Lens Review: Tamron AF 70-300mm F/4-5.6 Di LD Macro

Or in simple terms, Tamron 70-300 with macro for Canon DSLRs.

It's been an year since I've been using this lens. So, time for a review :-) or in other words, time to show off my pics taken by this lens :D

Facts:

How long I've been using this lens? - One year.

How much did I pay for this? - 8500 Rs ( ~ 170 USD)

Using it as a telephoto lens:

If you are out in a bright day light, and your subject is relatively near by and still, then you can take some good pics.

If you intend to use this lens mostly for bird photography, here are the things you need to know:

Problem:

Autofocus is painfully slow.

Work around:

I usually can guess the distance between me and the birds. So I switch to Manual focus, get the bird in focus, switch back to auto focus, take shots. For some reason, I haven't still perfected my manual focussing skills. I blame this on my short sight !

If you want to take pics of birds flying, then the slow auto focus is definitely a huge problem. Here is a trick I use. Start focussing on the bird while it is still far, and keep pressing the shutter button half way (auto focus) until the bird is in the frame you want. Then click :-)

Below is an example of that:

Not the best of the shots, but hey !

Problem:

Autofocus is very noisy !

Work around:

Pretty much same as mentioned above. But, boy, can it get any louder !!

Problem:

Pictures are not sharp:

Work around:

Well, use GIMP or Photoshop or whatever floats your boat :-) It actually takes sharp enough pics if you are close enough, I can't really tell the workable distance between birds and me, my guess is 10-12 feet. I know that it's ridiculous, 'cause in bird photography, it's way too hard to get close to birds. But some time I do get a chance when birds feel brave not fly off :-)

Case in point:

Problem:

Short focus ! What I mean is that, you took a picture, focussing on bird, but after you click, and see pic in laptop, you realize that focus is offset by a small value and actual focus is somewhere else near by the bird. ( Pardon my sentence :D )

Case in point:

You see, instead of Bulbul, the focus in on the leaf !! It was taken using autofocus, and I was quite close to the bird as well.

Another one:

Lens totally missed the Kingfisher !

Work around:

I don't know!! manual focussing, may be. I recently started noticing it. I'm yet to figure out the pattern ...

Using it in the Macro Mode:

This lens comes with a pseudo macro capacity, from 180-300 mm, you can switch to macro mode and get closer to the subject (~ 1 meter).

Problem:

Autofocus, noisy and slow.

Honestly, I am impressed with the macro shots this lens can take. Some of them came out really nice. (I guess).

You ought to have lots of patience with this lens, if you want to take a good macro. Not every macro subject stands still, like this lady bug on creeper ... Creeper moves for slightest wind, lady bug was in a hurry to get away from me :-)

But once in a while, there are subjects which stand still until you force them to move !

Case in point:

My biggest complaint:

As of now, with this lens, in aperture priority mode, I can not shoot with f value lesser than f5.6 ! Bummer ! If I try to shoot with f8 or lower, camera throws an error on LCD. I have to switch it off and on to get rid of it :( It's called 'Sticky Aperture' I guess.

My Conclusion:

I bought this lens as a cheap experimental lens to try bird photography. I had read about these problems before, but wasn't worried much.

For money it costs for this lens, it did give me quite a few good shots. But it also let me down lot of time. I've been using it for long time now, I pretty much know how to work with this lens!

If you are looking for a cheap, experimental lens for entering in to bird photography / telephoto arena, and won't mind risking some money, I would say, go for it :-)

Here [Flickr] are the few pics I've taken with this lens.

Let me know what you think !