Tamron 70-200mm just arrived and at very good price

I've been using my Tokina 80-400mm ATX F4-5.6 since 1998 and it has served me well at airshows etc with its incredible reach. I have never been entirely convinced of its clarity however which always seemed very variable and it clearly suffers from significant purple fringing on trees etc at the long end. I have thus been pondering my options for a better quality telephoto, a need which has become only more pressing due to my efforts to turn my photography hobby into a commercial business. I have found myself shooting family groups outdoors and found myself relying on the Tokina more and more and when there are paying customers involved I really want to deliver products of only the very best quality.

I thought about the Pentax 60-250mm F4 and that is clearly a very fine lens but at over £1000 rather out of my price bracket! The Sigma 70-200 F2.8 and Tamron 70-200mm F2.8 thus became my main options - the Sigma clearly has the edge on focus speed and the Tamron on image quality and price. I've had great experience with Tamron lenses in the past and a more mixed experience with Sigma. As a result I was keeping an eye on those two lenses in recent weeks and was surprised to notice on Saturday that Amazon have slashed the price of the Tamron to £437 which is a real bargain. I placed an order - secure in the knowledge that if I wasn't impressed with the lens I could easily return it within 28 days (which is probably the main thing that has driven me to make purchases of all kinds of things from Amazon over the past year or two.

Lens duly arrived this morning and my goodness it's a monster - it makes even the Tokina 80-400 which is a fairly sizeable and well built lens feel like a toy! Very impressed with the handling (though frankly it surprised me just how heavy it is), extremely impressed with the build - now can't wait to test the optical quality!!

Also paid a visit to Park Cameras for the first time on Sunday - what a great shop!! I received some excellent advice on tripods and was thrilled to finally find a store apart from SRS that carries a good range of stuff and has knowledgeable staff as well. Ended up with a manfrotto 496RC2 head and a Giottos 8261 carbon fiber tripod which seemed a reasonable compromise between stability and weight. It's been a rather expensive but enjoyable weekend!

Jon

looking forward to seeing some great snaps with the new kit

I love mine, its good from 2.8 and perfect by 5.6

I love mine too joy to use

And I will be loving mine too, in a couple of days time, just a quick question to current users of this lens, I currently use a Lowepro vertex 200 to carry my longer, heavier lens, but is it possible to fit this lens in a shoulder type messenger bag? And if so what do you recommend.

Thanks guys, I look forward to shooting with it at the weekend and posting some pictures. In the meantime have any of you had any success with teleconverters for this lens in case I need more range or will I be forced to either fallback on the Tokina 80-400 or think about a Sigma 120-400?

Interested in views,

Jonathan

I had sigma 120-400 sold to friend who lets me borrow it cracking lens and ok to hand hold

I do not have any success with TCs on any lens! - love my Tammy 70-200 and use it in conjunction with my Sigma 120-400. One thing that surprised me when I got the Tammy is just how much cropping the images will stand - I find I use the 120-400 much less than I thought I would have to

Carl

The 70-200 Tammy had its first proper outing at the weekend to the gold cup polo at Cowdray and I think it's noticeably sharper than the Tokina so I'm very pleased even if I did sometimes miss the range of the latter!!

Here's some shots from the Tamron 70-200 F2.8:
link

and some from the Tokina 80-400 F4.0-5.6
link

By the way I'm not a polo freak at all but tend to get dragged along by my wife who is horse mad!! I just like standing around in the sunshine taking pictures and I'm actually starting to rather enjoy the speed and drama of it all! It's actually a rather good fun place to take photos.

Sunday was very interesting because somehow with a bit of a shove from my wife I found myself in the paparazzi pit with the pro's for the prize giving and my was there some tasty glass there. I've never seen bigger lenses in my life - the really huge stuff (and I'm talking about way bigger than a Sigma 150-500 in some cases) was all Nikon and Canon glass and must have cost a fortune!! Great fun to experience it though even if I did feel a little like HMS Hood going up against the Bismark!!

Jonathan
PS I did try attaching some uncompressed shots to this post but it didn't work so apologies for the links (what incidentally am I doing wrong?)

After when I sold Pentax HD 55 - 300 WR I am looking for good zoom.
This lens mainly will be use for outdoor portraits, not for sport photography. I have been recognized I usually use to take potraits 90 - 150 focal lenth.

I have 3 types:

1) Pentax 50 - 135/2.8
2) Tamron 70 - 200/2.8
3) Sigma 70 - 200/2.8

Quality of photos and sharpness are very important for me.

Appreciate any advise.

Cheers

Lucas, not being funny but plenty of people have given advice about which lens would be the right one for your needs on your thread and I'm pretty sure they were 100% in favour of the 50-135mm. It's a bit pointless going onto other threads asking the same questions.

When researching a lens I tend to go on Flickr and do a search for those that interest me and from there I can view real world samples.

yes but a lot of people complained about bad works 50 - 135/2.8 with the sun, so I am still searching