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Think Tank – Glass Taxi bag
I was looking for a small bag to fit the Tamron 150-600mm mounted to my Canon 60D. I had seen the review with Jared Polin for this bag. He was able to put in lots of pro lenses in that small bag. He was very surprised by how good the bag was and was saying it was light weight. So I thought I have to try the bag to see what the fuss is all about.
I was checking it out in the store and I also had my camera and the Tamron 150-600 mm lens with me to try it out.
First thoughts of this bag was that the lens and the camera fits in the bag! That is a good start.
When the padding came into the picture, the issue started. The shop keeper and I tried to build it up so that you would be able to fit the camera house mounted on the big Tamron 150-600 lens and still have some lenses on the side of the big lens. That was not easy.
The good thing about Glass Taxi bag is that it has a option where you can choose to only have a big lens in the middle of the bag but then there will be no space for any other lenses. See the picture above to understand what I mean.
As you can see from the picture above you can fit lenses on the side if the big lens is straight. The problem with the Tamron 150-600 mm lens is that it is not straight and that makes it little harder to fit in this bag. The Tamron lens becomes wider in the end of the lens. That puts the camera house in a strange angle in the bag and the padding does not fit then. I am not saying it wont go, but I am saying that the camera bag is not built for the Tamron 150-600m mounted on a camera house.
This is what you can use the bag for:
- Holds up to a 500mm f/4 lens.
- Holds a 300mm f/2.8 with DSLR
- Holds a pro DSLR
Technical Specifications:
- Interior Dimensions: 8.3” W x 16.3” H x 8” D (21.1 x 41.4 x 20.3 cm)
- Exterior Dimensions: 8.5” W x 17” H x 9.5” D (21.6 x 43.2 x 24.1 cm)
- Weight: 2–3.7 lbs (0.9–1.7 kg)
Glass Taxi can be used as a backpack or a shoulder bag. You can attached a monopod or a middle size tripod on the side of the bag. With the speed/skin belt you can attached even more components on the belt, if you want that.
Another thing I noticed with the Think Tank Glass Taxi bag is that the side of the bags are very thin. This means if you happen to drop the bag your lenses and camera equipment can take damage. That is the reason I did not buy the bag. To bad Think Tank, other wise it would have been a nice bag. I am not willing to take a risk with this bag.
It does not matter that the padding in the middle on the inside of the bag is thick because there are no padding on the sides of the bag. This is something Jared Polin forgot to mention when he did his review and praised this bag.
A good advice is to always try out the bag in a store before you buy it. If you order the bag online you will not notice these things until you open the bag and then it might be to big of a hassle to send it back.
The price is right now around 159 US dollars. The pictures are from Think Tank’s site.
©2014
Pictures of fire
During earth hour my city arranged for a fire show. It was a nice event and here is some picture from it. The fire performers are called Favilla.
I have not tried to take picture of fire before so this was a good experience to learn which setting that suited me the most. I have used a Canon 60D with a prime lens of 40mm. I have tried different apertures to see which one that suited the most. If you move the mouse over the pictures you will find out the setting that I have used for each picture. It might be useful for you when you want to try to take pictures of fire. The settings worked for me and might work for you too.
What is common with all the pictures is that the pictures where taken without a flash. Most of the pictures are also cropped to remove unnecessary elements that take away the focus from the performers. Some pictures might have a green light because I had my Circular Polaris filter on as I do not have a UV filter for this lens yet. The CPL filter will also have made some effect to the picture even though I did not pay much attention to the filter and did not turn it because I only wanted to test the setting on the camera at this event.
When I took the pictures I choose tungsten in the white balance mode.
All the pictures are taken handheld, no tripod have been used. I love the sparks from the fire in this picture.
2014©ExpressivePhotos
Testing the Tamron 150-600mm lens on 60D
Hello everyone!
I will be showing you some pictures of a request I got to take a picture of a Swedish 20 SEK banknote from 8 meters away with the Tamron 150-600 mm lens. I will be using a Canon 60D for this test. There have been rumors that the Tamron 150-600mm lens might not work so well with the 60D, so lets test this.
The above picture is taken with a mobile to show how far away the camera was compare to the object. The picture quality of the mobile picture is not good but it will give you an idea of the distance. I have circled the banknote to make it easy to see the object we are aiming for in this test.
Lets try different distances from 300m-600mm (480mm-960mm on crop censor). There is one light directly on the banknote and one flash on the camera which is 8 meters away from the object. I do not have a slave flash that could have helped to get more brightness and maybe more detailed pictures.
Starting the test with 300mm (480mm with crop censor) taken with f5.6, 1/60, ISO-400:
Crop 100%. The camera might have moved a little when I pushed the trigger to take the picture, unfortunately I only took one picture with 300mm:
400mm (640mm on crop censor) f 5.6, 1/56, ISO-400:
Crop 100%. If you compare this picture with the 300mm crop then this picture looks better:
Next is 500mm (800mm), f6.3, 1/60, ISO-400:
Crop 100%:
600mm (960mm on crop censor), f6.3, 1/60, ISO-400:
I have heard that you should take at least with f8 in aperture when you take 600mm, but this picture is taken with the highest aperture on 600mm just to test the limits.
Crop 100%:
This picture below is taken with following setup 600mm, f14, 1/250, ISO-400. Since it is taken with a Canon 60D which is a crop censor this makes it actually 960 mm. With the 600mm (960mm) you can come pretty close to the bill and still see it clear.
Here is a 100% crop of the same picture. Look at the details in the face of Selma Lagerlöf who is the woman in this picture to the right. You can even see each hair on the fur she is wearing and this is with the 600mm.
Conclusion:
At 300mm it looks worst then the details at 600mm, but this might be because im getting more used to the lens after taken different shots up to 600m. If I would go back and use 300mm again it might have been a different result. It all depends on the moment I take the picture and the result will vary from one shot to another. It can also be a movement when i take the picture and push down the trigger. At 600mm when I use f14 I get better result than f6.3, so there are good chances of using 600mm with the Tamron 150-600mm lens. You just need to experiment for awhile.
This is just one way of testing the lens. There are lots of obstacles, for example the flash I was using was very far away from the object. If the flash would be closer to the object the result might have been different, it might have given the banknote more details. So do not take this test as a quality result of the Tamron. I am just starting to get used to this lens. There are lot more to learn about it before I will get the hang of it. With time I will master this lens to perfection, I hope.
I do not have any other ultra zoom lens to compare with so for me I am happy with the result. Till next time I will try to do some outdoor photos if the weather permit. This lens needs lots of light and since it is only cloudy outside it is hard to really test the lens at the moment.
Expressive photos 