Big Things in Small PackagesNature photographer David Akoubian doesn't miss a single moss-covered rock or waterfall with the versatile, compact Tamron 18-200mm Di III VC lens. |
Article By Jennifer Gidman Images by David Akoubian |
Georgia nature photographer David Akoubian just bought a house in the mountains - an ideal locale to plan and conduct his Bear Woods Photography workshops and to put his new Tamron 18-200mm Di III VC lens, designed for the Sony mirrorless camera series, to the test. |
"I'm loving the idea of traveling lighter," he says. "When you're walking around photographing on the street, for example, a bigger camera screams out 'professional' - which means if you're shooting people, they might not relax in front of your camera. With the 18-200, it's not as intimidating to your subjects, plus it gets rid of the fatigue factor because it's so lightweight and compact - important for when I go on my nature hikes. Plus it looks like a traditional lens on a nontraditional body, so you don't feel like you're cheating by using something so light." |
Getting professional quality in a smaller system also streamlines the travel process when Akoubian leaves his neck of the woods in Georgia. "I went to Vegas for WPPI with just my camera and the 18-200, and it was so nice to get on the plane without a big camera bag," he says. "It fit under my seat with room for my feet, and I didn't miss any photographic opportunities on my trip because it covered the entire range I needed to cover." |
From Mountain Highs to Night Skies |
Akoubian, who admits he's been "spoiled" by the quality of all of Tamron's digital SLR lenses, says the 18-200mm lens performs just as well for his mirrorless system. "That's a common complaint of people shooting mirrorless: They feel they don't get the crispness and sharpness they do with their digital SLRs," he says. "These pictures are my proof to show that's not the case. In the shot of the moss-covered rocks, my exposure was 2.5 seconds long. It's extremely sharp, and the detail is tremendous edge-to-edge - I love that the lichens on the left side of the image are sharp, and so are the ones on the right side of the frame."
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The versatility of this all-in-one lens allows Akoubian to also tackle macro work while he's on his nature hikes. "Not only am I going to a lighter system, I'm also able to focus closer if I need to to capture flowers and plants on the fly," he says. "The 18-200 with its 11x zoom allows you to go roughly one-third life-size, so you're able to fill the frame with something that's 3 inches wide. That's really nice because there's not a lot out there that you're going to photograph on a regular basis that's much smaller than that. If I'm hiking in the woods and come across a wildflower I want to photograph, that lens is going to do it. Then I can transition to a landscape by zooming out."
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From his new house in the mountains, Akoubian spies plenty of photographic opportunities. "You can see the lake with that red boathouse from my house," he says. "It's been so warm down here that we've been lucky enough to have a lot of fog in the valleys in the morning. The morning I took that shot, I just jumped in the car and drove down to the lake because I knew I wanted to capture that fog rolling through." |
Old Car City, a famous junkyard north of Atlanta that offers self-guided walking tours through 6 miles of abandoned cars, is another place Akoubian likes to take the lens. "For the shot I show here, the hubcaps were already lined up like that when I got there," he says. "What caught my eye was how the hubcaps and shovel lead the viewer's eye up to the taillight. It was probably another photographer who set it up like that - folks come through and set shots up the way they want, but it benefits the other photographers who come in behind them." |
Akoubian was especially excited to try out the 18-200 to shoot the night sky. Heading out on a clear mountain-air night, Akoubian set up in his driveway and nailed the shot on his first try. "I thought, 'well, maybe I can get a better shot,' but I knew that was the one!" he says. "I've come up with a formula that works really well for doing this type of shot: I set the camera at ISO 3200 on manual exposure for 30 seconds and open the lens up all the way to F/3.5. Because I can't really see, I just focus on infinity and then back it up just a little. It's a short-enough exposure that the stars don't move and I get a great shot of the night sky." |
To see more of David Akoubian's work, go to http://bearwoodsphoto.com. |