Tamron 100-400

Just seen this,thought it may be of interest to someone.

Can't wait for Part III of this series. I just bought the Nikon 200-500 in spite of its weight because its VR is far better than the Sigma 100-400's, which is otherwise a stellar lens. Abbot shows that Tamron's new 100-400 is just as incredibly sharp as the Sigma. Does its VR work any better? Will I want to sell the 200-500 again and buy the Tamron? Weight-wise, this is a no-brainer, so stay tuned...

I have only taken a few shots in the backyard, so I have no solid opinion one way or the other about this lens yet. Here's about a 1:2 crop with quick processing in Lightroom.

Woodyg3 said:

I have only taken a few shots in the backyard, so I have no solid opinion one way or the other about this lens yet. Here's about a 1:2 drop with quick processing in Lightroom.

View attachment 277264

Click to expand...

If thats the worse case scenario cheapish (by nikon standards) lens wide open at full telephoto it aint half bad :encouragement:

I'll post some pictures later, but one thing you should know about this new 100-400 is that if you accidentally leave the regular VR on when shooting birds in flight (or probably anything similar) you will get CRAZY motion blur. I've been shooting geese, and the first time out I got nothing but blur. I realized I had left the VR on so today, with VR off, I got quite a few tack sharp images. Next, I'll have to try Tamron's panning VR to see how that goes. Having a million gees around this time of year makes it easy to do BIF test shots.

Okay, so I meant VC since that's what Tamron calls it. Anyway, the first picture is typical of what it looks like if you leave VC on at high shutter speeds doing BIF, the second is what I was typically getting with VC off.

I tried the panning VC (type 2) for grins today. The light wasn't as good, but I think it still gives a valid comparison. I shot at 1/2000 and at 1/640. I don't think the panning VC hurts or helps at 1/2000. At 1/640 I think it tried to keep the body of the bird stable, but it came out looking pretty odd in all the shots.

I'll be interested to try panning a bike or car at a slower shutter speed to see how it does.

1/2000:




1/640:

Okay, since I'm on a roll, I shot 10 shots each at 1/6, 1/13/ 1/25/ 1/50 1/100 and 1/200 at 400mm hand held with Type (regular) 1 VC on. This is on the D500, so it would be equal to a 600mm on a full frame body. I picked the sharpest of each set to show here. VC is doing pretty well, because I am certainly not the steadiest shooter in town. Also, it's f/6.3 so the depth of field is very narrow.

None of this is meant to be scientific testing, I just wanted to throw out some examples for people to see.

1/6


1/13



1/25



1/50



1/100



1/200