Zig-Zaggy clouds above trees

One of my less snappy titles, admittedly and it seems that despite some beautiful sunset/sunrises, my recent Blips have been after sundown, such as yesterday's.

And this one, desaturated slightly, from a quite strong blue, to this. Uncropped - and unsharpened, but with a little shadow extraction to make the area around the trees more clear, this had a 6 second exposure.

That length only for what it needed, to keep iso levels low - greys are the worst for showing 'noise', as they did for grain in film. I was a bit concerned about the clouds moving, though there was hardly any wind but if they have, they've been softened slightly and in my view, this looks fine as it is.

Lens is Tamron's flagship SP 70-300mm VC. I find this lens better overall for landscapes than Nikon's, as it's got better coverage of sharpness across the frame, especially at the long end, slightly less contrasty, (Nikon's is more geared toward central image sports and action) giving better shadow detail and slightly faster short-end. Tamron's VC isn't as good as Nikon's VR, esp when in a hurry but Tamron's USD focussing is as good. I couldn't live with my Nikon as it has almost no manual focus ring and was in a stupid place and had to visually look for it, taking my eye away from where it counts, the viewfinder. And it's physically impossible to attach a teleconverter to the Nikon, whereas I can use, with fair/good results my Sigma 1.4X with the Tamron, giving 560mm top end with the D7000.

Try it on L (large)

Took the old battered all-metal Nikkor 135mm f2 into my local shop, for a bit of a 'tinker', by my mate Ken. Why it was "cheap" - it's all relative, of course, on ebay was partly as it had seen many better days and so screwing in a polariser (72mm) is not really possible. Seems to have got a little bent about that area and so Ken, for a tenner, will get his toolkit out give it a little cosmetic 'surgery'. You certainly wouldn't get that with a new plastic moulded filter thread and why it's also well worth giving your favourite, local, friendly camera shop as much business as you can. Here is their link Castle Cameras, Salisbury