Good Lens for the budgeted photographer

I have a fairly serious photography hobby and if you're into photography you know it can add up quickly.

I decided to extend my photography with a tele-photo lens and there were a number of lens' for me to choose from. My camera body is a Canon EOS Elan 7E (which I really like) so I needed an EOS lens. Canon makes two consumer lens' in the 70-300 focal range, one that is around $250 and another that has an image stabilizer (keeps images from blurring) that goes for around $450+. Well the $450+ one was out of my price range and the cheaper one didn't seem like the best bargain I could find.

So I figured while I was looking I would try to find a MACRO lens (which allows you to take extreme close-up pictures) also. The Tamron was priced in the $200 range and met both of my requirements (other than taking good photo's of course)... Not too expensive and Macro capability. Also it is very light weight, which is a big plus if you're going to be lugging it around with you.

So here are the Specifications
Lens Construction (Groups/Elements) 9-13
Angle of View 34°-8°
Type of Zooming Rotation
Diaphragm Blade Number 9
Minimum Aperture F/22
Minimum Focus 59.0in. (1.5m)
37.4in. (0.95m)/Macro
Macro Mag. Ratio 1:2
Filter Diameter ø62
Weight 15.3oz. (435gm)
Diameter x Length ø3.0 x 4.6in.
(ø76.6 x 116.5mm)
Accessory Lens hood

I purchased mine on-line for $199 from Adorama which was a good deal since they threw in a free 1.4X tele-converter. I received it within a few days and the first thing I noticed was how light it was, I hardly believed there could be a lens in the box that was delivered. First impression out of the box was that the plastic construction looked a little cheap and that they had overdone it with the rubber on the outside of the lens. It does have a metal lens mount where the lens attaches to the camera, which is a big plus... sometimes the plastic mounts can crack or wear down.

Well I'm not shallow so I decided not to judge it based on its looks and I took some shots with it. I took two rolls of film using the lens trying to test all the uses I would have for it. The auto focus on the lens was a little slower than I would have liked at the time, but I later discovered that every tele-photo under $400 is slower than what I would like, so it became a non-issue. The focus motors were very quiet, which is nice when you don't want something to hear you. I discovered why all the rubber coating on the outside... It makes it much easier to grip than most other lens' I've ever used. This made zooming in a lot easier since you had a large area to use. The Macro function was also very easy to use. The only downside was that as it started getting pretty dark, I started having some trouble getting things in focus due to not enough light. This isn't really a fault of the lens as much as it is the fault of my wallet not being able to afford more. Overall I had no complaints about my first outing and was happy with the function of the lens.

The real test is how the pictures come out. When I got my film back I was Extremely happy. The images were crystal clear with no distortion around the edges. Every picture turned out and I had great results in all the focal lengths. The ones I was most excited about where the MACRO photographs. They turned out even better than how I had seen them in the camera's view finder!