Tamron 150-600mm - Part 2

[John 2]

As promised, here are the test images I said I would make.

- All tripod mounted.
- All manually focussed to eliminate any Autofocus shortcomings.
- No PP except to match exposure levels. No sharpening (even in the camera).
- SOOC. No cropping. the camera was moved forward for the 500mm shots to fill the frame by the approximately the same amount as the 600mm shots.
- I haven't tried to compare centre and edge sharpness. Using a FF lens on a DX size sensor, there seemed no point.

To my eye, the only significant fall off in sharpness is wide open (f6.3) at 600mm. Otherwise the performance is pretty good. I think I'm happy.

P.S. I see that this lens has won this years EISA award for SLR Telephoto zoom lenses.

1. 500mm f6.3


2. 500mm f8


3. 500mm f16


4. 600mm f6.3


5. 600mm f8


6. 600mm f16

[Shadowman]

Maybe it's just my tired eyes but f6.3 doesn't look that bad. Would like to see a few shots of some difficult subjects such as a windblown flag or something that might create chromatic aberrations.

[PhotomanJohn]

These look very good to me. Just so I understand, you say they are SOOC with no sharpening. Does that mean that these are jpg files and you created a custom Picture Control (probably from Std or Neutral) where you set the sharpening slider to zero? I am not sure if that really means no sharpening is applied but at least I will understand what you did.

Thanks for the post!

John

[John 2]

John (Shadow Man), I don't think that the 600mm f6.3 is bad at all, just not as good as the others. See what I can do about some shots against the light to see what sort of CA might exist.

John (Photoman), I meant no in camera sharpening and no sharpening in PS. However, now you mention it, I forgot to zero the sharpening sliders during the RAW conversion. So these have had the default sharpening that PS RAW provides.

[pnodrog]

Impressed. What is the handling , zoom and manual focus controls like?

[deetheturk]

Not much wrong here John, looks like a good buy!

[John 2]

John (Shadow Man), just been relooking at the images. If you zoom in to the edges of the white on blue letters at the top of the sign, you can just see some CA creeping in. As you would expect, it is more pronounced at 600mm but it is pretty minimal. This is 600mm f6.3 and is about as bad as it gets.

[John 2]

Lp, the lens handles well. The manual focus is smooth and the zoom has about the right gearing for me. It's fast on autofocus as well and a nice touch is that you can set a limiter which reduces the range over which it is autofocussing. That makes it even faster. Should be of interest to BIF fans.

Thanks David. I must admit, I am a happy man.

[ajohnw]

It might make a certain manufacturer who's name I wont mention update some of it's designs.

On a personal note I'm glad to see Tamron are showing signs of getting back to where they used to be - better than Sigma and designs that follow the same sort of optical philosophy that the main manufacturers usually put out.

John
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[wilgk]

Looks good John!
Next assignment , some action shots if you wouldn't mind :-)

[Shadowman]

John (Shadow Man), just been relooking at the images. If you zoom in to the edges of the white on blue letters at the top of the sign, you can just see some CA creeping in. As you would expect, it is more pronounced at 600mm but it is pretty minimal. This is 600mm f6.3 and is about as bad as it gets.

John,

Thanks for the follow through.