Showing posts with label Tamron. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tamron. Show all posts

September 27, 2007

Stacking the Moon with the Tamron SP 500/8

Two days before full moon in September 2007 i wanted to try the Tamron SP 500/8 against the moon. Armed with an adapter for Olympus OM to Canon EOS, a Tamron 1.4 TC (EOS) and a good solid Manfrotto tripod i set out for - well - just the garden.



With the combination of Canon's 30D Body and the TC, the whole setup compares to a 1120mm lens at about f/11 or more.

To avoid any shaking i used a remotecontrol and mirror lock-up. After some test shots i took a whole series - to be exact, 27 images of the moon. And the shooting session was already over.


Here is one sample, 1/160 @ iso 500. 50% cropped. (click for 1:1 size)


Here the same 100% cropped. (click for 1:1 size)

Well the quality is not that impressive, but for starters it's ok.

This is where "Stacking" and the 27 images fits in.

Using the Software Autopano pro i stacked all the images into one image.


From this image (click for 1:1 size), which looks blurred, you are able to sharpen your way to a much better image of the Moon. But you'll need the right software, i used the freeware Registax 4.

Registax has the wavelet sharpener, which really improves the sharpness of your Moon photo.

Sharpening is always a bad idea due to the, in the process, introduced grains. But with the help of Noise Ninja you can make this picture worth looking at.


Here we see the original and the Wavelet sharpened images plus Noise Ninja.


And this is the 100% cropping. (click for 1:1 size)

As you can see, much more detail is available from all these shots as just from one image. One thought came to me during the processing: Why not resize the 27 images from 8 megapixel to 32? Then stack these monsters and do the Wavelet and Noise Ninja, the result must be much better, right?

Well i tried it.


The first image is the original 8mp, the second is the 8mp with wl+nn and the last is the 32mp with wl+nn scaled back down to 8mp!

I must say it's much better. But this seems to be the limit, a least with 27 images. The downscaling of the end picture has a nice sideeffect, it reduces the grains times 4.


This is the end result, scaled down to 33,3% of the 32 mp image and cropped.

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September 9, 2007

Tamron SP 500/8 Tele Macro model 55BB



This is the latest of Tamrons Mirror lenses. There was an earlier model called 55B which did have some optical problems due to mirror design. All that was optimized in this 55BB model.

Technical Data

Released year1983
Discontinued year2005 (Tamron.de told me that)
Minimum aperture8
Elements/groups7/4
Minimum focus distance170 cm
Maximum magnification1:3
Minimum length87.0 mm
Maximum length91.5 mm (dependent of the adapter)
Diameter84.0 mm
Weight0.595 kg
Front Filter diameter82
Rear Filter diameter30.5 (screw-on)
Hood mountscrew-on
Autofocus (AF)no


Gallery

The Images below were taken using a Canon 30D (equiv. to 800mm) with Olympus OM to EOS adapter.



  • 1: Taken handheld indoors @ iso 1600, f/8 and 1/100 s.
  • 2: Taken handheld @ iso 200, f/8 and 1/500 s.
  • 3: Taken using monopod @ iso 160, f/8 and 1/500 s.




  • 4: Taken using monopod @ iso 160, f/8 and 1/400 s.
  • 5: Taken using monopod @ iso 500, f/8 and 1/400 s.
  • 6: Taken using monopod @ iso 160, f/8 and 1/500 s.




  • 7: Taken using monopod @ iso 1250, f/8 and 1/400 s. This is the size of the moon on a APS-C Chip uncropped (equiv. to 800mm) .
  • 8: 100% Crop of picture 7. Sharpened. Noise was removed with Noise Ninja.


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