Tamron 150-600 lens

BWphoto

Has anyone here bought this new Tamron lens? If so, is it as great as the hype? I have seen about 6 reviews and it seems to be half and half. The ones for Canon have been "available" since December but they are still very scarce....I haven't found any store yet that has one in stock.

pathfinder

I received mine about 2 months ago, and used in Iceland for shots of puffins with my 70D body. It is good enough that I am selling my older Tamron 200-500mm lens on EOS mount. I was surprised that Lightroom 5 had profiles for the Tamron 150-600, so there is no residual chromatic aberration after image editing.

This is an image of a Skua, shot at 600mm handheld with my 70D



This is a few puffins at 600mm on a cloudy, overcast day at ISO 500 with the 70D, handheld again



I think mine is a pretty good lens, not as good as some of my Canon long primes, but smaller, lighter, more inexpensive, and pretty darned good if used right. YMMV

I have more images with the 150-600mm lens here - http://pathfinder.smugmug.com/Travel/In-Iceland-with-Marc-Andy-et/41045993_FfbRDd#!i=3309923846&k=QMqFb2H You must check the exif data as I was also shooting with a Canon 70-300 IS L on another body as well, so only the images shot longer than 300mm were with the Tamron 150-600 in this gallery. Some of the arctic terns were shot in flight with a 24-105mm lens - go figure.

I will be happy to answer any questions I can about it. I am interested to hear others experience with this lens also. Especially with how well it tolerates high speed frame rates. It does seem to offer pretty nice bokeh.

BWphoto

Those are very nice. Very clear and hand held! Thanks for the reply. I have had the lens on order from B&H for a month now and they have no idea when they will get more. When I emailed Tamron 2 weeks ago, they said orders could be caught up in 2 to 3 weeks......we'll see.

norvig

I have both the 150-600 and the 70-300 L as well. What's your strategy for using the two of them together?

pathfinder

I'm not sure I have a strategy exactly, but I did tend to use the 70-300 IS L on my full frame body, and the 150-600 on a crop body 70D.

My thinking was to take advantage of the crop body's 1.6 mag factor, and to limit the 150-600 to the smaller image circle of the crop body where it is likely to be sharper than in the corner of a full frame body. Also when shooting wildlife, sometimes they come much closer than you expect , and having a full 70mm angle of view on a full frame can be useful.

Also the 70D ( without any brackets ) is a much smaller, lighter body than my 1Dx with an L bracket attached to it. The 70-300 IS L balances nicely on the 1Dx in my hands, better in my opinion, than on the 70D. The 150-600 is so much larger than the 70D, you end up holding the lens, with the camera as a minor appendage, if that makes sense. The 1Dx is a very heavy appendage on the 150-600 especially for handholding.

I just wish the 70D files at high ISO more resembled the ones from the 1Dx at high ISO, but nothing in life is free.

And just to confuse you more, I am not always consistent about this scenario.

I am a strong believer in carrying two bodies, and not switching lenses in the field anymore than I have to. My preference is not to switch lenses in uncontrolled environments.... ( Still sometimes it is necessary )

One of the cool things about photography, is that there are exceptions to almost all of the "rules"

I found this file the other night 70D 600mm f6.3 ( wide open ) 1/640th - the shutter speed surprised me as most of these were shot in Tv at 1/1000th ISO 400 I was shooting in Auto ISO in Tv usually ( Heresy!! I know )

Brett1000

BWphoto wrote: »

Has anyone here bought this new Tamron lens? If so, is it as great as the hype? I have seen about 6 reviews and it seems to be half and half. The ones for Canon have been "available" since December but they are still very scarce....I haven't found any store yet that has one in stock.

the posted images look good, I've heard the AF isn't as good as the 100-400 but if you're not shooting actions or sports then it's definitely worth considering (when restocked !)

pathfinder

That may be true, I just never have developed much love for my EOS 100-400, so much that I put mine up for sale in Flea Market recently. It is sharp, I used it for eagles in Alaska, but I never liked the push-pull zoom very much.

I think the AF of the 150-600 is as good or even better than my older Tamron 200-500 and I shot lots of planes and BIFs with it. No lens with a 5.6-6.3 aperture is going to be as snappy at AF as a nice f4 or f2.8 prime, but one gives up something for 1/5 to 1/10th the price, don't you think?