Just back from holidays

From August 24 to September 5 i left the south of Provence to the Alps with my wife and daughter for a little holidays.
As usual, we traveled with our van so we can stop where and when we want.
After a few days in the north of Provence, we stopped in this wonderful place in the south of french Alps.

Green fields, blue sky, wonderful mountains and rivers. It was a nice place for photography, for playing and for hiking so we stayed there about 10 days.

As i was not there for work and didn't want to carry some heavy equipment i just took my D100 with one brand new zoom : Tarmon 17-50 XR DiII and one light and small tripod.
About the Tamron, i've to say that it's amazing : not expensive, light, small and very sharp. I think it's a perfect only lens for holidays. The focal range permits some nice landscapes and family candids and i was nicely surprised by the raw files sharpness.

Something else about this lens :
I shoot some panoramic landscapes with just one tripod and nothing to set up the nodal point. When stitching in PTGui Pro some files shooted with the shortest focal the optimizer's diagnostic was always very good. It seems that the nodal point is not so far in front of the lens. Nice !

Sigma 10-20 and Nikon DSLRs

With digital photography and APS sized sensors, it can be difficult to find a nice wide angle zoom lense.
For near one year i use the Sigma 10-20 EX with my Nikon DSLRs.
Around 10 mm i retrieve the framings i loved with my wide angle lenses when i was shooting 24x36 mm films.
Some reviews told this lens was suffering of a strong shading but it's really not an issue on mine. I never noticed this although printing big frames.
Sharpness is good, the lens feels robust and the HSM focusing is very nice.
In my mind the only default is that some landscapes sometimes show a strong distorsion in their upper right angle.