So, the sun rose again
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Recent endeavor found a humble narrator waking up at 5 in the morning and then driving over to the West End Overlook Park, in Pittsburgh’s Eliot section, for sunrise. A new lens has been acquired, one which finally replaces my old Sigma 18-300mm Superzoom that was a ‘go-to’ on my older camera. The Sigma was a ‘crop sensor’ lens, so adapting it onto my current ‘full frame’ setup never was a good idea as I was throwing away a third of the image by doing so.
The new glass I’ve acquired is from Canon, and it’s a 24-240mm superzoom. Nothing better for testing a lens than mounting the camera onto the tripod and doing a sunrise session, I seldom say.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This is very much a ‘daylight’ and ‘outdoors’ lens, with a fairly narrow maximum aperture, but I was impressed by the results it produced. It’s heavy, but with this new device in my bag, I can leave several other lenses at home and go out with ‘bare minimum kit.’
Pictured is a CSX freight train rounding a bend along the Monongahela River on Pittsburgh’s south side.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The shots in todays post were all captured in about an hour or so, and they were selected not to necessarily display the growing illumination of the burning thermonuclear eye of god itself, rather they just kind of fit in with what I was trying to do here – discerning the failings and strengths of the glass before my return window closed on it.
If a lens sucks, I send it back.
That’s Allegheny General Hospital in the shot above.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Looking downward at West End Bridge’s approach ramps just as the morning light reached them.
Just like my old Sigma lens, this new one operates best with a narrow aperture – I like f8 for this kind of shooting. It’s a variable aperture zoom, f4 at the wide side and f6.3 at the telephoto side.
At some point I decided to pop the camera off of the tripod, activate the lens’ image stabilizer technology, and then shoot handheld for a while. It behaved like a champ.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Long telephoto lenses are pretty expensive when you get to the high end, especially the ones you’ll see sports and bird photographers brandishing. I didn’t need anything like that, as I don’t regularly shoot those sorts of things. Instead, being able to quickly dial between wide angle and long telephoto was what I’ve been missing in recent months.
This one looks down the Monongahela River, and that’s the Fort Pitt Bridge at bottom right.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Wide open at 24mm, you can see the range that the zoom lens offers when comparing it with the 240mm shot which preceded it. This is a bit wider than human vision, but was more or less the scene I was looking at.
Back tomorrow with something different, at this, your Newtown Pentacle.
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[…] in the distance, amongst those hills, is the West End Overlook park which I’ve visited repeatedly since moving to […]
From Frank Curto Park | The Newtown Pentacle
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