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Tamron 24-70mm f2.8 VC on D800e

tashley

Subscriber Member
I picked up one of these ahead of a vacation where a mid-range zoom was necessary and because Nikon had failed to fix my 24-120's blurry right hand side.

Nervous about travelling untried I ran some tests and they indicated a whole range of problems, such that I almost returned the lens. It tries to frontfocus at close range and to backfocus at distance, it seemed to need differing AF fine tune at either ends of the zoom, and the VC was making blurry images.

Staying as calm as ever (right!) I just took it for a walk, shot loads of stuff at different zooms, apertures, etc and everything was fine, however dodgy it looked in a test environment, so I took the plunge. I packed a 70-200VRII as well, just in case, and a 28 f1.8... And a Sony RX100.

Yesterday, the first full day of the trip, I waked about for several hours with just the Tammy and decided to turn VC off for all shots over 1/40th and, for all shots over 1/40th, to use at least twice the reciprocal of focal length. Otherwise the only concession I made was, in distant scenes, to focus on something slightly closer than the furthest thing I want in focus.

Now: I have a MacBook retina with me, so can't make fine judgments because LR is still enterpolating full resolution on retina displays but, initially, I think this lens is great. It's about as sharp as the 24-120 on centre, has better edges even than the 'good edge' on my 24-120, and the VR makes it very useful in dark places. Edges at 24mm could be tighter, otherwise I am happy, and the results are very consistent too. I know Guy has just bought this lens, so useful maybe to have a thread for people to share impressions...

There's a full and soon-to-be growing vacation snapshot gallery at
Tim Ashley Photography | Black Sea and full-sized images can be downloaded for anyone who wants to tell me that I'm not judging this properly on the MacBook ;-)

Some for a starter:






 

Guy Mancuso

Administrator, Instructor
Turning VC off in good light as Tim mentioned seems to do the trick. I sat down on my couch inside with it on at all focal lengths and ISO and in the shutter speeds that are running slower with VC on worked very nicely both wide open and stopped down a bit. Now front focusing and back focusing I'm seeing very little of it and need to get out more and shoot with it. I have my AF set for -7 at the moment.

So this week I want to get out and test a little more before I go to NY with it and shoot city stuff. Glad your started this Tim and I will load up some images also as I go along.

Images look good so far Tim, thanks for posting

Hopefully my trigger finger will work okay. Seems I broke my index finger. There goes my golf game too. LOL
 

Guy Mancuso

Administrator, Instructor
Okay so today I put it on a tripod and AF tuned it to live view. Came up with -12 at all focal lengths I also tried different distances as well from 3ft to at least 100 ft with several 20 , 30 tests. Good news it is holding steady and dead on there but I have VC off the whole time. My plan is VC on when I really need it in low light.Off otherwise
 
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