Tamron 28 - 300 VC test following adverse comments.

[dougdarter]

Hi,

I recently sold this lens to 'Nictry', who was disappointed with the IQ of the lens. Nobody has yet intimated that I may have sold this lens because it was 'less than perfect', and I'm hoping that my reputation here is such that no one would do so.

However, prior to my selling the lens, I had just got back from holiday, where I took many shots, all of which I was happy with, and noticed no fault at all when I downloaded my card at the end of the holiday.

Here are some jpegs which I took while I was away:

Here's a good test of the lens, it's integrity and IQ. Shot at 300mm @ f6.3:

And a crop:

Other images, and I have many, many more.

Detail from 300mm shots:

Low light reflections from inside cathedral:

This final shot was handheld at night, no flash. f3.8 @ 1/2 sec ISO 200. If there was any fault with the lens, it would have been easy to pick it up with this one.

I hope you will understand how upset I felt, when I was informed that the lens was less than perfect. I felt more than happy with the way that the lens had performed, particularly as it is quite a compromise over a lens package.

 

[puddleduck]

Its very strange, I'd seen your shots as you know as I was first off the block when it came up, and I'd had it if Nick hadn't beaten me to it!

However Nick's shots seemed to show up some issues (particularly on the left hand side at 300mm).

Your crop (is it 100%?) looks good, especially wide open @ 300mm.

Very tricky situation and I think you've handled it well (especially as it was pretty public).

Have you tried the lens since you got it back? Its always possible it took a knock in the post en route to Nick.

I'm still tempted by a 28-300 VC!

 

[dougdarter]

Weather has been absolutely foul since the lens reached me, but I will take a couple or three, and post results when the weather get's a little better.

 

[dougdarter]

Well, the weather is a little better, and the rain has stopped, so I've taken a couple of shots which may be of help.

Here is a picture of my usual 'test' church, taken at 300mm, and a 100% crop.

300mm:

100% crop:

Here is a wide angle shot of my garden, with the church in the far background, taken at 28mm, and a large crop of the edge showing detail.

28mm:

Edge detail:

You want detail?? Here is a pic of the remote weather sensors in my garden, first at 300mm, and then a very large crop.

300mm:

Crop:

These were taken in less than ideal conditions, at medium apertures, to try and match Nictry's pictures, and for the sake of accuracy, they were taken on the same camera body that I used to take the first series.

Not the finest shots that I have ever taken, but I would like to hope that they demonstrate the CURRENT sharpness that the lens offers.

I can't really see any sign of the CA that was visible in Nictry's pictures eaither, and given the contrast in the 300mm shot and crop, if this was a problem, I would have expected to see it.

You can read camera settings in the EXIF files. I have made no attempt to try to represent these pictures as anything but genuine Jpegs.

 

[puddleduck]

They look fine to me, especially as you are using an S3 Pro, which if its anything like the S5 Pro won't be that sharp JPEG wise.

Whats the bottom left hand side like at 300mm?

 

[puddleduck]

Nicks shots (100%)

http://www.odysseus-software.co.uk/LensTests/28-300vs70-300.jpg

 

[dougdarter]

Here you go -

300mm:

4x crop from extreme bottom left of exposure:

I just can't find anything wrong with this lens!!

It seems absolutely fine to me

 

[dougdarter]

Nicks shots (100%)

The only thing that I can imagine is that Nick had the VR switched on for the Nikon shot, and the VC switched OFF for the Tamron shot:shrug:

 

[puddleduck]

Looks fine to me there as well, certainly close up.

For distant objects, I'm not sure there is a whole lot of difference between your sample and Nick (using your church tower as a reference)

http://www.odysseus-software.co.uk/LensTests/28-300vs70-300.jpg

Some lenses perform better close up, but not so good at infinity. Certainly looking at distant brickwalls (your church, Nick's roof) I think this could be a factor. Perhaps its better close up? Your weather sensor looks good, but the church crop only average.

Nick's also on a D200 which is pretty mercliless due to a strong AA filter, and its 10 megapixels vs 6 which makes optics more critical.

Having said that, from your crops I can see no clear evidence of a fault at all, yet from Nick's shots... well personally it looks a little "Off"

 

[dougdarter]

Looks fine to me there as well, certainly close up.


Some lenses perform better close up, but not so good at infinity. Certainly looking at distant brickwalls (your church, Nick's roof) I think this could be a factor. Perhaps its better close up? Your weather sensor looks good, but the church crop only average.

Nick's also on a D200 which is pretty mercliless due to a strong AA filter, and its 10 megapixels vs 6 which makes optics more critical.

Having said that, from your crops I can see no clear evidence of a fault at all, yet from Nick's shots... well personally it looks a little "Off"

I actually think there is more detail in the brickwork than there is with Nick's Nikon VR. If the weather is better tomorrow, I'll repeat the church shot on the D2X - will make a better comparison perhaps @12mp.

I'm still not convinced the lens is faulty. I think it holds up well against the Nikon VR.

 

[puddleduck]

The D2X would be an good choicr to use as it has excellent per pixel sharpness.

For this sort of testing, tedious though it is, a brickwall is hard to beat to test a lens, you can at least rule out depth of field errors.

 

[nictry]

Hey guys, just got in and read through the thread and first point is an absolute confirmation that I never suggested for a moment that there was anything 'wrong' with the lens or that it was sold as anything less than perfect.

I can confirm that all my comparison shots were taken with VR on and VC on for the respective lenses. There was no difference in apeture or shutter settings on both shots as shown by the exif data on my links so again there was a like for like testing.

I am not an expert at photography at all and would never suggest I know the intimate workings of either my D200 or lenses I attach to it but from the pictures I posted I hope anyone would understand why it felt that the lens did not perform to the same level of quality as the Nikon I had.

As a final comment I should add that I will end up at least £100 out of pocket from the selling of my lens and the cost of replacing it, the postage costs of both lenses (mine to Stu and the Tamron back to Doug) so it would be utterly crazy for me to have wanted to reject a perfectly good lens out of hand and to suggest any impropriety on the side of a seller (so please don't feel for a minute that I was suggesting that of Doug)

I agree that the shots posted do seem to be of a reasonable level of PQ, it would be nice to see the actual full size shots (Doug perhaps you could post a link to be able to take a look?) as even I struggle to see the quality issues I posted reoccuring in your shots?

 

[dougdarter]

Hey guys, just got in and read through the thread and first point is an absolute confirmation that I never suggested for a moment that there was anything 'wrong' with the lens or that it was sold as anything less than perfect.

I can confirm that all my comparison shots were taken with VR on and VC on for the respective lenses. There was no difference in apeture or shutter settings on both shots as shown by the exif data on my links so again there was a like for like testing.

I am not an expert at photography at all and would never suggest I know the intimate workings of either my D200 or lenses I attach to it but from the pictures I posted I hope anyone would understand why it felt that the lens did not perform to the same level of quality as the Nikon I had.

As a final comment I should add that I will end up at least £100 out of pocket from the selling of my lens and the cost of replacing it, the postage costs of both lenses (mine to Stu and the Tamron back to Doug) so it would be utterly crazy for me to have wanted to reject a perfectly good lens out of hand and to suggest any impropriety on the side of a seller (so please don't feel for a minute that I was suggesting that of Doug)

I agree that the shots posted do seem to be of a reasonable level of PQ, it would be nice to see the actual full size shots (Doug perhaps you could post a link to be able to take a look?) as even I struggle to see the quality issues I posted reoccuring in your shots?

Nick,

I don't think that for a minute you were suggesting any impropriety, indeed you said that you weren't. It would not be beyond reason however, to expect that one or two might be thinking that I tried to pull as fast one.

I'll post links to full size images of both tomorrow.

 

[puddleduck]

One thing that did occur to me is that the other day when Krazy_Horse came over to mine, so we could test his Tamron 28-75 is that some cameras and lenses just don't play well. Probably why newer bodies have AF Fine Tune.

On his D200 neither lens (and mine is a good sample) looked amazing, but mine was better. On my D60, both lenses sharpened up hugely, although his never matched the wide open sharpness or mine, and looked hazy.

On my D700 his lens actually looked pretty good, and if I hasn't compared it to mine (which was again sharper) I probably would have thought it was OK. The low pixel density helped to cover up the alignment issue in his lens, which gave a slight green OOF haze to the image.

So there are various factors here, including pixel density, camera body, and just plain "oddness" which are hard to explain but just "are".

 

[dougdarter]

Here's a link to the pics:

Church 300mm:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/darterdigitalmagic/2765574499/sizes/l/

Wide angle 28mm:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/darterdigitalmagic/2766417144/sizes/l/

 

[allanm]

Certainly is an odd one, Dougs pictures seem perfectly fine to me too.
The only thing that is different between your full size images and Nicks is that Nicks are (3872 x 2592) and yours are (1024 x 683)

When viewing Nicks at the smaller size, they seem to look fine too. I wonder if a 100% crop of one that size would look blurred and show as much CA?

Allan

 

[nictry]

Here's a link to the pics:

Church 300mm:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/darterdigitalmagic/2765574499/sizes/l/

Wide angle 28mm:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/darterdigitalmagic/2766417144/sizes/l/

Doug, cheers for posting these, if I was being totally honest I would say that the 300mm shot of the church still doesn't look that sharp (blurry edges to my eyes) and obviously this is showing at 1024x683 and my shots were 3872 x 2592 which will be a vast difference in detail when cropped.

I am not sure if the pic of the coal tit on your flickr page was taken with the 28-300 (as it was taken on the D2X) at 300mm but being truly objective I do feel this is not incredibly sharp (slightly blurred around the edges) so my honest feeling is that the lens is still a fair difference in IQ from the shots with the Nikon?

 

[nictry]

Certainly is an odd one, Dougs pictures seem perfectly fine to me too.
The only thing that is different between your full size images and Nicks is that Nicks are (3872 x 2592) and yours are (1024 x 683)

When viewing Nicks at the smaller size, they seem to look fine too. I wonder if a 100% crop of one that size would look blurred and show as much CA?

Allan

Snap!!! I also wonder if the size of the image is where the crops are showing the slightly higher IQ of Doug's pictures over the ones I took?

In fact here is a link to the same size shot Doug has posted on my original test images:
Tamron http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3111/2756847331_036f72bdbf_b.jpg

Nikon http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3037/2757717718_f122d24c67_b.jpg and when looking at this size compared to the Nikon shot I would probably be hard pressed to say there was a great deal of difference, it really is the larger size shot that highlights the difference in the IQ

 

[puddleduck]

A full size S3 Pro JPEG will be either 4256 x 2848 (not recommended due to interpolation) or 3024x2016 (6 megapixel or JPEG "M").

 

[dougdarter]

OK,

I'm posting another series of pics with the lens mounted on my D2X, but otherwise, the pics will be from the same perspective. I'll also do a couple of pics, as suggested using a brick wall.

These will be the last I will post regarding the lens, as for the life of me, I cannot find a single fault. I will probably keep the lens now, so these pics will just be 'for interests' sake.

I took similar pics (which I won't show) using a 200mm f 2.8 Nikkor with an 1.4x converter, and my 300mm f4 Nikkor prime. Just for fun, I then repeated it with my 80 - 200 f2.8 Nikkor zoom, and cropped it to equate 300mm. They were all superior to the Tamron, but that was to be expected. It proves nothing other than good Nikon glass is superior to anything third party. I still maintain however, that as a do it all, the Tamron 28 - 300 is a cracker, especially given it's price.

Church at 300mm:

Crop of centre:

Garden at 28mm (church in background)

Crop of bottom left hand corner to test for edge sharpness.

Wall at 300mm:

Centre crop:

Wall at 28mm:

LHS crop:

I honestly believe, that these prove beyond any doubt, that there is no inherent problem with the lens, with regard to either IQ, lack of sharpness, or CA/contrast problems.

Thanks for reading.

 

[puddleduck]

Again they look fine, could you show a 100% crop from the brickwall on the bottom LHS? You've showed on at 28mm but not 300mm.

This is the area that looked problematic on Nick's shot, so a crop here for consistanty with the 28mm LHS crop would help.

Centre crops to me look fine.

A suggestion would be to post the full JPEG from the 300mm wall image? Then folks can "flip" it in Photoshop to see if the bottom LHS is softer than the RHS etc?

Finally question - are you showing 100% crops? As the 28mm brick wall doesn't look like 100% to me? It looks more like 25%.

 

[dougdarter]

Again they look fine, could you show a 100% crop from the brickwall on the bottom LHS? You've showed on at 28mm but not 300mm.

This is the area that looked problematic on Nick's shot, so a crop here for consistanty with the 28mm LHS crop would help.

Centre crops to me look fine.

A suggestion would be to post the full JPEG from the 300mm wall image? Then folks can "flip" it in Photoshop to see if the bottom LHS is softer than the RHS etc?

Finally question - are you showing 100% crops? As the 28mm brick wall doesn't look like 100% to me? It looks more like 25%.

Here is a large crop from bottom LHS of the 300 wall pic.

The 300mm shot of the wall is the full Jpeg, resized for posting - it is all there.

 

[puddleduck]

Here is a large crop from bottom LHS of the 300 wall pic.

The 300mm shot of the wall is the full Jpeg, resized for posting - it is all there.

This isn't a 100% crop.

What do you define as a "large" crop?

 

[puddleduck]

Doug:

Please post a 100% crop, you are posting small "full images" and not 100% crops.

The D2X has 4288x2848 resolution.

LHS brick on the 300mm image is about 1/3rd of your screen, horizontally.

Therefore a 100% crop of the bottom LHS brick will be about somewhere around 1250 - 1400 pixels when viewed at 100%. It should pretty much fill out screens at standard web resolution.

 

[dougdarter]

This isn't a 100% crop.

What do you define as a "large" crop?

:bang::bang:I said in the first post of today, that I wasn't going to post any more, pictures, but I did.

I'm just about fed up with jumping through hoops to try and prove that a fault I personally don't believe exists, doesn't exist.

I am not into pixel peeping. Any of the pics I posted here would print at A4 beautifully, and at anything larger than that, I wouldn't be interested.

I'm certainly not going to get into a discussion about what 'I call a large crop'. It is too subjective. I posted what I thought were large crops, so that should be good enough.

I believe that I've done far more than was necessary, both in refunding Nick's payment, and providing pics in far more detail than most posted here, from a lens that seems to be perfect, both functionally, and optically.

As I said, I'm not going to advertise the lens again, given the publicity it has received here, that may prove to be difficult, even though there is nothing wrong with it.

Let's be frank, if we were trying to prove an expensive Nikon zoom is better than a 3rd party zoom from Tamron, we've done it, in spades. I have never implied that this was better than the Nikon, I've even admitted that the Nikon is a better lens.. This is a low priced, do it all lens, that provides good IQ from 28mm through to 300mm. Nikon doesn't do this lens, but if they did, it would probably cost more than twice the price, and really, would it be any better??

Look at the Pics I posted at the start of this thread, which were taken in fine, perfect weather for photography, in bright of interesting, detailed subjects. This is what the lens should be judged upon.

I have tried extremely hard to provide pictures both yesterday, and today. All I have been able to do is take pictures of a church a mile away - yes a mile away!!, and some uninteresting wide angle shots of my back garden in poor weather, with doubtful light, at apertures to match the ones Nick took - not easy!!

I'm sorry, but I don't intend to do any more. I'll discuss pics I've already taken, but that's all.

 

[puddleduck]

I'm certainly not going to get into a discussion about what 'I call a large crop'. It is too subjective.

Don't be subjective, show 100% crops.

I posted what I thought were large crops, so that should be good enough..

You started this thread to rebutt Nick's 100% crops though...?

BTW I should say that the lens looks fine to me too, and would print just fine (25% viewing would make a nice A4)

 

[fracster]

For chrissakes.......:bang:

 

[dougdarter]

Don't be subjective, show 100% crops.



You started this thread to rebutt Nick's 100% crops though...?

BTW I should say that the lens looks fine to me too, and would print just fine (25% viewing would make a nice A4)

I didn't start the thread to rebut Nick's 100% crops. There was nothing wrong with them, and I had no issue with them. I started the thread to re-assure anybody who might have thought otherwise, that the lens was absolutely fine when I sent it to Nick. One or two of the comments on the original for sale thread were a little unfair.

I then, when asked to, provided pics taken SINCE I received the lens back just to try and indicate that no damage occurred to the lens in transit to Nick, or back to me.

I believe I have done so. I have done everything asked of me, and will do no more.