Klantreview: A South Moravian Adventure

t was love at first sight. Just at the point when we had given up hope of finding the perfect scenery, we drove around a corner and could not believe our eyes. The magic of South Moravia is something I’ve been dreaming of for over a year since my first visit to the Czech Republic. At the time I was mostly in Prague and other parts of Bohemia. I made up my mind after seeing images of South Moravia that I needed to come back and I would need the proper equipment. 

This is where the Nikon AF-D 80-400 mm and Tamron 70-200 mm come into the story. It may seem odd that in the end despite offering more light (the Tamron comes in at f2.8 vs a range of f4.5-5.6 on the Nikon lens), I found myself shooting exclusively with the Nikon lens. Two factors helped – reach and weight. The first meant I had the freedom to get the kind of dreamy landscapes I had in mind, I present exhibit A:

The second, was critical as we needed to be relatively efficient with time and dwelling in a location – frantically adjusting for the best light and composition. I didn’t have much experience wielding such a heavy lens and since my trusty Nikon D7500 (a crop sensor and full frame lens, criminal to some I know) could provide sufficiently fast focus and dynamic range to compensate for the lack of f2.8 shooting I settled on the lighter choice.

Range is critical when shooting in this kind of setting, it can convey surreal scale as illustrated below:

In frame above is my good friend Ngoc (@nappyc on Instagram) – she did quite the trek to get to the right spot on the hills – this type of image would not be possible shooting at my usual max range of 50 mm. Long lenses with a tight aperture range also provide some creative flexibility to draw viewers into your composition:

Overall it was a magical experience and helped me express myself visually in a completely different way than I have been until now – from now on, I plan to focus on shooting landscapes to capture scale and layers with this kind of technique and see where the journey takes me. Hopefully it will bring more scenes like this:

Benieuwd geworden naar de Nikon AF-D 80-400mm f/4.5-5.6 ED VR? Reserveer ze dan direct via de Budgetcam website. Ook een keer de nieuwste apparatuur testen voor het schrijven van een review? Schrijf je dan in voor de Budgetcam reviewpoule of stuur een mailtje naar marketing@budgetcam.nl.