hey we just arrived here in Yosemite and I'm gonna shoot this entire weekend with
nothing but a 20 millimeter lens just 20 millimeter I think I'll be exciting to
do so I'm gonna get started let's go shoot. Hey, everybody, this is JP Morgan
we're out here in Yosemite we came to Yosemite this weekend for a
couple of reasons. The moon is going to be up a rising full moon just as the Sun
Goes Down but the real reason we're here is to check out the 20 millimeter Sony
mount this is a great offering from Tamron this entire range of lenses
they've got 24 35 and now the 20 is a 2.8 they're all 2.8 they're on the exact
same barrel size so you have about a two and a half inch lens which makes them
very compact very small you know 20 millimeters an interesting lens because
it's either about getting you more showing more and a lot of times like I
was shooting some shots here of El Capitan and I wanted to see that the
reflection in the water and I want to see El Capitan. That 20 millimeter was
exactly what I needed to be able to get all of that in in a single shot. It's
also fabulous because I did a horizontal kind of panoramic view of El Capitan
right here with the bright rock in the background and the shadowy trees in the
foreground with that 20 millimeter it looked fabulous
so this 20 millimeter really is about getting more into the frame that's one
aspect but the real aspect of a 20 millimeter lens the real reason that you
use a 20 millimeter lens I think is to force the perspective you want things in
the foreground close and make a strong subject matter statement in the
foreground and then the background pushes deep and interesting back there
so it's about creating a forced perspective that's really what you want
the other thing about this lens is really fabulous is it's a 1.2 macro lens
which means you can get in super close four point three inches you can focus
4.3 inches from your subject matter which does give you that ability with a
20 millimeter lens to give that force deep perspective that's something up
close to you like a flower or whatever in the foreground but then you get that
really deep background and if you want to pull your focus you can so everything
falls out of focus or go a little deeper focus f11 f-16 and you can see
everything from that better up front into deep focus into the
background so you get that 2.8 which is fast I mean there are faster 20
millimeters out there but what I love about this series from Tamron everything
they've done from their 35 their 24 their 20 there are 17 to 28 28 to 75 and
soon coming the 75 to 180 I just love the fact that the form factor is so
small so the lens doesn't have anything to switch to auto focus or manual focus
on the lens that's what keeps it so small all you do is you simply touch the
back of your the FN button on the back of your Sony gonna give you a menu and
in that menu for focus you go to manual or to auto focus so it's it can either
be single frame auto focus continuous auto focus or manual once you go to
manual then this is going to work on the front just like any manual focus would
go so that's really what's made this there's no internal stabilization in
these you'll stabilize in your camera if you have a lot of the Sony's and just
really made to be able to be on a Sony camera. This has been a lot of fun to be
here in Yosemite and to see this valley through the perspective of them a 20
millimeter lens such an interesting perspective that gives you a lot but
also can get in tight on things and give you a force perspective we've played
with all those things let's get a little review of the weekend first off we start
at Sentinel bridge here's some of the images we shot there at night as the Sun
had already gone down you see the moon coming up those gorgeous wide images of
the water in the foreground and the Sun and the moon in the background next
morning we were out and we shot a lot of El Capitan reflecting in the water which
was beautiful because in that wide view you can get in there and you can see the
foreground and way up into El Capitan which was so huge those were beautiful
here's some of those then that night we came up here to Valley View this is one
of my favorite spots because you're looking out at El Capitan into that
whole valley and you got the water and rocks in the foreground then this
morning we played around over at the lodge we don't over the lodge and I shot
a lot of images just in the lodge with mixed night I love mixed light you got
tungsten and daylight got that cool and warmth I shot some shots of a phone that
I really loved you get that curl of the cord coming towards the camera
got the phone then the the lamp in the background which gives you some depth
with that color that was a lot of fun plus with this 20 millimeter lens
architecturally it gave me the ability to shoot in those spaces and just give
me a great huge vista of the lodge and to be able
to play with that I love using a 20-millimeter because it makes me see
the world differently most people don't usually get this wide
most people don't get much wider than 24 so this just gives you that that look at
the the world that's so interesting we shot some stuff of a fence and some
other places where we're playing with that forced perspective things up front
that's Valley View that's exactly we got things up front things deep so we're
back from Yosemite and it's time to process images this is always the
exciting part for me because you get to see exactly what you got which I love
doing I have been using luminar for since the software came out they are
recently become a sponsor here at the slanted lens the reason I have used them
is couple of great things and one is that it's quick I can make quick changes
and apply them it's very easy to make those changes I don't have to go through
a lot of steps to get there the software really has done and put a lot of those
steps in for me so I can go through my images a lot quicker I can use it either
as a plug-in to photoshop or I can use it as a standalone I'm gonna use it a
standalone today so let's get started with my image here normally I would go
underneath the light mode here and I would start messing with exposure and
highlights and shadows and all that but really what I'm gonna go to is the AI
enhance and as I push this all the way over that's gonna do a lot of what I
want to do to this image because it's understanding the image it's reading the
information there and just giving a pretty good look because I want to open
the shadows in the foreground I don't want to blow out the highlights in the
background and that just gives me a nice just a great starting point so I'm gonna
go in here now I'm gonna go back to the light and I'm just gonna open the
exposure up just a little bit I want I want that mountan just a little bit
brighter for me alright so I'm gonna go back up to light module now and I'm
going to hit the detail enhancer I'm gonna sharpen this to me about 30% and
blow it up so I can take a look at the as it comes in
alright I'm gonna leave it essentials now I'm gonna go back down to the pro
I'm gonna come here to color enhancer and under the hue I want to just mess
with the blue in the sky a little bit of the foreground so I'm gonna set this on
my blue level here and then I'm gonna that off a little bit and just make that
look a little more nice and blue
so there's the work I did on the image in my first layer and then there is
adding just a little bit of that warmth I'm at 12% I'm again you make it really
warm but I wanted to but that's not good you keep at 12% and I'm feeling like
that's pretty awesome there I don't want to mess with that anymore so these
images I shot with that 20 millimeter are just fabulous they're sharp and they
give you just great view I love the color on these images and with luminar
is able to kind of punch things up even a little more and give me a great image
so there we have it processing of luminar you'll see it's doing this a lot
because it's just it's fast and it's easy it's powerful it just makes it
simple for me to get in make some quick Corrections and move on so I love it for
that reason so now we're back here at Valley view's
we're about to head out of the valley Sun just opened up on the on the
mountains in the back of us gorgeous shots again with that force perspective
in the foreground and the valley of the background but love using this lens it's
just a small compact lens two and a half inches at one to two macro which is
allows you get like 4.3 inches away from your subject matter and it's just light
it's a great beginning lens for people at under $350 great place to start and
build like play and experiment with a 20 millimeter lens you know also you might
want to check out Cheyne walls and I did a landscape
photography download if you get over the Sun lens calm and click on courses
you'll find that download there will teach you exactly how to get great
landscape photography from a master at it which is Cheyne walls so check that
out be very beneficial to you for this closing we're trying to bounce the light
on my face with the light that's on bridalveil falls in the background so we
brought out three of the light Rah's and clustered those together and that gave
us a nice light on my face which really helped us build bounce those out those
like the studios are so easy to travel with small form easy to carry around got
a battery put them up and use them out on location fabulous just been a great
weekend time to head back to LA head back to the larb so keep those cameras
rollin keep on clickin