Go Wide or Go Home! Get Creative New Tamron Sony 20mm Lens

Morgan

5 years ago

I’ve just arrived here in Yosemite and I’m going to shoot this entire weekend with nothing but this Tamron 20mm lens!

We’re out here in Yosemite for a couple reasons. At this time of the year the full moon is going to be rising just as the sun goes down, but the main reason we’re here is to check out the 20mm Sony mount from Tamron. This entire range of lenses, 20mm, 24mm, and 35mm, they’re all 2.8 and all on the exact same barrel size – so you have about a 2.5-inch lens which makes them very compact.

20mm is an interesting lens because it’s about giving you more – for example this shot here, I wanted to get the river and have a shot of El Capitan and it was great for it! I also was able to do a vertical panoramic view of El Capitan with the 20mm and it looked fabulous.

So it’s great for getting more in the frame but I think the real reason you use a 20mm is to force the perspective. You want things in the foreground close and then the background pushes deep.

Another thing about this lens is it’s a 1.2 macro lens – which means you can get in super close. You can focus 4.3 inches from your subject matter, which does give you that ability with a 20mm lens to get that forced deep perspective.

You get that 2.8 which is fast, there are faster 20mm out there but what I love about this series from Tamron is that everything they’ve done from their 35mm, 24mm, 20mm, 17-28mm, 28-75mm, 75-180mm – I just love that the form factor is so small. The lens doesn’t have anything to switch from auto to manual focus on the lens – that’s what keeps it so small. You simply touch the fn button on the back of your Sony and it’s going to give you a menu and from there you go to the focus controls and choose manual or auto.

There’s no internal stabilization on these and it’s just really made to be on a Sony camera.

This has been really fun to be here in Yosemite and to see this valley through the view of a 20mm lens. Such an interesting perspective that gives you a lot but can also get in tight on things and give you forced perspective.

Here are some of the images from over the weekend.

Sentinel Bridge

El Capitan

Valley View

The Lodge

I love using a 20mm because it makes me see the world differently. Most people usually don’t get this wide. It gives you a look of the world that is so interesting.

POST PROCESSING

So we’re back from Yosemite and we’re going to process some images. This is always an exciting part for me because you get to see exactly what you got.

I have been using Luminar since the software came out – they’ve recently become a sponsor here at TSL. I’ve used them for a couple of reasons:

It’s quick! You can make quick changes and ally them. It’s very easy to make those changes. The software has really gone in and done a lot of steps for you. I can go through and edit my images a lot quicker. I can use it either as a plug in to photoshop or use it as a standalone.

With my image here, normally I would go under the light mode and start messing with exposure and highlights, but this time I’m going to go to AI Enhance. As I push this all the way over, it’s doing a lot of what I wanted to do to this image, because it’s understanding the image, reading the information there and giving it a pretty good look. I wanted to open the shadows, I don’t want to blow out the highlights and this just gives me a great starting point.

Now I’m going to go back into light and am just going to open up the exposure a bit. I want the mountain a bit brighter.

I’m going to sharpen the image to about 30 percent.

Now under the color enhancer I’m going to mess with the hue of the blue in the sky. So I get it on my blue level here and then I’m going to cool that off a bit, and then play with my overall warmth with the Warm Sunset setting.

I feel like this is pretty awesome now.

These images show with that 20mm are just fabulous. It’s really sharp and gives you a great view and color in these images. Then with Luminar I was able to punch it up to another level. It’s fast, it’s easy and powerful, so simple to get in make some correction and have a finished image.

We’re about to head out of the valley. I’ve loved using this lens while here in Yosemite. It’s just a small compact lens – 2.5 inches, 1-2 macro which allows you to get 4.3 inches away from subject matter.

It’s a great lens at a great price point – coming in under $350 dollars.

Also, you might want to check out my landscape course I did with Cheyne Walls! Head over to TheSlantedLens.com/landscape to learn from an absolute master at it, which is Cheyne Walls.

Thursday, Feb 13 – Monday, Feb 17th get 20% off all TSL Courses!

In this closing we’re trying to bounce the light off my face with the light in the background so we’re using 3 of the LitraStudio lights. They are so easy to travel with, setup ad use out on location!