The Daily Blog #54
The Order in the Chaos
Texture and pattern with the Tamron 60mm f/2 DiII Macro lens
Macro lenses offer a unique view into the small, sometimes unnoticed parts of life. The close focus distance and 1:1 reproduction ratio make it capable of capturing much smaller subjects than regular lenses. The flat field of view and lack of distortion makes a macro lens a great choice for picking out graphic elements in a scene and isolating them as a composition. The photographs above are just photographs of little details in my life. Little snippets of the patterns and textures that surround me every day and make up the little corner of the city that I live. Macro always reminds me to slow down and notice notice more, and see more.
I shot this series with the full frame Nikon D610 and the Tamron 60mm f/2 DiII macro lens. The lens is sharp and lightweight, so I wanted to give it a go, even though the lens is made for a crop sensor camera. When a lens that is made for a DX body, is mounted on an FX (full frame) camera, the lens does not project light onto entire surface of the sensor, causing serious vignetting around the edge of your image. To counter this limitation of crop sensor lenses (DiII designation on Tamron lenses), Nikon allows FX cameras to shoot in DX crop mode. This mode crops the sensor down from 35mm (FX) down to APS-C sized capture area. This ensures that the lens is projecting light onto the whole sensor evenly. Since the Tamron 60mm f/2 covered past the edges of the DX crop mode, I ended up shooting in FX mode and cropping later after a while. It turns out that the lens covers more of the sensor than the DX mode allowed saving me some resolution loss.
Gear used:
Update: Tamron has announced a brand new 90mm f/2.8 Di Macro lens. Pre-order here.
