Interesting comments. . . .
I had pretty good results with my Tamron SP 28-105/2.8. Your comment on
the construction is very true. Lots of polycarbonate vs the metal in my
35-80/2.8 Zuiko. I didn't mind the quick focusing ring, although the ring
itself was way too thin. It's obvious that this is an autofocus-designed
lens first and a manual focus lens a distant second. You just have to get
used to the feel though. Yes, it didn't snap into focus like many other
lenses, including the 35-80/2.8 Zuiko.
OTOH, I didn't have the problem that you describe with having to tap the
focusing ring or the loud auto-diaphragm. Hmmm. . . QC issues??
I thought the image quality was very, very nice. Just about up there with
my best lenses. The slides and prints always seemed to "pop". I don't do
technical testing however, only my seat-of-the-pants evaluations. I'll
leave that up to you Gary.
I especially liked the focal length range, but these days, you have to give
up something, and I guess size considerations lost out here.
OK, here's the question you all should ask. Why don't I still have
it? Well. . . it was just too big for me. Even though I have big hands, I
found the diameter to be a bit too much. Also when you zoomed out to
105mm, the lens really got intimidating. I guess that I'm too used to the
svelte OM-System Zuiko, Leica M, and Voigtlander screw-mount lenses to deal
with a "real" wide-range zoom <bg>. Maybe that's why I don't own one of
the "modern" autofocus SLR's??
Skip
At 12:41 AM 9/14/00 -0700, you wrote:
I think the test of the US$800+ Tamron SP 28-105mm f/2.8 might be
particularly interesting to folks. I was underwhelmed with the lens. It
is very much constructed like the Tamron 28-200mm Super we see millions
of on AF SLR's - so it's plastic look is a FAR CRY from a 35-80mm f/2.8
Zuiko's construction. The focusing rotation is very short, thus the
smallest movement of the focusing ring will throw the focus off.
Conversely, one has to tap the ring to get it to jump into focus. Not
good . . . The wide open performance isn't good enough to really make
any significant improvement in focusing. I was hunting for focus even
with a Varimagnifinder and a 2-4 screen. OTOH, vignetting is well
controlled except at the extreme focal lengths when wide open. At f/8
and f/11, it provides image detail up with the best of lenses, but it
doesn't have evenness of performance across it's aperture range. It also
gives off a rather harsh and loud sound from its auto diaphragm
mechanism. I had the feel that using mirror and diaphagram prefire was
really helping the lens performance, but I didn't test without it. For
all of you who have wanted me to test more intermediate focal lengths on
zooms, this test should please you! I really burned up the film. I also
added the Popular Photography SQF data at 24x, for comparison.
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