Lens advice: age old question

crayzphotography

Hey all,

The story is, I have a wedding shoot I am doing on October 3. Ive got it all saved up and until now I was set on purchasing a Tamron 28-75 2.8 for my mid-range zoom. My biggest worry is the auto focus speed and the lack of a wide end on a crop body. I will be using a Nikon D90 and have my trusty Sigma 70-200 2.8 for the long stuff. This is my 3rd wedding, but I had a completely different setup for the last 2.

My questions to more experienced wedding photogs are:

#1 Who uses this lens for weddings or similar situations and what are your feelings about it?

#2 Is it too long on the wide end or just right?

#3 Is the focus speed fast enough?

I have read good and bad things about this lens nearly scaring me into a much more expensive Sigma 24-70 HSM which has a tad more wide angle and snappy autofocus.

notes:
*I have tried the Tamron and it did perform well in a well lit scene, have not tested it in dim conditions yet (I will try)
*f/2.8 is required as I will be shooting in a supposed haunted house (should be interesting) and I need it for other applications as well. (:bow 2.8)

Thanks in advance,
Josh

JohnBiggs

crayzphotography wrote:

Hey all,

The story is, I have a wedding shoot I am doing on October 3. Ive got it all saved up and until now I was set on purchasing a Tamron 28-75 2.8 for my mid-range zoom. My biggest worry is the auto focus speed and the lack of a wide end on a crop body. I will be using a Nikon D90 and have my trusty Sigma 70-200 2.8 for the long stuff. This is my 3rd wedding, but I had a completely different setup for the last 2.

My questions to more experienced wedding photogs are:

#1 Who uses this lens for weddings or similar situations and what are your feelings about it?

#2 Is it too long on the wide end or just right?

#3 Is the focus speed fast enough?

I have read good and bad things about this lens nearly scaring me into a much more expensive Sigma 24-70 HSM which has a tad more wide angle and snappy autofocus.

notes:
*I have tried the Tamron and it did perform well in a well lit scene, have not tested it in dim conditions yet (I will try)
*f/2.8 is required as I will be shooting in a supposed haunted house (should be interesting) and I need it for other applications as well. ( 2.8)

Thanks in advance,
Josh

I use that lens for weddings. For the longest time on crop only and I like the reach over the wide. I never ran into a problem with it not being wide enough.

I would often get focus while my counter part (second shooter) would have problems getting a focus lock with a different lens. When light gets low just aim for a point of contrast.

I did have one wedding where every lens was failing to focus because the lights were so low. Even my 1.8. So the tammy didn't hold up there either. But thats been the only one.

I had the Sigma and the image quality was horrible in comparison. Its also a much bigger lens.

JohnBiggs

BTW: I had the Sigma 70-200 (mk1) and it was also the pits. I bought it because I thought sigma was a great alternative to Canon. However these days I'm all about Tamron/Canon. The Tamron 70-200 blew away all others in IQ on DPreview. Even the top end Canon and Nikon.

Not every lens Tamron makes is great, but these two are stellar.

http://www.dpreview.com/lensreviews/widget/Fullscreen.ashx?reviews=20,19&fullscreen=true&av=3,3&fl=70,70&vis=VisualiserSharpnessMTF,VisualiserSharpnessMTF&stack=horizontal&lock=&config=/lensreviews/widget/LensReviewConfiguration.xml%3F4

crayzphotography

Thanks for the quick replies. i also read many good things about the tamron 70-200 but I ended up with a better deal for the sigma. I have been there when all lenses fail from lack of light (and my eyes are not very great at manually focusing) I dont think it will be that bad so I am probably going to make the tamron purchase.

thanks again,
Josh

Tim Kamppinen

I have a Tamron 28-75 that I use on a D90 for weddings. I'm very happy with it. It's quite sharp, even at 2.8, and I haven't noticed any focusing issues.

It's wide enough to manage, but it is nice to have something wider in the bag as well. I rented a Tamron 17-50 for one wedding, which was also good but I used the 28-75 more because of the extra reach.

For the wedding I shot this Saturday, I rented a Tamron 10-24mm. I figured if I was going to rent a wide lens I might as well have some fun and not get something that overlapped so much with what I already had.

Sadly, the Tamron was a terrible choice. It was soft and backfocused horribly. I had to use it for the formals because of how small the area at the front of the church was, so I had to manual focus the whole time. When shooting that wide, it's next to impossible to see what's in focus in the viewfinder, so I had to constantly chimp to make sure I had focus. Slowed things down terribly. I should have used a tripod, but then it would have been blocking the family members from getting back and forth since I was shooting from the aisle.

Basically, run as far away as you can from that lens. If not, you'll rue the day you ever fell victim to it. Of course, maybe I just got a bad copy, who knows.

Scott_Quier

On a crop-sensor (I shoot Canon), the Tamron 28-75 f/2.8 might be a bit long at the short end. It was for me and that's one of the things that prompted me to buy the Canon 17-55 f/2.8 IS lens.

The other was that I was having problems getting focus lock with my 20D/Tamron combination. The 17-55 fixed that problem as well. Though, I have to admit that the Tamron on a 5D2 focuses quite well, so it's not ALL about the lens.

For quite some time, I shot weddings with a pair of crop-sensor cameras. On one, I had the 17-55 and the other was a 70-200 f/2.8. That combination covered 99% of the shots I made (the balance was a few using a 10mm-22mm - just for fun). Using a crop-sensor camera, I think you might be better served with a similar combination. While she's not a wedding photographer (yet ), divamum her Tamron 17-50.

divamum

Scott_Quier wrote:

While she's not a wedding photographer (yet ), divamum her Tamron 17-50.

Nice try, Scott :nono:D

As for the lens: I do indeed love my Tamron 17-50 on a Canon, but I'm not sure how AF performs in low-light on the various flavours of Nikon models. Perhaps a Nikon-user can chime in on that?

zoomer

I shot a lot of weddings with the 28-75 Tamron on a d300.
It is a very good range. I can only think of once of twice where I would have liked to have a wider lens but was never a big problem.
The lens is not sharp at f2.8, quite fuzzy, by f4 it is sharp as a tack. I always shot with it on F4.
Focus was never any issue in any kind of light.
By F5.6 to f11 you can't tell the difference in sharpness between it and my Nikon 24-70 which 5 times a much.
One big bonus feature is it's macro ability which is great for doing ring shots.
I recommend it highly.

crayzphotography

Thanks very much everyone,

It looks like the lens will serve me just fine. My biggest worry was the auto focus over the lack of much of a wide angle. There are always tradeoffs it seems, but that is the fun of all of this. I will be purchasing tomorrow and Ill try to get some of the wedding pics up when the time comes.

Thanks for the advice!
Josh