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I’ve neglected to mention that all of the photos from my last three blog posts — Glimpses of Auckland, Auckland Graffiti and Back from New Zealand — were taken with my new Tamron 18-270mm lens. As I had suspected, the wide range of focal lengths offered by that one small lens made it the perfect companion on those quick walks that I would take in the morning before breakfast or between sessions of my SATW Board meeting. I also took it to meals just in case something particularly photogenic was served, like these oysters on Waiheke Island:

When I travel for reasons other than purely photography, it’s always a trade off of when to take the gear and when to just focus on the meeting or whatever else might be the actual purpose of the trip. The thing is — you never know when an opening ceremony at a convention might include dancers in traditional dress or be held at a venue that has an amazing view of sunset over the bay. It’s not always practical to take a backpack full of gear and keep it shoved under the table while having dinner at a nice restaurant. For a while I made do with a pocket point-and-shoot for times like this but I was never entirely satisfied with my results. For this trip, I went with the Nikon D7000 and the Tamron 18-270mm lens. I even had video capabilities when needed.

The flowers at the top of this post and the detail shots below came from a couple of hours that I had to walk around the small village of Greytown, New Zealand. The weather was overcast and wide shots weren’t exactly tourism brochure worthy with those white skies, so I focused on details that kept the sky cropped out and took advantage of the nice, flat light. The Tamron came through for me again with its ability to focus close enough that there really wasn’t ever a shot I couldn’t get (I think Tamron specs out the minimum focus distance at just over 19 inches). The bokeh is nice as smooth as well.

Sure, there were other times on the trip when I had more time and freedom to photograph and I’d make use of nearly every lens and filter that I’d packed, but for those days that I had to tend to other business and still feel prepared for the occasional shot that presented itself, the D7000 and 18-270 combo never let me down.