Photos of the lens taken from www.dyxum.com

Easily the most expensive piece of lens bought for my camera and only my second brand new lens (after the Sony kit lens), I got this for a clearance price that is well below the 4 figure mark which is remarkable. Reason why it is so cheap?

Tamron - SP AF 70-200 F2.8 Di LD IF MACRO

Because they have a new lens announced.

Now back to this mini review of my new baby. In terms of features, it has a non-removable tripod collar, focus limiter on top of what you can read from the title, fast constant f2.8 range and the low dispersion glass to reduce those fringes. But the important thing about using such a heavy and big lens (as heavy as the Sony 70-200 f2.8 SSM) is that the quality must be good at f2.8 otherwise I'm better off with my Minolta 70-210 f4.0 beercan. So... I brought this rock to Sultan Shoal and had some time to play with it both wide open and stopped down. Results of this lens when stopped down to f4.0 compares favourably with the beercan which is expected.

So I used this piece of glass and took some wide open shots with it and that's what I'm sharing.


First, I have my longest serving model, xiaobudian in this shot @ 210mm f2.8

I don't like to give much comments about qualities such as sharpness and bokeh because what works for me may not work for someone else. So what's better than putting some samples up here for all to see together with some 100% crop

100% crop of xiaobudian's rainbow tee. With a bit of sharpening

We can still see the texture of the t-shirt's fabric here so details is definitely around wide open. Also, bare in mind that pixel for pixel, if we are looking at 100% crop on your monitor, the entire image will be like 3 times wider and taller (total 9x larger in terms of area) than if you print in equivalent quality. For most purposes, this is sufficient for me. Side note is that one side of xiaobudian's tee was not in focus simply because the depth of field of this lens is in the cm to mm region.


Another wide open shot @ 150mm f2.8

100% crop on one eye with a bit of sharpening

Old folks are great for photographing simply because their life experience can be found written on their faces. In this shot, one of her eye was out of focus if you look at it at 100%. This is the one in focus. Judge for yourself if you would like the quality of this fast lens.

The greatest challenge any photographer using this lens wide open will be depth of field. And if your focus is not right you will find your image to be a bit "soft". And remember this lens is less than 1/4 of what I would have paid if I bought the Sony 70-200 f2.8 SSM lens. Am I satisfied with it? Of course I will. Will I pay a bit more for the Tamron - SP AF 70-200 F2.8 Di LD IF MACRO? It depends on how much I will value 1.) removable tripod collar, 2.) Digital coating on the lens, 3.) Internal focusing, 4.) Close focusing distance for macro mode and finally, how much better will the image be. But I suspect that any other fast 70-200 lens will not beat this in terms of bang for bucks.