Jonathan's blog

Back in September 2009, I was given a 35mm SLR camera – a Canon AE-1 Program. I loved it, it was fantastic to use, and I wrote a blog post about the possibility of upgrading to a DSLR.

In March 2010, temptation got the better of me and I bought a Canon EOS 450D. My main concerns beforehand was the loss of the large LCD viewfinder of my Fuji S9600, and in particular, not being able to flip it out for awkward shots, and not being able to see useful information about the camera settings in the eyepiece.

Well I needn’t have worried – the 450D is of course more advanced than my AE-1 and has a small LCD under the optical viewfinder for that information. I hadn’t realised until I tried it out in the shop.

The issue of having to put my eye up to the camera still hasn’t been addressed, but it hasn’t been a problem. I just find myself lying on my belly more, or simply pressing the button and guessing about the composition.

In the two months that I’ve owned the 450D, I’ve taken over 2,000 photos^[1] and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed all of them. I feel more in control of the photos, and I can’t recommend an SLR strongly enough to anyone who is serious about photography.

I now have three EF mount lenses for this camera. Unfortunately they don’t fit the AE-1 (which uses the FD mount) but this very evening I bought a Canon EOS 300, which is a consumer-level 35mm SLR with an EF mount. You can pick up 35mm camera bodies on eBay for a fiver so I thought it might be nice to make even better use of my lenses.

If you’re actually interested in any of my camera facts and figures, you might like to look at my page of cameras. If you’re more interested in the pictures themselves, then why not browse my photo blog.

[1] That’s about 1.4 each hour I’ve owned the camera

Recently I bought a Canon EOS 450D from Jessops. They were running a bundle deal, and it came with a Canon 18-55mm lens and a Tamron 70-300mm lens.

The long zoom was quite an important aspect to me, since I had upgraded from a Fuji S9600, with a huge range in focal lengths.

I’ve now owned the camera for a couple of weeks and I’ve had a chance to play with it a bit. Of course a fortnight isn’t nearly enough time to fully understand everything about a complicated device such as a DSLR, but I’ve tried a few things with it.

This review in particular is about the Tamron lens.

Obviously you don’t expect wonders from the cheapest lens in its class, but I am still quite disappointed. The S9600 was a jack of all trades (and master of none) and showed weaknesses at both ends of its range of focal lengths. That said, the whole camera cost around £200 and can now be bought for significantly less than £200. I think that represents fantastic value for money. During my 23-month ownership of it, I’ve taken about 10,000 photos. On average, that’s more than one every two hours!

Given that the Tamron lens on its own costs almost as much as the entire Fuji camera, I had hoped for significantly better images. Never mind.

At the shorter focal lengths, it’s OK. Nothing to write home about, but it’s fine. I took these self portraits at a focal length of 70mm and they seem OK.

But when you start to zoom in, the problems get worse. Some of this should have been obvious from reading the box – its largest aperture at 300mm is f/5.6, which is pretty slow. To make matters worse, there is no image stabilisation. You can’t complain about this – it says it on the box and if you want a fast lens, you have to pay more for it.

But I wasn’t at all pleased with the optical quality at 300mm. Take, for example, this photo of some distant horses. The first photo is the full image, and the second one has been cropped to show detail. Neither photo has had any other editing.

Horses in Hartshill

Horses in Hartshill

The first thing you might see is that the focus is very soft. It wasn’t camera shake because the sun was out and I used a tripod. The autofocus just seems to struggle at long focal lengths.

But then look at the chromatic aberration around the white horses. It makes the image look pretty terrible.

I also tried taking some photos of the moon last night, also at 300mm. As before with the horses, it couldn’t autofocus properly. The low light conditions made it much worse and the image was so blurry that there was no definiton on the surface of the moon.

I flipped the lens into manual focus mode where I was able to hugely improve the focussing. Unfortunately it seems in manual focus, as you approach infinite focus, the moon becomes sharper, but for the last little bit of the travel the lens goes beyond infinite focus and makes a garbage image. Not good at all.

In the end, this is the best I could manage. Here I used manual focus, spot metering and I’ve cropped the image afterwards.

The moon

It’s OK, but I’ve managed a better photo of the moon with my S9600.

I’m not sure if my lens in particular is faulty, or if these lenses are all equally bad. But I am very unimpressed with the results, even for a budget lens. Given how much more the 450D and this lens cost than the S9600, there is no excuse.

Tamron’s own website says:

Perfect 2^nd lens for your DSLR kit

So they are certainly admitting that it shouldn’t be your primary lens. However I would also hesitate to say it’s “perfect” for anything.

My advice would be to avoid this lens, unless you’re on a particularly tight budget, or you don’t plan to use the higher end of the zoom range. Be prepared to switch off the autofocus, and focus manually if sharpness matters. Get a Canon telephoto lens if you can.

Update

I may have been a bit hasty in my critical review. As I said in my comment below, I had another go today at taking a few photos with the lens.

First here’s a chimney stack at full zoom, and a cropped version below.

Chimney stack at 300mm

Chimney stack at 300mm (crop)

As you can see, the focus is very sharp. There is a little aberration, but that’s expected from a cheap lens.

This photo of the seagull was also taken at full zoom. The autofocus can be pretty slow going from one end of the focus to the other, but if you focus on a similar object first, it’s much faster. In this case, fast enough to get a lock on a swooping seagull.

Seagull

Yes, it’s not perfect – but it’s acceptable for the price. I’m going to keep this lens and see what I can achieve with it