Most Helpful Customer Reviews
|
|
74 of 76 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
This len has lots of potential, but quality control is questionable, January 3, 2007
I felt like I was taking a gamble when I bought this lens, because I was not able to find many reviews of it. Given that the equivalent Nikon was almost 3x the price, I decided to take a chance. At this point I still can't give a solid thumbs up or down, so I opted to give it a 3. Here is a short history of my experience:
1) Bought lens from Amazon to use on my D50. It was a joy to have an f/2.8 zoom lens, but I was not totally convinced about the sharpness (which the few reviews I could find said was supposed to be really good). After comparing it to my other lenses and a rented Nikon 17-55 f/2.8 (great lens, but much bulkier and heavier), I determined that it front-focused so much that the subject would always be very slightly out of focus. It wasn't obvious right away, because the front-focusing meant that the background went out of focus really quickly, making for a great depth-of-field effect. The heavily out of focus background essentially made the subject look more focused, even though it really wasn't all that sharp. After much deliberation, I sent it back to Amazon to try another copy.
2) 2nd copy. This one was much sharper but back-focused, which I found to be even more annoying. This would manifest itself by someone's eyes and nose being out of focus and their ears and hairline being razor sharp. After trying to force myself to live with it, I decided I couldn't and sent it off to Tamron for calibration. Several people in lens forums mentioned that this did the trick, so I decided to give that a shot rather than send it back to Amazon (they were out of stock at the time anyway, so it made the decision easier).
3) Tamron told me that they were running slow, so it would take 5 weeks to calibrate it. Again weighing the extra $800 I'd have to pay to buy the Nikon, I decided to send it in. It actually took 8 weeks! And when I wrote them to inquire at the 7 week mark, they said they had no record of it. I think that was just because they had already shipped it, but it did scare me at first.
4) Calibrated lens. My first impression was wow, this thing really is sharp, and I was really glad that I has sent it back in. And that's when I started noticing something strange... many of my shots were looking massively overexposed. I was out on a nice, evenly-lit overcast day, so I wasn't able to figure out why the camera was having such a difficult time metering. After a few more shots, I realized that anything taken at an aperture smaller than f/2.8 would be overexposed, which led me to suspect a problem with the aperture blades. Sure enough, they were stuck wide open, so every picture was at f/2.8, regardless of the actual setting. At this point in the story, I was very unhappy.
5) Tamron customer service. I expressed my frustrations to them in an email over Christmas weekend, and I am happy to say that they responded positively the next business day. They gave me their Fedex #, so that I didn't have to pay return shipping. They also promised that they would keep it for only 2 or 3 days and ship it back right away. That made me feel a little better.
6) ???? I have not received it back yet (should be soon), so I don't have a final recommendation on this lens. My sense is that it will follow the "worth what you pay for it" adage. It will have taken a large investment of time (actually, waiting), but in the end I hope to have a pretty good lens at a relatively bargain price. There have been several times that I wanted to give up and just go buy the Nikon, but not being a professional, it's really hard to justify paying $1200-1300 for a single lens.
Otherwise, the lens is really nice. It's nice and compact for what it does, and what several have complained about as a "really loud focus noise" doesn't seem bad to me at all. It does have some pretty serious distortion, especially at wide angle. It's a complex moustache distortion which isn't correctable with Photoshop's built in correction. I did send in photos to the creator of PTLens, and he calibrated the lens and integrated it into the PTLens plugin (and standalone version). With that, your photos can be essentially distortion-free. It's really impressive how well it works. Of course, I used the lens for weeks before I really noticed the distortion. I took a picture of brick wall and couldn't believe how bad it was. Unless your photo has a continuous horizontal element, you're unlikely to even notice this.
I wish my review could be more conclusive, but I'm feeling ambiguous at this point. Hope that this helps someone trying to decide on this lens.
|
|
|
32 of 33 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A close match for the $$$ Nikon lens, May 2, 2007
I have had this lens for a month now and have shot a few thousand photos with it in different lighting situations. I own a few other fast lenses and use them all in my work as a wedding photographer. This was the first purchase I have made outside of the Nikon brand name. I am always a big review reader, before I buy kinda guy. Not just with Photography.
First off, let me say this. The lens is very good. I would go so far as to say it is excellent, with all things considered about this lens.
Now I will tell you how to buy it. Go to the shop you favor and use it. I did this and did not buy it on Amazon. I brought one of my cameras (D200) and I used the lens inside and outside of the shop. Then for comparison, I used the Genuine Nikon lens to A-B them together. Tamron has been rumored to have some QC issues, so using the lens copy you are going to actually buy is the best bet, I think. Note: I made samples from each lens at 2.8, f4, f8 and f11. I did them at full wide and full zoom and about the middle range of both lenses I think it was 35mm. I used no flash for these tests.
Here is what I determined from the above exercise. The Nikon lens is definitely much better built. It is much larger and has significantly more weight. It reminds me of a Jr version of my Nikon 80-200mm 2.8D AF lens. A lens I love btw. However, that is not to say that the Tamron was in any way built cheap. In fact it is well built. I use my lenses a lot, but I am very careful with them too. Tamron offers a 6 year warranty VS Nikon's 5 year. The build of the Tamron lens was better than the kit lens sold with most Nikon models, but no where near that of the Nikon lens I am comparing it to. With proper care, the Tamron lens will hold up, no doubt.
Focus was also, noticibly faster on the Nikon lens. However, not dramaticly so. It is more quiet, again, not dramaticly so. Some people have complained about the Tamron being noisy. All I can say is the one I tested was not. It was About as noisy or a little less than my Nikon 18-55 Kit lens was, before I sold it.
Image quality: Honestly, I could not tell the difference here and this is what really sold me on the Tamron lens. The folks at my camera store took the A-B images I took and uploaded them to one of their in store computers for me to really compare them on the spot. Now that is customer service!! I was really hard pressed to see any difference at all in the images and I knew which lens they came from. Both lenses produced images which were very sharp and contrasty in all areas at all focal lengths and stops. I would bet if I mixed them up and said..OK, Pick the Nikon and the Tamron's out of the pile, I do not think anyone would get them right. The only noticible difference was an image taken outdoors at f/11. The Nikon one did seem to be just a tad sharper in the background. I should have taken more images at that range, but on the LCD they both looked good at the time and I was starting to run late, so I didn't. My point was, I do not know if it was lens error or my error on these two particular shots. But like I said, it was minimal differences anyway.
Conclusion: Ok, so the Nikon is a better lens on a number of points. This of course given my highly un-scientific testing results. However, when you consider the cost, it better be superior at something. I opted to buy the Tamron 17-50 because, I could not tell the difference enough to make me justify the cost of the Nikon lens.
I am very happy with this lens and I have no doubts it will last many years. So, do yourself a favor if you are in the market for this lens, use the one you intend to buy first. Make sure you did not get one of the bad copies and I am confident you too will love this lens.
|
|
|
15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
All around great lens for the money, May 2, 2008
I spent a great deal of time researching a DX equivalent pro normal zoom lens, I've read many reviews and it came down to the nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8, the sigma 18-50mm f/2.8, and this little gem of a lens. After owning this lens for a month, I can attest to it's value and performance as similar to other's experience. It's fast, the newer built-in-motor version is much quieter and finds it's focus lock much faster than the previous version, which I did not care for having tried it out on my D80 the better part of a year ago. I have also found it acquires focus lock in lower light better than my AF-S kit lens, with little hunt, but there is some. I would have liked to see a focus limiter for those situations.
My nikkor 18-135mm performed horribly in low light, and realizing it is not as fast in terms of maximum aperture, I did expect much more from an AF-S DX lens costing $300.
Now, back to the Tamron...
Pros:
At a third the price of the nikkor version, this lens is the best value, even at MSRP full price. I did not purchase through amazon, but I realize that many have and will so I want people to know what they are getting. I paid the full $500 for mine and still feel I made the best investment. This lens excels at sharpness and has some of the creamiest bokeh I have produced on my D80, better even than the venerable AF nikkor 50mm f/1.8. I've got just enough depth of field to keep a person's face nicely focused from their ear to their nose, but shallow enough to blow out the background in a soup of lovely soft edged blur, this achievable from the rounded aperture blades. Sharpness is unbelievable. I was so surprised at what I got from this lens the first shot I took from it. The zoom ring has a nice feel to it, not too lose, not to tight and the zoom lock is very useful...even though there is zero creep so far. I love that the focus ring has a short throw from infinity to close (which is very close by the way, about 2 and a half inches from the glass at either end of the focal range). I can flick the focus ring, in MF with one finger from infinity to close, and it feels very natural giving great response, as does the zoom ring. The included lens hood is much better than the nikon supplied hoods, being very sturdy and easily put on and taken off. I hear the hood for the nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 is a pain and has a much larger profile. The tamron hood is nice, does its job, and even fits in my bag without taking it off. It usually stays on the all the time. The lens cap is also very good, like nikon's, can be taken off with the hood in place, which is very convenient. (I hear nikon stole that idea from tamron by the way, but I won't hold it against them)
Now for some things I have noticed that aren't so perfect. But before I share them, I want to make sure that people who will read this understands something that is very important. This is not a pro lens. So it will not be perfect optically and because it extends, or telescopes during zoom it is not sealed from the elements. As I stated earlier in this review, for the money, this is the closest you can get to achieving pro results without spending on the order of a thousand dollars more.
Cons:
There is some significant vignetting, or light fall-off (darkening of the corners) wide open at f/2.8. This is to be expected in most zooms anyway, pro or not. If you are someone who is knowledgeable enough to know why you need this lens, I will assume you've heard of photoshop. In this case, the lens correction filter in CS2, will eliminate 95% of all optical anomalies to include corner vignetting, barrel distortion, and pincusion distortion. That being said, there is little barrel at 17mm believe it or not. Even better than my 18-135mm AF-S. A +2.0 correction makes it go away. I have noticed zero pincusion, but admit that I did not shoot against a grid to notice anything any more than what my eyes can see. As I stated already, there is a chance debris will enter the lens. I have not seen any yet, after a month, but I will not be disappointed if I do, it is to be expected. If you keep your camera protected most of the time, you will likely never see a problem, but there does exist the potential. The only real gripe I have with this lens is the absense of a focus limiter.
There was one time where the AF stopped working altogether, while in AF mode. I was sure to have checked the position of both AF switches (both on lens and on body) and sure enough, no AF. I turned my camera off, then on again and the problem seemed to just go away. This was early on, and it did not happen again. I do not blame the lens directly, it could be a copy issue if it persists, but again, I have not had it happen since the first time. I haven't read that it is a common problem with the lens. I will be utilizing the 6 year manufacturers warranty if there is any further problem (which I do not foresee, but it's good to know I have it nonetheless).
Bottom line, this is a great lens to get you to your next pro level lens if you're tight on cash (as I am). This lens works well and comes from a company that has been around for some time, and will remain for some time to come. You can't beat it for the money. It just works. I am constantly surprised at the quality I get on a consitent basis with this lens. I have been so impressed that I am considering the new 70-200mm f/2.8. We will see.
I hope this review is well recieved, and good luck in your decision.
|
|
|
Most Recent Customer Reviews
|
Saving...
