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Posts Tagged ‘SAL18200’

Flowering Dogwoods, Mustard Blossoms and Redbuds in Maryland

Posted in 3rd party lenses, Digital SLR, Landscapes, Macrophotography, Minolta AF Mount, Photography, Sigma, Sony Alpha 700, Sony α, Sony SAL18200, Zoom, tagged Alpha 700, Carroll County, Flowering Landscape, Gaithersburg, macro lens, Mustard Blossoms, SAL18200, Sigma, Sony Alpha, Spring Flowering on April 23, 2008| Leave a Comment »

Mid-April is the time for flowering dogwoods and vast expanses of wild mustard growing in the fields all over Carroll County… later in the year, these fields will be planted with Soya beans or Corn, but for now, they are just a golden mass of flowers, gently swaying in the slightest breeze. The dogwoods are something to look forward to, as they appear just as the Cherry Blossoms and Magnolias are fading, and they are much more durable blossoms. April is also the time of heavy rainfall here in Maryland, and delicate blossoms like the cherry don’t hold up well. Here are some of the pictures I took in Gaithersburg, and along Rte 27 north of Mount Airy, on the road to Westminster, MD. Mostly flowering dogwoods and fields of mustard blossoms – and a few redbuds.

Dogwood and Mustard	Dogwood and Mustard
Dogwood and Mustard	Dogwood and Mustard
Dogwood and Mustard	Dogwood and Mustard
Redbud	Redbud
Redbud	Dogwood and Mustard
Dogwood and Mustard	Dogwood and Mustard
Pin Oak flower	Birch flower

Dogwood and Mustard

Redbud

Dogwood and Mustard

Thistle

Dogwood and Mustard

Photographed with a Sony Alpha 700 and Sony 18-200mm f/3.5-6.3 Zoom lens. I used a Polarizer. Close-up of Pink dogwood photographed with a Sigma 50mm f/2.8 Macro 1:1 lens with Tiffen 812 warming filter

Alphamagic by Ajoy Muralidhar is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
text and images © 2007-2008 ajoy muralidhar. all product names, websites, brands and technical data referenced are the copyright or trademark of their respective owners. thank you for visiting alphamagic, have a great day!

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Colonial Beach, VA – Sony Alpha 700

Posted in Digital SLR, Landscapes, Photography, Sony Alpha 700, Sony α, Sony SAL18200, Zoom, tagged Colonial Beach, Hustoric Beaches, Potomac River, SAL18200, Sony Alpha 700, Tiffen polarizer, Virginia Beaches, Waterscape on April 21, 2008| Leave a Comment »

Colonial Beach is a little town on the Virginia side of the Potomac River, about 60 miles south of DC… it’s the second longest beach in Virginia (Virginia Beach is the longest). The town was founded in 1892, and served as get away for the residents of DC in the early years of the 20th century, especially in the years before the Great Depression. It was a favorite holiday spot, and it grew and thrived until the coming of automobiles and other transportation – vistors preferred to come on day trips, rather than leisurely vacations as before, and this led to the waterfront hotels closing down.

The town limped along, losing population and businesses until the 2000’s. Then, as if that wasn’t enough, Hurricane Isabel pretty much destroyed the little waterfront town in 2003. The residents are a resilient bunch – they picked up the pieces and rebuilt again. The housing boom brought some prosperity, with developers taking interest in the town. However with the current bust in housing, the city may see some hard times again, but I hope it will recover easily.

The beach is a great place for a family visit.. it’s clean, and with good amenities – parking, restrooms, restaurants, beach shops etc are all located very conveniently, and there is even a Days Inn located right on the beach for overnight and weekend stays. Nancy’s Ice Cream is closeby, and I recommend the Chocolate Ice Cream soft cones.

This past Saturday 4/19 was beautiful, bright and warm in the 80’s so we drove down to Fredericksburg on I-95 and then east on Rte 3 until we got to Rte 205. We followed Rte 205 all the way to Colonial Beach, it’s easy to follow the signs. My daughter Sunayana had been asking to go to the beach since it started turning warmer, and we could not have asked for a better day to be at the waterfront.

I took the Sony Alpha 700, and after some deliberation, I took the Sony 18-200mm lens as it’s the perfect all-occasion lens, and fitted with a Tiffen Polarizer, perfect for beach and water photography. I took along some other AF and manual lenses, and never got around to using them. We got there in the late afternoon, and found parking under a large Willow oak just a hundred feet from the water.

The Sony 18-200mm SAL18200 is a pretty versatile lens, especially when you want to travel light and are reasonably sure of good light levels. It’s equivalent to 27-300mm in the 35mm format, and the huge zoom ration it affords pretty much covers any situation. The lens is a bit slow at the fully extended part of its zoom range (It ranges from f/3.5 at the wide end and f6.3 at the 200mm focal length), but on a bright day, it doesnt matter at all, since we’re generally shooting at much smaller apertures (f11 to f13) with polarizer.

Colonial Beach, VA	Colonial Beach, VA
Colonial Beach, VA	Colonial Beach, VA
Colonial Beach, VA	Colonial Beach, VA
Colonial Beach, VA	Colonial Beach, VA
Colonial Beach, VA	Colonial Beach, VA
Colonial Beach, VA	Colonial Beach, VA
Colonial Beach, VA	Colonial Beach, VA

Colonial Beach, VA

Photographed with a Sony Alpha 700 DSLR and a Sony 18-200mm f/3.5-6.3 lens and Circular Polarizer. I used the landscape setting and Auto ISO, with Sunny White Balance.

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2008 Cherry Blossom Festival, Tidal Basin, Washington DC

Posted in Digital SLR, Landscapes, Photography, Sony Alpha 700, Sony α, Sony SAL18200, Telephoto, Zoom, tagged Alpha 700, Cherry Blossom Festival, Jefferson Memorial, Potomac River, Roosevelt Memorial, SAL18200, Sony, Spring Flowers, Tidal Basin, Washington on March 31, 2008| Leave a Comment »

Ever since the first signs of Spring, I’ve been out with my cameras, not wishing to lose any of the magic of the Great Annual Awakening of Nature. Maryland’s topography is so varied that even though it is such a small state, Spring arrives early in the southern part of the State, especially around Chesapeake Bay and the lower Potomac – almost a full month before it arrives at the Northern regions – near the Pennsylvania border. The rolling hills and valleys of Carroll county are decidedly cooler than DC and the annual cherry flowering takes place almost a week after the Tidal basin flowering

This year (2008) the the Cherry Blossom Festival kicked off on Saturday, March 29 – the flowers began blooming a couple of days before that, and on the 29th, it was close to approaching the peak – and it was 50 degree weather the next few days are likely to be cold and rainy, and we’ll lose a lot of the blossoms. I’m hoping that the flowers last until next weekend. The Festival itself runs until April 13th – but I’m afraid the flowers may be all gone by then. Here are the flowers.. as usual, it was a family trip, but we got separated looking for parking, and never caught up with the other car (which, incidentally, had our picnic lunch). My group ended up snacking at the refreshment stall behind the Jefferson Monument. I was able to walk around a bit under the trees, and here are the pictures. The crowd was very heavy on Saturday.

2008 Cherry Blossom Festival	2008 Cherry Blossom Festival
2008 Cherry Blossom Festival	2008 Cherry Blossom Festival
2008 Cherry Blossom Festival	2008 Cherry Blossom Festival
2008 Cherry Blossom Festival	2008 Cherry Blossom Festival
2008 Cherry Blossom Festival	2008 Cherry Blossom Festival
2008 Cherry Blossom Festival	2008 Cherry Blossom Festival
2008 Cherry Blossom Festival	2008 Cherry Blossom Festival
2008 Cherry Blossom Festival	2008 Cherry Blossom Festival
2008 Cherry Blossom Festival	2008 Cherry Blossom Festival
2008 Cherry Blossom Festival	2008 Cherry Blossom Festival
2008 Cherry Blossom Festival	2008 Cherry Blossom Festival
2008 Cherry Blossom Festival	2008 Cherry Blossom Festival
2008 Cherry Blossom Festival	2008 Cherry Blossom Festival

2008 Cherry Blossom Festival

Photographed with a Sony Alpha 700, Sony 18-200mm f/3.5-6.3 SAL18200 lens at Landscape setting and Auto ISO. I used a polarizer. The Shutter speeds ranged from 1/320 second in the Sun down to 1/50 second in the shade Here are the rest of the pictures.

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Sony SAL18200 18-200mm f/3.5-f/6.3 Lens on the Alpha 700

Posted in Digital SLR, Photography, Sony Alpha 700, Sony α, Sony SAL18200, Zoom, tagged Christman Park, Gaithersburg, Montgomery Park District, SAL18200, Sony Alpha 700 on February 15, 2008| Leave a Comment »

I’ve been so busy testing all my Olympus mount Zuiko and Kirons and Vivitars as well as the Minolta AF, Sigma, Tamron and Phoenix lenses on the Sony Alpha 700 that I feel that I haven’t really had a chance to use the Sony lens that I bought along with the Sony A700 body. It’s the Sony 18-200mm f/3.5-6.3 lens, officially named the SAL18200.

Coming from the manual lenses world, I originally had some trepidation with regards to the extended 1:11 zoom ratio, but I have been pleasantly surprised. Prior to this, the largest zoom ratio lens I owned is the Kiron 28-210mm super-zoom (1:7.5 zoom ratio) for Olympus mount. The Kiron is an awesome lens, but it’s bulky and heavy.

There used to be a time when designing lenses with such large zoom ratios used to mean accepting that there would have to be a compromise in the performance, particularly at the shorter end of the zoom, but Sony has some how managed to make it work. Sony even has a lens with an even larger zoom ratio, the SAL18250 (18-250mm) which has a mind boggling 1:13.9 or 1:14 zoom ratio.

In 35mm format terms, this 18-200mm lens is equivalent to a 27mm-300mm zoom lens, which pretty much covers every shooting situation that one is likely to encounter in casual photography. It’s a very well built lens, but I admit I’d have been happier if the lens had a metal mount like all my beautiful Minolta AF lenses instead of a cheesy hard plastic mount. But such is life. Industrial plastics get tougher, lighter and stronger every year, so I’m not complaining too much, though.

The one thing I am really happy about is that the SAL18200 a Sony “Made in Japan” lens – I expect that the production will soon shift to their Chinese or Malaysian plant. The fact that the China plant didn’t pass the official Chinese quality inspection doesn’t leave me with a lot of confidence in the facility, so I was happy to pony up the few extra dollars for the Japan made label. Maybe I’m just being paranoid, but that’s me. Don’t get me wrong, I’m no China snob, I buy my share of stuff from Walmart and other stores, but I’m particular about my lenses.

The brochure states that the lens has a close focus of about 18 inches, but I have found in practice that it can focus as close as 12 inches at full extension – that’s at the 200mm focal length (300mm) so it’s very useful for close-ups as well as any general photography.

The lens is short – about 4 inches or so, with a 62mm filter, so its about 3 inches thick at its widest point. It’s short enough that the lens barrel doesn’t obstruct the on-board flash even when focusing close. The lens gave me a petal hood as well, which mounts very easily, and I reverse the hood on the lens body for easy transport.

The lens has focal length markings at 18mm, 35mm, 50mm, 75mm, 100mm, 135mm and 200mm (APS format) which correspond to 27mm, 52mm, 75mm, 112.5mm, 150mm, 202.5 and 300mm in 35mm format.

Here’s a series of photographs taken at each focal length detent mark. These pictures were taken at Christman Park in Gaithersburg.

Sony SAL18200 Lens-18mm (27mm eq)	Sony SAL18200 Lens-35mm (52mm eq)
Sony SAL18200 Lens-50mm (75mm eq.)	Sony SAL18200 Lens-75mm (112.5mm eq.)
Sony SAL18200 Lens-100mm (150mm eq.)	Sony SAL18200 Lens-135mm (202.5 eq.)
Sony SAL18200 Lens-200mm (300mm eq.)	Sony SAL18200 Lens- the Menhir

Sony SAL18200 Lens- Christman Park

Photographed with a Sony A700, Sony 18-200mm f/3.5 –f/6.3 lens

text and images © 2007-2008 ajoy muralidhar. all product names, websites, brands and technical data referenced are the copyright or trademark of their respective owners. thank you for visiting alphamagic, have a great day!

Alphamagic by Ajoy Muralidhar is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

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alphamagic

explorations with my Sony α 700 dSLR

Posts Tagged ‘SAL18200’

Flowering Dogwoods, Mustard Blossoms and Redbuds in Maryland

Colonial Beach, VA – Sony Alpha 700

2008 Cherry Blossom Festival, Tidal Basin, Washington DC

Sony SAL18200 18-200mm f/3.5-f/6.3 Lens on the Alpha 700

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