Well worth a visit if have the chance.

Photo & Processing

This is a single exposure taken with my Pentax K200D and Tamron 17-50mm f2.8 lens. I made sure to set the zoom to around about 35mm so there was minimal distortion in this shot.

Due to it being late evening the shadows were quite dark, and to help bring up the detail a little I decided to have a go at doing a single exposure HDR. I did a quick Tone Map in Photomatix, imported back to Lightroom (the Photomatix Lightroom plugin is really handy for this btw) and finished off with a slight crop and conversion to black and white.

Result

I quite like this photo, its a shame the shutter speed was a little slow, as it means some of the people’s features are a little blurred. How do you think it turned out? It is always good to have something to work on for next time.

Landscapes, Pentax K200D, Tamron 17-50mm f2.8

Niagara Falls

Leave a comment

Niagara Falls, originally uploaded by jezza323.

A close up shot of the Horseshoe (Canadian) Falls at Niagara Falls. You can really see the power of the water here!

I went for an early morning walk on our last day (Victoria Day) while there were not too many people about. It was a beautiful clear sunny morning, but the spray was quite intense, and the harsh light made for difficult shooting conditions. I walked up to the falls, then took this shot on the way back.

This was a single exposure, taken with my Pentax K200D and Tamron 17-50mm len with a Kenko Pro-Digital CPL filter fitted. All editing (levels and tiny straighten) were done in Lightoom 3.

Architecture, Pentax K200D, Tamron 17-50mm f2.8

Skylon Tower

Leave a comment
 

Skylon Tower, originally uploaded by jezza323.

This was taken from our hotel room when we spent the Victoria Day weekend down at Niagara Falls.

Skylon Tower is an observation tower built overlooking both the falls at Niagara. It is quite a sight all lit up at night.

I took this one handheld (I have no tripod anymore – see here for why) but it came out very sharp anyway. I pushed the ISO to 1600 (the highest my old K200D goes) and kept the lens as wide as I dared. The camera’s inbuilt Shake Reduction function also helped a lot for this shot. The exposure was 0.1s @ f4.0. Unfortunately I forgot to remove my Kenko Protection filter, so there are a few slight reflections doubling up in the shot. This happens with night shots as light reflects off the front lens element, then off the inside of the filter and back into the camera.

I edited this single exposure in Lightroom 3. I made use of the Noise Reduction, which is much improved from Lightroom 2. I also played with the levels and gave the shot a slight crop.

HDR, Landscapes, Pentax K200D, Tamron 17-50mm f2.8

American Falls

Leave a comment

American Falls, originally uploaded by jezza323.

This is the American Falls at Niagara Falls, viewed from the Canadian side of the border. I took this one quite late in the evening, on an after dinner walk. I was so stuffed full of food I had to walk some of it off.

This is a 3 shot HDR, taken at +/- 2.0 EV with the Pentax K200D and Tamron 17-50mm f2.8 lens.

I blended the shots with Photomatix and made some final adjusts in Lightroom.