 For the price and what it offers, one of the best lenses in its category |
| Review Date: October 31, 2008 |
| Reviewer: Mary Jo Sminkey, Raleigh, NC USA |
Watch Video Here: http://www.amazon.com/review/R3PNXIZMMHLGC9 Tamron's new lens offers a 15X zoom range, the most you will find for a DSLR. But do you have to give up too much image quality as a result? I was looking for a lens for travel and for casual shots that could replace my need for both wide angle through the telephoto range and hopefully replace several other lenses that I typically have to bring with me.
Overall, I'm very pleased with this new lens, it did better than I was expecting. The quality of the photos is almost on par as my Canon 70-300mm (but of course not my 70-200 f/2.8) with a much more usable range for an everyday lens. I also tend to have back problems, so the less weight I carry on vacations, the better!
A few negatives: the lens does not zoom smoothly through its whole range, particularly when zooming from wide to tele, and you only have f/6.3 when fully zoomed (common with superzooms). The zoom was nice and tight when I got the lens (as shown in the video) but after a few weeks of use, it creeps pretty badly. The lens hood is fairly small, may not work as well at the 150mm+ range (but nice that they include one at all!) Also a typical issue for super zooms, as the hood has to be designed to minimize vignetting at the wide end. No full-time manual focus, which I don't use enough typically to be bothered about. The focus ring is located at the front of the lens and it's pretty easy to switch back and forth and use it as needed, but this is definitely not a great lens for using manual focus on. Some distortion in images at both ends as you would expect for a super-zoom, the barrel distortion at the wide end in particular is fairly obvious, but correctable in most situations. CA and vignetting on my copy are reasonable for a lens in this price range, with CA most apparent at the upper end of the range. Macro feature is nice to have, but somewhat underwhelming performance and certainly no substitute for a true macro lens. The lens has a nice, solid feel to it, while still being fairly lightweight. I've used the Canon 70-300mm DO lens in the past which was comparable to this in size, but MUCH heavier. The focus is fairly quiet as well, not USM quiet, but considerably better than some other off-brand lenses I've used. As I usually find with off-brand lenses, the autofocus is not quite as fast and accurate as Canon lenses, but it seems considerably better than some other Tamron lenses I've used and not enough to be a problem for casual use.
I give the lens 5 stars, not because it takes the greatest photos you will ever see, but because it is the first super-zoom I have tried that performs good enough that I am willing to use it, as a best-in-its-class lens. It's a perfect lens in particular for any new DSLR owner that can't afford to invest thousands in really high quality and/or multiple lenses, or for someone like me that is often limited in the equipment they can carry at one time. The lack of smoothness in the zoom ring and the creep are the primary annoyances for me, but I've yet to use a long telephoto lens in this price range that doesn't creep, so hard to be really tough on it for that. I wouldn't use it as my primary sports lens (my f/2.8 will do that job far better) nor as an architectural wide angle lens but for a general all-purpose casual lens, it's got a great feature set and well worth considering. |
Love this lens with my new Rebel T1i
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| Review Date: June 5, 2009 |
| Reviewer: Bullwyf, Austin, Texas |
I have always owned Canon lenses, primarily the 17-85 IS and the 70-300 IS. For travel convenience reasons, I wanted a single lens. My quality expectations were not that high for the Tamron, but I decided to take a chance. The price at Amazon is one of the better ones I found including shipping.
After using it for almost a week with my T1i, here are my thoughts.
1. Zoom. The range of course is amazing. Initially, I too noticed that turning the zoom was tricky as it gets tight in the middle. That loosened up after a few days. It does slide out and in when pointing down and up, but so did my Canon 70-300, and I always have my hand on the lens so I am totally fine with that. I don't even bother to use the lock.
2. Picture quality. It's at par with my Canons. I did three things to get sharper pictures. Firstly, adjusted the little dial next to the view finder to make the dots rounder - I noticed it needed adjusting. I don't know what it's called, but it allows you to set the lens with the camera properly, looking through the view finder to make the dots small and round (instead of fuzzy-vertical or fuzzy-horizontal). Secondly, I changed focus to spot instead of evaluate, and I do the same with metering. That made things sharper. Thirdly, I increased the picture quality settings in the camera and increased sharpness, contrast, and color saturation. And lastly, I do use the largest aperture available, but noticed that f/8 gives good pictures at the entire zoom range.
There is visible barrel distortion at 18mm - I am OK with that.
3. VC (Vibration control/optical image stabilization). Wow. I can take hand-held pictures at 270mm indoors at 1/10 seconds with no visible blurring! I get lucky at 1/5 seconds sometimes as well. Needs practice - you observe the slow stable movements and click when it is at the end of range for such low speed clicks. Of course at such speeds if you have moving subjects you get blur from that, but that is not the fault of the camera. I HATE using flashes, although I have the Speedlight 580 II which rocks - I prefer natural light handheld photos - I like about 1/50 with normal movement to capture a little bit of motion blur. Anyway, the VC on this lens is great and above and beyond what I need.
4. Overall feel and issues. It feels solid and of high quality. Manual focus is hard as its turn range is pretty small. Sometimes automatic focus fails, especially in very low light. You can help it by turning the focus ring (it does turn with some force, even when in auto focus mode) to get it close, then it locks. Focusing is a little slower than my Canon lenses. Chromatic aberration does not seem to be any worse at 270mm than my Canon 70-300. It is quite acceptable to me.
What a great value. I plan to use it for 3-4 years until something better comes out, like a 17-400 perhaps! :-)
I highly recommend this lens. |
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