Marumi make excellent polarisers at a decent price - there is a comparative text at Lenstip worth reading.

Hey Leanne, welcome to the site.

As others have said, the Tamron is a great macro lens, but then to be honest most macro lenses tend to be pretty good. Pentax have their own 100mm lens, and Sigma make two in PKA fit - a 70mm and a 105mm.

I'd be cautious about using the longer lenses for portraits though - 90mm+ is getting a bit long for those, and 70mm or less may be a more flexible focal length. Also macro lenses tend to (a) focus terribly slowly and (b) be bitingly sharp. The latter in particular is not necessarily that desirable for portraits, and people won't thank you for showing every pimple and wrinkle in all its glory....

For macro, I think it would be useful to know what you want to take shots of. If it's inanimate objects that aren't going to be scared when you get close, you can get away with a shorter lens (did I tell you I was selling my Sigma 70 on this site?!) but if you're thinking about critters, then you really need to head for longer focal lengths if you can. The Tamron is a good choice but avoid the very earliest (f2.5 1:2) manual focus examples as they have a flat rear element which causes reflections on digital sensors and you get nasty hotspots in the centre of your image when you stop them down beyond about f8.

I have a few other suggestions though...

(1) you could consider something like the Raynox adapters or a good quality close up lens on front of your existing lenses and you might be surprised at how good they are unless you really want to go for macro in a big way

(2) or you could try extension tubes

(3) and for portraits, I'd suggest you try a fast 50mm prime lens (plenty of those available both old and new) or if you want to splurge, there's also the 70mm DA Ltd - one of the nicest shots I've ever taken of my son was made with that lens, and I think they really are exceptionally good.

Whatever you choose, good luck and enjoy!

Jon

Trev - you'll find they work well with an adapter on your Olympus too (I think you have live view?). I used some great legacy lenses on an E-1 and the results were lovely (best being from a Pentax 135/2.5 SMCK which became a rather fast long telephoto on the four thirds camera).

I think I'd buy a 70-200 and crop later. The results will probably be better than a consumer XX-300 and you'll gather a lot more light to enable some faster shutter speeds.

Jon

Weekend bump - photos of this fantastic lens now added. Cheers, Jon

Weekend bump: photos of the M28/3.5 and M135/3.5 added below. Both in superb shape.





















Cheers,

Jon

Matty - what are the main requirements for this lens? Are you talking about birds in flight (or similar) or sports? Or things that are slower moving?

Jon

I think the bottom line is that longer telezooms at the budget/consumer end of the market where most of us lie are all a bit pedestrian in terms of focussing speed. I suspect better quality and focus speed might come from pairing one of the fast, heavy and bright 70-200 f2.8 lenses with a good teleconverter, or using the 60-250 DA*. Not exactly cheap options though.

The issue is "top notch AF" - there are ways to work with the 55-300 and its competitors that allow you to cope - and quick shift focus is an essential tool in that so I'd really give it some priority. Helping the lens by getting close with MF, and then shooting in short bursts of 3 or 4 shots rather than single images should increase the likelihood of good results with moving subjects.

As for the real cracker of a 28/3.5 mentioned above, I concur....and I have one for sale. PM me if you're interested (and sorry for the shameless plug!). Jon

The difference in reach between 300mm and 320mm is negligible. But the difference in field of view between 55mm and 80mm is much more substantial. If you want to get this right first time, I'd go for the newer lens.