Tamron developing 150-600mm VC USD lens

DAA wrote in post #16681018
My copy is just plain soft at 600 and wide open. Good light, subject close enough, solid support, fast shutter, remote or timer, doesn't matter - if it's fully zoomed and fully opened up, it's gonna be soft. With mine.

- DAA

What body are you shooting with?

Snydremark wrote in post #16681110
What body are you shooting with?

60D.

- DAA

pwm2 wrote in post #16681043
Have you verified if you need to adjust the focus? It takes two to tango - both the lens and the camera can be a bit off. And the depth-of-field is very narrow so very little off is enough to get a soft image.

This lens maybe more than most; I have never needed to use MFA on my 6D so far for most of my lenses (they might be 1 or 2 units off but not enough for the bother, especially for shorter lenses with lots of DOF), but I needed -7 for the Tamron at 600mm.

pwm2 wrote in post #16681043
Have you verified if you need to adjust the focus? It takes two to tango - both the lens and the camera can be a bit off. And the depth-of-field is very narrow so very little off is enough to get a soft image.

My 60D doesn't allow MFA. But, manual focusing via Live View 10x, same softness.

It definitely sharpens up when stopping down, which is no surprise. And as far as it goes, neither is it any surprise that it's soft wide open and fully zoomed.

- DAA

I might add, that the very first thing I did with this lens is test AF accuracy and it's as close to spot on with my 60D as I could ask for. Better than my Sigma 150-500 which does front focus slightly.

John Sheehy wrote in post #16680656
They are very good photos, and I don't say that lightly. They are obviously in focus, or very close to it, but the images being sharp at this size does not mean that the lens itself is sharp. It is trivial to make a sharp 0.5 to 2MP web image from an 18-22MP original of mediocre sharpness.

I appreciate your disclaimer. Of course the photos are websized, but it is all relative. I'm comparing it to the myriad of other photos that have been posted from this lens. Hey you can count the little rodent's wiskers, so ya know... You can see the serious potential of this lens (I feel like we have had this same exchange not too long ago)

Andrushka wrote in post #16681168
I appreciate your disclaimer. Of course the photos are websized, but it is all relative. I'm comparing it to the myriad of other photos that have been posted from this lens. Hey you can count the little rodent's wiskers, so ya know... You can see the serious potential of this lens (I feel like we have had this same exchange not too long ago)

Well, if a web-sized photo is soft, it can be due to the web software (DPReview, for instance, softens images from its galleries that it resizes for the forums), or the post-processing.

As far as counting things are concerned, things can be too sharp. The original Sigma SD9 had such big pixel spacing, no microlenses and virtually saw the lens as isolated points of light, and would very sharply render 7 lines on a test chart where there should have been 9! You can simulate this by taking an already pixel-sharp image, and downsize to 33.33% with "nearest neighbor", and looking at the result at 100%.

The Tamron shots do seem to sharpen up quite well, but it depends on the noise in the image too. I have been experimenting with Topaz Denoise, which works great on the background, and still pretty good on the subject. But I try to shoot where I don't have to denoise really at all.

I actually think I might want to tone down my sharpening now, or use Bicubic smoother on resize, since some appear maybe too sharp now.

Jeff Donald wrote in post #16680526
Amazon is not a Tamron dealer. All the Tamrons sold through Amazon are either sold and shipped direct from a dealer or just sold by a dealer and just fulfilled by Amazon. With limited availability of the lens right now, I doubt any dealers have surplus stock.

The Amazon.ca web site lists the lens - sold and shipped by Amazon. So I might suggest that it is something that is regional specific. I believe Amazon is focused around approximately 10 distinct regional operations......

Last year I purchased a Tamron lens from Amazon.ca and the price at the time was considerably less than any other retailer I could find in North America.

John Sheehy wrote in post #16681197
Well, if a web-sized photo is soft, it can be due to the web software (DPReview, for instance, softens images from its galleries that it resizes for the forums), or the post-processing.

As far as counting things are concerned, things can be too sharp. The original Sigma SD9 had such big pixel spacing, no microlenses and virtually saw the lens as isolated points of light, and would very sharply render 7 lines on a test chart where there should have been 9! You can simulate this by taking an already pixel-sharp image, and downsize to 33.33% with "nearest neighbor", and looking at the result at 100%.

Not sure what you are getting at with that info. But, the Indian wildlife photos, taken in context with the accompanying review would indicate that the photos are up to par at larger viewing sizes since the author (an obviously experienced photographer) is willing to replace his Canon 100-400 for his wildlife guiding. Not really looking for an argument, just a comment on the fact that this particular reviewer is making the Tamron 150-600 look VERY capable, well, at small viewing sizes anyway. hahaha

1Tanker wrote in post #16680124
Nice review, and awesome shots!! Nice to see what the lens can do with some decent light.

Thanks for the link.

This x 1000. I was in India last August and shooting the 100-400L in truly good light was a revelation. Coming from Oregon, it was an almost surreal experience.

I went to that review again and when you click on those images they zoomed in and out is that counts as a larger size? . I am just curious.

Andrushka wrote in post #16681257
Not sure what you are getting at with that info.

You said that the web pictures were sharper than than some of the others you've seen, and I commented by saying that soft web-images don't tell you any more about the lens than sharp web-images. IOW, web-images' sharpness is mostly dependent upon software, not upon the lens.

But, the Indian wildlife photos, taken in context with the accompanying review would indicate that the photos are up to par at larger viewing sizes since the author (an obviously experienced photographer) is willing to replace his Canon 100-400 for his wildlife guiding. Not really looking for an argument, just a comment on the fact that this particular reviewer is making the Tamron 150-600 look VERY capable, well, at small viewing sizes anyway. hahaha

I see the capability of the photographer to go out and get excellent photos, at the macroscopic level. I've seen no evidence of the micro-detail of the lens from those images. You (and not just you; many other people do the same) got all excited about sharp web images, when, as I said, sharp web images are trivial to make, with post-processing. The ability of any lens that is not an outright toy to make a sharp web-sized image is not in question. Had you said that the AF seemed to work pretty well, and said nothing about the sharpness, I probably would not have said what I said at all. I might have mention that he might just be showing us the best of many, where many were out-of-focus.

I'd hate to think of someone laying down their hard-earned money on a product because they saw a sharp web image, thinking that it would stand up to a large display or heavy crop as well, because it is simply "sharp", as if sharpness was a quality that transcended scale; that's why when I see people get excited about the sharpness of web images, I try to inject some illusion-shattering reality, if no one else has done so recently.

Peter2516 wrote in post #16681292
I went to that review again and when you click on those images they zoomed in and out is that counts as a larger size? . I am just curious.

A full-res image from an 18MP camera would be 9x the area of HD monitor; 22MP, 11x the area.

My point has been that no lens that wouldn't be laughed out the marketplace would fail to allow sharp, downsampled images. That is not in question. If one understands this, they will not be surprised that any lens that isn't an outright toy could have a sharp 0.5 to 2MP image made from it. The question is how it stands up to much closer inspection; that is where the variation between lenses mostly lies. If the lens were not able to make sharp 0.5 to 2MP images, every serious person who already had one would have told you that "it is junk; don't buy it", and even the web images would have to be sharpened enough to create extra noise.

John Sheehy wrote in post #16681316
You said that the web pictures were sharper than than some of the others you've seen, and I commented by saying that soft web-images don't tell you any more about the lens than sharp web-images. IOW, web-images' sharpness is mostly dependent upon software, not upon the lens.

I see the capability of the photographer to go out and get excellent photos, at the macroscopic level. I've seen no evidence of the micro-detail of the lens from those images. You (and not just you; many other people do the same) got all excited about sharp web images, when, as I said, sharp web images are trivial to make, with post-processing. The ability of any lens that is not an outright toy to make a sharp web-sized image is not in question. Had you said that the AF seemed to work pretty well, and said nothing about the sharpness, I probably would not have said what I said at all. I might have mention that he might just be showing us the best of many, where many were out-of-focus.

I'd hate to think of someone laying down their hard-earned money on a product because they saw a sharp web image, thinking that it would stand up to a large display or heavy crop as well, because it is simply "sharp", as if sharpness was a quality that transcended scale; that's why when I see people get excited about the sharpness of web images, I try to inject some illusion-shattering reality, if no one else has done so recently.

Haha - so a sharp image is not an indicator of potential, but neither is a soft image? Thanks for that illusion-shattering reality

Anyway - to see solid images (at whatever size) come from a specific product is always helpful if one is interested in said product, short of renting and using it. All positive reviews have to be taken in good faith to some degree, until you are holding that product in your hand and using it for yourself in your day to day shooting environment. I think that is understood by most forum members when reading reviews.