1129 - Roll River Roll

2009-11-15

It’s Sunday night, I am on the train to Vienna. Just like in the last post, these are images taken yesterday, Saturday. Yesterday’s images, the “Silver & Gold” and the baptistery in a local church, were taken while I waited for one tire on our car to be changed.

So were the first two images of this post. Much contrary to today, yesterday was a beautiful day. You know this slightly milky light, this November light that does not warm you, but that nevertheless warms your soul. That’s how it was.

I had to wait for an hour, walked around in the neighborhood, entered a local church (that’s yesterday’s baptistery), took photos of some more industrial aspects, of street corners, a former sawmill and much more, in other words, I had a jolly good time.

Waiting for something, that’s normally nothing that I easily bear. I am not a patient man, but being forced to wait on a day like that, holding a camera in my hands, that’s pure pleasure.

I tried to find out what it is with that autofocus problem that I reported in the last post, but I did not come any further. It sometimes happens, I believe it happens mostly after I have turned the camera on, but - honestly - I am not even sure of that. It just does not happen often enough and I can’t provoke it.

For the afternoon, clouds were predicted to come from the west, thus we decided to make a trip to Carinthia’s eastern end, the region around Lavamünd / Dravograd,where river Drau / Drava leaves Carinthia and enters Slovenia. The wayside shrine is somewhere on this way.

Ask me why of all these images, I made an image of some shrubs beside a river my Image of the Day. I can’t tell. It’s something in this image, some silence, some peace, that mightily appeals to me.

It is some quality of summer lost, some quality of sweet bitterness, some sting of death, some melancholy, some essence of fall. I can’t properly explain it but I feel it when I see this image, when I remember being there, and I hope you can feel it as well.

“Roll River Roll” from Richard Hawley’s 2007 album “Lady’s Bridge” is probably not a bad match, but judge for yourself.

There are 4 comments

April   (2009-11-15)

Oh, yes; definitely bittersweet. I can image this scene mid-winter, and it's going to be a long time before the greening of spring.

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Earl   (2009-11-16)

Andreas, I don't know if this is chance or if it could be related, but I have a recent generation Tamron AF28-300mm F/3.5-6.3 XR Di VC LD Micro lens which I have experienced the AF problem you describe. It doesn't happen very often and I cannot find any sequence that will cause it to happen each time. When the AF does stop working I usually quickly turn the camera off and on and that starts it working again. I've used the lens with a Nikon D700 & D300 and have had this happen with both camera bodies. I returned this lens once to Tamron Repair for a problem with the VC (grinding noise). They fixed the VC problem and said the lens checked out OK. The AF problem however still happens on occasion. I don't use this lens much anymore, mostly because I feel it lacks sharpness at certain focal lengths, but the random AF issues are also a bothered.

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andreas   (2009-11-16)

Ahh, fantastic! I see, we're getting somewhere. Any other Tamron owners who want to come forward? Experience with D300/D700/D3 preferred, as they share the same AF module. As I said, I am no action shooter, when it happens, I simply turn the camera off and on again, but for others it may be a real show stopper. For me it's just the compromise, the price to pay for an otherwise fine lens. Anyway, there may be even more to it. I guess the D300 has problems with this lens on AF points where it works just fine with other lenses. AF may really be the Achilles heel of this lens, but otoh it's still too early for conclusions. You know the effect, you see a problem in one aspect, and soon you suspect problems everywhere. I plan for a rather tedious experiment with the Nikon 35/1.8 and this Tamron, set to 35mm, different AF points, focusing from infinity to a certain target, the same from very near to that target, making the images without much care, just as one would in action, repeat 10 times for every lens and point and focusing way. Count the perfectly focused vs slightly focused vs unfocused images, compare by lens. Oh dear, it's tedious to just write that 🙂 Anyway, that's the plan.

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Flo   (2009-11-16)

Andreas, I have an old Tamron 200-400 mm autofocus lens that I've never had a problem with on about 5 different Nikon bodies. But, I have a 3-yr-old Tamron 180 mm Macro autofocus that's just not sharp. In fact, my favorite camera dealer wouldn't take it in trade, due to the sharpness issue. Recently I bought a Tamron 90 mm Macro autofocus lens. It has a switch for autofocus/manual and another for short range/long range autofocus. At times it won't autofocus, so I flip that switch and then it'll behave. I don't like the lens so will probably trade it in for a Nikkor 100 mm Macro. I'm thinking now that I'm going to stay away from the Tamron brand! I have a Nikon D300. It could be that when you seat the lens into the camera, one of the electrical contacts doesn't quite mesh properly - and you may bump the lens while using it, causing this contact to malfunction. But this doesn't explain why turning the camera off and then back on makes the autofocus behave.

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