Last week I bought a new lens, the Tamron SP 150-600mm F/5-6.3 Di VC USD G2, mainly for Nature Photography but also for gigs and events. I’d been umming and ermming for ages about getting a new long lens and I saw this one (second hand) on Parks Cameras at a good price so I jumped in and bought it.
I used to have a Nikon 80-400mm years ago but sold it and have often regretted parting with it. It was mainly due to medical reasons (spinal injuries) that made me sell it but as I’m a lot better nowadays I think I’ll be okay with this one.
So this morning I took the Nikon D800 and the new Tamron 150-600mm lens up to Maiden Castle. There are a lot of new lambs in the fields so thought it would be a good test for the lens. It’s been a good few years since I walked around with a lens this big so it was a good test for me as well!
As we drove up to car park we couldn’t see much as a mist had descended and I was concerned that it might be a wasted journey. But the mist gave off the most fantastic light (mase me wish for a wide angle lens!) so we set off with the dogs along the path. The first thing I saw was a crow sitting on a fence post in the mist, I took a couple of photographs and walked forwards a bit more – the crow stayed on the post so I managed to get another photo before it flew off.
The mist was really thick and I had had about 40 metres visibility which didn’t help trying to photograph the ewes and their lambs. The first series of photographs I took I didn’t bother to process, as you’ll know, the mist really leaches out any colour and adds a haze to the image making it look like you’re shooting through fogged glass!
As it started to burn off, I did get one photo I really like of a sheep emerging from the mist, standing slightly behind a raised part of the field (photo: Maiden Castle Sheep – 01). Then suddenly all the mist was gone and all the lambs were frolicking around. We watched them for a while as I took photos and one particular pair of lambs were jumping on their mum and trying to stand on her back (Maiden Castle Sheep – 04) which made a great photo.
As we started walking back to the car, Caroline spotted some Hares in the opposite field. I had the lens set to VC MODE 1 (standard Vibration Compensation) and as the hares were running around I quickly changed it to VC MODE 2 which sets the vibration compensation for panning. As I said (above) it’s been a long time since I used a lens this big and I didn’t know how good my panning skills would be with extra two kilos of lens attached to my camera…
But, I think I did okay. The three photos below are all at 600mm and uncropped – I’m happy with them as a first time out with lens photographs.
