03-17-2016, 06:49 PM
I waited patiently for the promised review here of the Tamron (and the Sigma Sport 150-600mm)....but to no avail...so it gives me great pleasure to give you after 10 months or so of hands on experience, my findings of the lens....
Firstly it's very hand-holdable, decently constructed and perfectly adapted to birding and nature photography...
The VC is for the most part very good and hand held shots can be taken at slow shutter speeds at shorter and medium focal lengths, but as Klaus said, towards longer focal lengths it can do more harm than good, I find when shooting a stationary subject it's OKish, but it really comes unstuck when panning, here you are unlikely to get better than 10% of sharp shots. However, it is great help on a tripod where at 600mm vibration of the camera is nicely ironed out to perfect stability.
Sharpness.....From 150-300mm it's very sharp even wide open......300-450mm F7.1-8 and up it's also very sharp....450-600mm F8 is the minimum and F9-13 gives best results...... it still does give very decent results at 600mm.......with a bit of practice.
Autofocus........For a lens in it's price range the AF is fast and more to the point "very accurate" (AFMA set at -2) it seems to nail the focus 90-95% of the time and reacts quickly to changes....(slight caveat is black birds, it struggles when panning small birds sometimes, this I think is just a short fall F5-6.3 aperture)
APSc bodies....the lens is tested most on the smaller sensor....where the magnification of image size tests it's sharpness.
Full frame.........here the lens does better on the larger sensor even resolving adequately out to the corners.
Bokeh is slightly gritty, but typical for tele-zooms, not better not worse......however onion rings are visible in specular highlights/sparkling water etc.
Typically when birding I shoot at 1/1600 at F9-11 the lens being used most at 600mm.....VC is firmly in the off position.
Since I bought it, it has been my go to lens and I've had more pleasure from it than any other optic I've owned.........
As they say on PZ.......Highly recommended Plenty of sample images here:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/124690178@N08/
I'm also looking out for the Sigma Sport, if anyone has any propositions. (Klaus?)
Firstly it's very hand-holdable, decently constructed and perfectly adapted to birding and nature photography...
The VC is for the most part very good and hand held shots can be taken at slow shutter speeds at shorter and medium focal lengths, but as Klaus said, towards longer focal lengths it can do more harm than good, I find when shooting a stationary subject it's OKish, but it really comes unstuck when panning, here you are unlikely to get better than 10% of sharp shots. However, it is great help on a tripod where at 600mm vibration of the camera is nicely ironed out to perfect stability.
Sharpness.....From 150-300mm it's very sharp even wide open......300-450mm F7.1-8 and up it's also very sharp....450-600mm F8 is the minimum and F9-13 gives best results...... it still does give very decent results at 600mm.......with a bit of practice.
Autofocus........For a lens in it's price range the AF is fast and more to the point "very accurate" (AFMA set at -2) it seems to nail the focus 90-95% of the time and reacts quickly to changes....(slight caveat is black birds, it struggles when panning small birds sometimes, this I think is just a short fall F5-6.3 aperture)
APSc bodies....the lens is tested most on the smaller sensor....where the magnification of image size tests it's sharpness.
Full frame.........here the lens does better on the larger sensor even resolving adequately out to the corners.
Bokeh is slightly gritty, but typical for tele-zooms, not better not worse......however onion rings are visible in specular highlights/sparkling water etc.
Typically when birding I shoot at 1/1600 at F9-11 the lens being used most at 600mm.....VC is firmly in the off position.
Since I bought it, it has been my go to lens and I've had more pleasure from it than any other optic I've owned.........
As they say on PZ.......Highly recommended Plenty of sample images here:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/124690178@N08/
I'm also looking out for the Sigma Sport, if anyone has any propositions. (Klaus?)