jdub's reviews

Tamron 28-75mm f/2.8 XR Di LD Aspherical IF SP AF

After reading reviews here I decided I would give this lens a try with my new D700. I lucked out and got a pretty good sharp version of the lens. I was initially pretty happy with the lens, it was a little blurry at the edges at 2.8f but sharp from 4f. Captured color pretty well and I liked that it is fairly small and light weight.

However it didn't take long for me to realize this lens was almost unusable because of the slow AF speed. I tried to ignore it for awhile since you can't expect everything from such a low cost lens but the 3-4 sec focus times (indoor lighting) were unacceptable. Works better in broad daylight but still not reliable enough to capture action.

I thought my AF issues might just be due to the inconsistent manufacturing of these lenses, but versions I tried at my local camera store were also slow. Also I just didn't feel like jumping through all of the hoops of testing the lens quality over and over to make sure I got a "sharp" version again. Might be a good starter lens, but you'll be missing some photo opportunities because of the slow AF