Comments on Tamron Lens

Does anyone have any experience, comments (Good or Bad) on the Tamron 200-500 Len's. I have been back and forth on what the hell I should buy for the past month and I have narrowed the choices down to the Canon 100-400L of the 200-500 Tamron.

If I buy the Canon then that will be the only lens I buy for telephoto, but if I buy the Tamron I may also buy the Canon 70-200L to fill in the gap.

Why not a Sigma 150-500mm OS or Sigma 50-500mm OS? I currently have a Tamron 200-500mm that I shot with for 5 years before switching to the Sigma 150-500mm OS and now the the 50-500mm OS. I had the original 50-500mm Bigma prior to the the Tamron. My favorite of the 4 lenses is the 50-500mm OS which is sharp and very hand holdable. The auto focus is much faster with the Sigmas as well. I found myself manual focusing the Tamron most of the time and it performed very poorly in low light and image quality suffered as well. In good light the Tamron is capable of some very sharp images and it is light weight which is what drew me to it in the first place. I have never considered the Canon 100-400mm becauae I hate push/pull zooms. I have shot with one in the past, that was owned by a friend, plus I owned a 28-300mm L for a while and I just do not like the trombone zooms. Quality wise I will admit the Canon images look better to me overall than the Tamron or the Sigmas but I just like shooting with the Sigmas better.

I was torn between the 100-400 and 150-500. I ended up buying both doing side by side comparisons. While both had their strong points, I kept the 100-400. The IQ was better. The IS (OS) on the Sigma was great, but it was at 6.3 at just over 300mm's. I'm very pleased with the 100-400 so far. I'll still keep my 300 f/4 for birds in flight, but the 100-400 is perfect for all the sports stuff I do with my kids, plus most of the wildlife stuff I enjoy.

The Tamron 200-500mm has a decent reputation as a basic, relatively inexpensive long lens. However, the newer Sigma 150-500mm lens has the advantage of optical stabilization at nearly the same price. That Sigma lens was used to generate these images:

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