Tamron 150-600 lens test

I recently tested my new Nikon mount Tamron 150-600 f5-6.3 lens and was pretty impressed with its performance. It was a two-part test. First I  spent one afternoon photographing a Great Crested Flycatcher nest with the Tamron lens, a Sigma 300-800, and a Nikon 200-400 with TC14EII. The next day I photographed a 1951 USAF resolution chart and compared the Tamron, the Sigma, and Nikon 200-400 with and without the TC14EII. The test results include full-frame and 100% crops of the flycatcher and 200% views of the resolution chart. You can view my test and conclusions on my website blog at http://erkesphoto.com.

Thanks for the review - I just sold my 70-200 yesterday and was desperately looking for something longer that didn't require the sale of a vital organ.

Checked availability at B&H and it's back-ordered; not surprising considering what you found in your tests.

Thanks again for the heads up.

Glenn

I tested the Tamron on stationary subjects at a festival of Nature photography here and was quite impressed. I also know several full time pros who bought it and are very happy with it so far. It got good ratings at lenstips, lensrentals,depreviev (DxO) and other reviews, too. However, from what I read, the achilles heel seems to be the less than average AF-performance when photographing faster moving subjects such as BIF. I couldn't try this by myself to date but the user ratings over at Fredmiranda are pretty poor for that lens, too. So it seems a mixed bag for me.
 
Wolfgang
 
 
 
 
 
 

I have used this lens and shot the resolution test suite with it. Yes AF is a bit sluggish but not terribly so until you get to the longer focal lengths. The lens is relatively sharp to 400mm after that it rolls off and by 600mm is outside of what i would consider usable from a sharpness perspective. This is likely why the AF performance isn't very good at 600mm, the lens simply doesn't supply a sharp enough image at that point. Like most super long tele-zooms, if you avoid the last 100mm, you are going to be pretty happy with the results but that last 100mm isn't good for larger prints, it's probably OK for WEB with significant edge sharpening.

WJaekel wrote:I tested the Tamron on stationary subjects at a festival of Nature photography here and was quite impressed. I also know several full time pros who bought it and are very happy with it so far. It got good ratings at lenstips, lensrentals,depreviev (DxO) and other reviews, too. However, from what I read, the achilles heel seems to be the less than average AF-performance when photographing faster moving subjects such as BIF. I couldn't try this by myself to date but the user ratings over at Fredmiranda are pretty poor for that lens, too. So it seems a mixed bag for me.
 
Wolfgang
 

 I heard stories about issues with AF performance with certain Canon crop bodies, but it  is really hard to test AF performance and  come up with a reliable way of scoring or visualizing images for comparison purposes. All I can say is that I was impressed with AF performance: speed of AF acquisition, lack of hunting, etc..  Obviously, it is an f6.3 lens at 600, so you won't get the performance of a 300 f2.8.  My action photography test consisted of a number of minutes photographing my 4 dogs in the backyard, tossing tennis balls to them. I shot with both the Nikon 200-400 and the Tamron. No noticeable difference. So I feel comfortable that it will AF fine-- more errors in missing birds in flight will be due to my performance rather than the camera/lens combination.
All I can say is the lens truly impressed me in every way. I highly recommend the lens,