Tamron 60mm Macro - First Thoughts
pyanez
Registered Users Posts: 212 Major grins
Lens arrived late yesterday. Had a bit of a chance to play with it, but I'll limit my more detailed comments today until I get more of chance to play with it and retest some issues I might have with this lens.
Lens Basics:
1) Lens is a bit longer than my Canon 60mm and about the same length as the Nikon 60mm AF-S. But much. much smaller than either the Nikon 105mm VR or the Canon 100mm Macro.
2) The lens is completely internally focusing and does not extend at all when focusing.
3) The working distance (front of lens to subject) is about 3/4" greater than for the Canon 60mm EF-S macro lens and over 1" more than that of the Nikon 60mm AF-S. This means that you can shoot with (in my case with a Nikon D90) at 1:1 without the lens casting a shadow on your subject. This is VERY important to me so I tried it at a variety of angles to my subject and in all cases the lens did not cast a shadow on my subject.
4) Vignetting characteristics are very good. Even wide open (f2.0) light loss in the extreme corners was less than 1/2 of an f stop. By just f2.8 fall-off was significantly less than 1/4 of an f stop.
5) The focus of the lens is about standard for a macro lens, but is (at least on my Nikon D90) very accurate even is low light. On the other hand is is significantly more noisy than either my Canon 60mm or the Nikon 60mm AF-S that I have tried in the past.
6) The lens can produce extremely sharp 1:1 macros (see below). My initial impression is that it's not quite as tack sharp as my Canon 60mm wide open (but through detailed testing this lens is more than 1 fstop darker at 1:1 range than the Tamron). At equivalent (real) working apertures they are equivalently sharp*. * = On Nikon systems lenses actually show real working apertures at close range so the Tamrom max aperture is only F4 at 1:1 range, while Canon systems do not show the real working aperture. In my testing of the Canon 60mm EF-S has a real working aperture (light transmission and DOF of approximately f5.3).
7) It appears that the Tamron (or at least my copy) may suffer from significantly more CA in the macro range than my Canon EF-S 60mm, especially at apertures greater than f8. Likewise the lens (or my copy) seems to produce some very busy bokeh in the macro range. I'll be looking closely at these last two issues and reporting further on what I find -- take the above statements with a grain of salt as they are very preliminary and (may) only relate to the lens I received and not be intrinsic of this lens design.
One teaser image of what I got late yesterday (best shot of maybe 30). Shot at 1:1 with onboard flash. You can view much larger copies at my Photo Gallery Here
Full crop of image:
Crop from Center to Edge of Photo (go to webpage above and you can see at 100% size by clicking "original")
Lens Basics:
1) Lens is a bit longer than my Canon 60mm and about the same length as the Nikon 60mm AF-S. But much. much smaller than either the Nikon 105mm VR or the Canon 100mm Macro.
2) The lens is completely internally focusing and does not extend at all when focusing.
3) The working distance (front of lens to subject) is about 3/4" greater than for the Canon 60mm EF-S macro lens and over 1" more than that of the Nikon 60mm AF-S. This means that you can shoot with (in my case with a Nikon D90) at 1:1 without the lens casting a shadow on your subject. This is VERY important to me so I tried it at a variety of angles to my subject and in all cases the lens did not cast a shadow on my subject.
4) Vignetting characteristics are very good. Even wide open (f2.0) light loss in the extreme corners was less than 1/2 of an f stop. By just f2.8 fall-off was significantly less than 1/4 of an f stop.
5) The focus of the lens is about standard for a macro lens, but is (at least on my Nikon D90) very accurate even is low light. On the other hand is is significantly more noisy than either my Canon 60mm or the Nikon 60mm AF-S that I have tried in the past.
6) The lens can produce extremely sharp 1:1 macros (see below). My initial impression is that it's not quite as tack sharp as my Canon 60mm wide open (but through detailed testing this lens is more than 1 fstop darker at 1:1 range than the Tamron). At equivalent (real) working apertures they are equivalently sharp*. * = On Nikon systems lenses actually show real working apertures at close range so the Tamrom max aperture is only F4 at 1:1 range, while Canon systems do not show the real working aperture. In my testing of the Canon 60mm EF-S has a real working aperture (light transmission and DOF of approximately f5.3).
7) It appears that the Tamron (or at least my copy) may suffer from significantly more CA in the macro range than my Canon EF-S 60mm, especially at apertures greater than f8. Likewise the lens (or my copy) seems to produce some very busy bokeh in the macro range. I'll be looking closely at these last two issues and reporting further on what I find -- take the above statements with a grain of salt as they are very preliminary and (may) only relate to the lens I received and not be intrinsic of this lens design.
One teaser image of what I got late yesterday (best shot of maybe 30). Shot at 1:1 with onboard flash. You can view much larger copies at my Photo Gallery Here
Full crop of image:
Crop from Center to Edge of Photo (go to webpage above and you can see at 100% size by clicking "original")
0
Comments
For the shorter macro, I just bough a used Nikon 55/3.5 AI from Keh. It meters on my D300 and is an absolute joy to use (wouldn't meter but it would work on the D90). MF is not a problem as you'd use that for macro most of the time anyway. I use the Tammy 90 in MF almost always too.
Good luck on yours!
Nikon D700, D300, D80 and assorted glass, old and new.
very good shot, good detail. try a portrait crop witha bit more of the head in.
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