First impressions - Tamron 28-300mm VC f3.5 - 6.3.

dougdarter · 24 Jul 2008

Hi,

This hefty hunk of glass arrived this morning, and first impressions were very favourable. It is extremely well bolted together, and the finish is well above average, certainly better than any contemporary Nikon lens that I have seen. Zooming is smooth and unremarkable, and there is absolutely no sign of 'droop' if the lens is pointed downwards with the zoom set at 18mm. There is a lock should this become a problem as the lens gets older. A decent petal shaped lens hood is included. Extension at 300mm is not as long as some I have seen, but still looks daft!

AF isn't as fast as I would like, and the lens hunts above 200mm unless you start to focus from wide angle. VC mode is excellent, and it is quite obvious in use - the image stabilisation is very noticeable, especially through the viewfinder. The downside is that the VC motor is quite noisy... sounds a bit like a drain! How good is it?? We shall see.

This is a series of shots taken at various focal lengths marked on the barrel. The camera was hand held, and the exposures were taken with programme mode. I wanted the camera and lens to demonstrate how good the combo is without any input from the handler. Jpegs are fine quality, 3mp in size. All other camera settings were neutral.

28mm

35mm

50mm

100mm

200mm

300mm

This is a 100% crop from the 300mm image. It is still very sharp at an effective 60mm, certainly useable without any PP.

Macro is pretty good as well!

It is obvious from the pictues, that the IQ is never going to compete with a prime lens at any given focal length, but I believe that it competes with any O/E zoom lens, particularly with this range, and it is perhaps a little better than many, especially at it's price of £500.

I have to admit that I am extremely happy with the quality and the functionality of this equipment, though a 300 Nikon prime is now winging it's way to me courtesy of nice Mr Fforde.

a1ex2001 · 24 Jul 2008

looks good, shame your 100% crop isn't from the bit of the image that is in focus.

dougdarter · 24 Jul 2008

That was never an option - the 'infocus' portion of the frame was far closer to the camera. This was never an excercise to demonstrate depth of field.

The intention was to show the amount of detail in the furthest feature from the camera, which was the tower, and given that this is a 'digital' 100 % crop from a 300mm zoom lens, which was hand held, I think that the sharpness is remarkable.

a1ex2001 · 24 Jul 2008

dougdarter said:
The intention was to show the amount of detail in the furthest feature from the camera, which was the tower, and given that this is a 'digital' 100 % crop from a 300mm zoom lens, which was hand held, I think that the sharpness is remarkable.

Sorry to be a pain but how can you comment on the sharpness of that 100% crop when it is pretty much an out of focus blur? The macro shot looks reasonably sharp and the in focus tree in the full size shot looks pretty good but the church just isn't sharp?

dougdarter · 24 Jul 2008

The church was never going to be pin sharp at an effective 600mm, but that isn't the point! The point was to demonstrate the ability of the lens, which I think is pretty remarkable!!

To put the pics into context, here is the same shot taken at 400mm with my Canon 1D IIn and EF400L last year:

And at 560mm (Canon extender 1.4)

These were shot from a tripod, with the finest Canon equipment, and frankly, they don't look that much better.

Knock my photography all you like, but don't knock the results without being objective. The photographs were taken at the absolute limits of the len's capabilities, and given that, I still think the results were remarkable. I never said the results were perfect. They could have been improved a lot by post processing, as most images posted here are, but that would have made the results absolutely meaningless.

a1ex2001 · 24 Jul 2008

I'm not knocking your photography or the lens I'm just saying that if you want to campare sharpness you need to do it with comparable focused images, from what you saying above you are comparing that 100% crop with the well focused image above? I don't see how this is fair as of curse the canon shot will look a million times sharper it's in focus, something out of focus like the church in the crop will never ever be sharp.

dougdarter · 24 Jul 2008

a1ex2001 said:
I'm not knocking your photography or the lens I'm just saying that if you want to campare sharpness you need to do it with comparable focused images, from what you saying above you are comparing that 100% crop with the well focused image above? I don't see how this is fair as of curse the canon shot will look a million times sharper it's in focus, something out of focus like the church in the crop will never ever be sharp.

OK, here is the 100% crop taken this morning, and a crop of the Jpeg taken with the Canon. I promise you, apart from re-sizing the Canon Jpeg to match the Fuji's size, I have NOT done any further processing, and the same goes for this morning crop.

Incidentally, the Canon shot is at full size, and the Fuji shot was a 100% crop. Given the fact that the Fuji shot is a 'digital enlargement', I think the result is even more remarkable.

Canon 1Dn MkII and Canon 400mm f 5.6L

Fuji S3 and Tamron 28 - 300.

There is no doubt in my mind that these crops are of similar sharpness and quality. I actually see more detail in the weather vane in the Fuji shot.

The 1st picture is the one that you said -

" look a million times sharper it's in focus"

And the second of which you said -

"something out of focus like the church in the crop will never ever be sharp"

a1ex2001 · 24 Jul 2008

I give up, take the shot again with your new lens and focus on the church not the trees on the left hand side of the fram then put the crops next to each other and if the new picture isn't a millions time sharper than that oof one I will eat my camera bag and it's contents. You can't talk about sharpness in an oof section of a photo it is utter nonsense.

puddleduck · 24 Jul 2008

Without wanting to debate the merits of either lens, the test above is totally flawed.

http://www.talkphotography.co.uk/forums/showpost.php?p=812996&postcount=7

The focus point on the Canon crops are clearly several yards infront of the Church in that image, the trees in front are sharper.

Again, I am not discussing either lens, but this "test" is not a test. Sorry

dougdarter · 24 Jul 2008

a1ex2001 said:
I give up, take the shot again with your new lens and focus on the church not the trees on the left hand side of the fram then put the crops next to each other and if the new picture isn't a millions time sharper than that oof one I will eat my camera bag and it's contents. You can't talk about sharpness in an oof section of a photo it is utter nonsense.

I don't doubt that you are right, but this wasn't originally an exercise in 'sharpness'.

The excercise was to demonstrate the ability of the lens at all focal lengths - I took the exposures at differing focal lengths, from the same position, altering nothing except the focal length.

I wasn't taking 'per se' a picture of the church, just the view. If I was trying to demonstrate the sharpness of the lens, not it's general ability, it would habe been mounted on a tripod, focus would have been on the church with manual aperture setting, spot metered, and in a more appropriate focus mode, and as you say, the result would have been different.

I quote this, from the original post:

"This is a series of shots taken at various focal lengths marked on the barrel. The camera was hand held, and the exposures were taken with programme mode. I wanted the camera and lens to demonstrate how good the combo is without any input from the handler"

You seemed to have missed this....

a1ex2001 · 24 Jul 2008

dougdarter said:
This is a 100% crop from the 300mm image. It is still very sharp at an effective 60mm, certainly useable without any PP.

Then why say that and why post the crop which neither proves or disproves anything, Yes the series of shots show the lens has consistently reasonable quality accross the focal length but that crop adds nothing to that debate and the comment about sharpness is misleading at best.

dougdarter · 24 Jul 2008

puddleduck said:
Again, I am not discussing either lens, but this "test" is not a test. Sorry

This is my point exactly.

It was never intended to be a lens/camera test. My original post was merely an attempt by me, to demonstrate the overall qualities of the Tamron lens.

There was never an intention that it should be compared with the Canon lens. Indeed such a comparison is slightly rediculous!

With the picture comparison, I was trying to prove my assertion that the 100% crop was not, as Alex put it 'that 100% crop when is pretty much an out of focus blur', when he also said that the Canon shot was 'a million times sharper'.

Technical merits or either camera/lens combination apart, the Fuji shot is at least as sharp as the Canon shot, irrespective of any other considerations, and that is the ONLY reason I posted the old Canon shot.