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Tamron G2 arrives.
#1
Hi guys,

             The Tamron GSP 150-600mm F5-6.3 Di VC USD G2 lens arrived at lunchtime. I didn't take long to bolt it onto the D750 and take a few test shots, first off it works, and works OK. Next down to the river also taking the D500. A few shots of a large refurbished mill (brickwall test), at four focal lengths wide open. Then on to try and catch a bird or two, so I came away with 170 shots of this and that.

  My old Tamron was a goodie, so I was making observational comparisons whilst shooting.

 

 First off the build is immediately and noticeably better, the barrel is metal and the focal lengths are semi lockable at any FL by pushing the zoom ring towards the front element, it is also fully lockable at 150mm. The inner tube is still plastic but with a metal covered front tulip. The zoom feels even and solid, it can also be zoomed in a push/pull fashion.

 Lens foot is Arca quick release with two threads....nice!

 

 Back home I looked at the images, firstly from the D750 to see whether the lens is well centered, "unbelievably" it seems OK, From the D500, things still look good and at 600mm @ F8 images are sharp and fringe free, I wasn't expecting the bokeh to change but it has, things are smoother and less flare explosions in sparkling water.

All in all it's a big improvement on the first version and in just about every way, the VC is better and less jerky, and now there's three positions, but it's not quite as good as Nikon's (maybe a FW update?). When I get the "Tap in" I'll try and see if there is some adjustment, in the meantime it's pretty damned good.

Autofocus seems much the same.....medium fast.

 

 Some improvements are small, but every thing that was "a bit just" has now been improved, to me I wanted sharper images at 600mm, weather sealing and closer focusing (now 2.2mts vs 2.7mts) and it offered them.

 

 This new G2 has just upped the game and frankly it's Tamron's latest game changer at a reasonable price, I went "grey market", it was €1,104 inc postage...........

 

                                                                                        ...a bargain!

#2
I'm so happy it's raining all day!

 

Otherwise I would be too tempted  B) sounds good, man! Hope to get a quick shout if you did a comparison to the 500/4, just to get the idea...

#3
Quote:I'm so happy it's raining all day!

 

Otherwise I would be too tempted  B) sounds good, man! Hope to get a quick shout if you did a comparison to the 500/4, just to get the idea...
 

 Yeah I will do that comparison, the real difference is one of aperture thouigh, the the 500mm F4 is sharp wide open, the G2 at 600mm @ F6.3 is still not there, I'll try F7.1 today though, I have yet to fine tune a little, the sun's out this morning.

 

  With the arca foot  removed it weighs 1.904 Kgs (4lbs 3 ozs)....it's just not that heavy.....compared to the Sport which weighs in at  3.1 Kgs without the base of the tripod foot, a whole bunch of the weight is that monster front element (105mm) so the balance isn't good either.

 

 

My guess is that Sigma will come out with a MkII Sport model where the sharpness will justify that extra weight!

 

BTW.  There's still not a single test site out there at the moment that has reviewed all the "big five" ( [150-600mm] the two Sigmas and the two Tamrons+ the AF-S 200-500mm Nikor)  The forums are alive for a lens testing site to do a comparison "big five" test.

 

  A test of the three missing lenses would be sweet...

 

   I know Klaus is cringing here  :wacko:  no problems Klaus...just delegate.....Marcus where are you?  Tongue

#4
Yesterday night I was on Sigma's website:

 

There was a very nice, 15' long movie made with the new cine-lenses 18-35 and 50-100, a work of two years preparation. A nicely told story about photography and blur.

 

They also mad the step to update their crappy RAW-converter, so that the Mac version now finally reached 64 bit. Pity, it's still not as fast as the windows version.  :angry:

 

One firmware update for the 35/1.4, the other updates are mostly for Canon users  :unsure: A new USB-dock software as well.

 

So there's still some life in Sigma, but a couple of developments I don't understand and I don't follow this path. The new 85/1.4 Art is somewhere in between an Otus and a standard 85/1.4 or  85/1.2 weight- and size wise. Running around with close to 3 kg to portrait people? Or with less than half of it and still have eye-detection?

 

I was hoping, Sigma would add some interesting lenses to Fuji X as their own SD quattro lacks also a bit of HQ and fast APS-C lenses - so, at the moment this Tamron is the most interesting lens to me.

#5
Congratulations, Dave, and here is to many successfull shoots with the new lens!


Kind regards, Wim

Gear: Canon EOS R with 3 primes and 2 zooms, 4 EF-R adapters, Canon EOS 5 (analog), 9 Canon EF primes, a lone Canon EF zoom, 2 extenders, 2 converters, tubes; Olympus OM-D 1 Mk II & Pen F with 12 primes, 6 zooms, and 3 Metabones EF-MFT adapters ....
#6
Quote:Congratulations, Dave, and here is to many successfull shoots with the new lens!

Kind regards, Wim
Thank you Wim and I hope you have a good year too!

 

   AF fine tune done, D500 -2.......D750 +2.... with no sign of inaccuracies between focal lengths, actually Tamron have done very well with their reverse engineering version of Nikon's AF.

 

 

 

The first three Flickr shots are with the new G2!

 

https://www.flickr.com/photos/124690178@N08/

#7
Not too bad, wow  :blink: The highlights on the water are not too disturbing. 

#8
Thank you, Dave!

 

Your images look outstanding!

 

Kind regards, Wim

Gear: Canon EOS R with 3 primes and 2 zooms, 4 EF-R adapters, Canon EOS 5 (analog), 9 Canon EF primes, a lone Canon EF zoom, 2 extenders, 2 converters, tubes; Olympus OM-D 1 Mk II & Pen F with 12 primes, 6 zooms, and 3 Metabones EF-MFT adapters ....
#9
Quote:I know Klaus is cringing here  :wacko:  no problems Klaus...just delegate.....Marcus where are you?  Tongue
Right here... reading your wish list, though, I maybe should better hide Wink

-- Markus
Editor
opticallimits.com

#10
The Sigma 150-600mm C will come at some stage.

But I really have to process my backlog first (7 lenses). And thereafter I have to do two that I'm personally interested in ;-)

  


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