Playing with a 200-500

[wfooshee]

I got a used Tamron 200-500 f/5-6.3 on eBay, and today was the first sunny day we've had since it arrived over two weeks ago. I went out to a local state park to play with it, intending to do a full battery of shots, and I ended up shooting at only the longest reach, although I did pick several subjects and distances.

This thread is more about the lens rather than the images, and trying to decide whether to keep it or put it back on eBay and get some money back.

It doesn't auto-focus on my D5000 (no focus motor in the body) which I knew going in, but focusing turns out to be more difficult than I expected. With "modern" viewscreens lacking the split-image we used to count on, the only indication is how it looks in the viewfinder, and if you happen to be able to look down, maybe you'll catch the "in-focus" dot lighting up at the bottom of the viewfinder. But breathing on the focus ring moves it far enough to ruin the focus.

First frame is a blue heron in flight, from about 200 feet away. The crop (on this and the next two images) is pixel-for-pixel without resizing (if you look at the full-size image) and I really don't know if the lack of sharpness is the lens, the distance, or not quite focused. I'm thinking 300 feet is just a bit of a reach.



Even more extreme, this egret was 300 or 400 feet distant. I'll come back to this image later.


Egret gathering nesting material, followed by a shot of the trees on their island, showing the nesting density.




Another blue heron, from about 50 feet:


Same guy from about 10 feet:


Mockingbird on the ground. (Florida's state bird, it's really pretty hard NOT to find one somewhere!)


Another individual, apparently following the first one around. Stalking, sort of.


Courtship display?




I bought the lens for what I did with it today, and perhaps as a sports lens. I can't focus fast enough with it to use it for sports, though, if today is any indication. I gave less than 600 bucks for it, so I can't fault the price. Besides the focus difficulty, I find the bokeh rather annoying. Items out of the depth of field don't simply blur, the lens seems to "copy" them vertically. In the last image look at the twig coming forward from the right wing. This is where I come back to the second image, that I said I'd come back to. Look at how this effect paints the background.

So I may not keep this lens. I've always wanted a really long lens to play with, but unless I get a body with a focus motor, this one may just be too difficult to use. OTOH, the images I got of near subjects (10 to 50 feet) are quite satisfactory, to me anyway. So maybe I'll put it back on eBay in a few weeks after playing with it some more, maybe I'll keep it.

[randimal]

Well, I thought I would make a few comments though I'm fairly new at this too.

It's kinda hard to tell how well the lens works on those long distance shots. Overall, it doesn't seem quite as clear as my Canon 400 f5.6. I don't have IS, I don't think your lens did either. However, in order to get good shots I usually snap off about a dozen and only get a couple of really clear ones. Since it often has to do with taking lots and picking the best its hard to compare image to image. But from the images you posted, its not too bad.

I believe the annoying bokeh problem is actually normal with telephoto and JPEGs. My lens does it too. Too avoid it, you need to look for better backgrounds without twigs. And again, take lots of pictures and choose the best. If there is less camera shake it will do it less, and sometimes the compression just does a better job. I don't think its any fault of the lens, although I suppose it's possible that worse lenses would do it more.

So the lens is probably OK from a quality perspective. However, I've tried using manual focus only and its WAY more difficult. In most situations auto works fine and it lets you concentrate on composition and lighting and everything else. So I would get rid of it just for the lack of autofocus.

I'm pretty new at this too, but those are my thoughts. Hopefully one of the pros can confirm if my guesses are right.

[wfooshee]

I'd done some other "testing" with the lens, and ended up putting it back on eBay. I made a whole dollar off of it!

Its sharpness suffered tremendously at large apertures. I shot the full moon the other night, and wide open the image was unusable. Stopped down to the other end (f/32) it was fine, but it took mounting it on a tripod and using the self timer so I could trip the shutter at 1/100 without touching the camera. I didin't really look at settings in between. The distant shots above were probably wide open or close to it, and it didn't occur to me out there to stop it down, either with slower shutter or higher ISO.

Focusing manually turned out to be much more difficult than I anticipated. Since I bought it for a sports lens, that made it rather useless to me.

I don't think the bokeh issue has anything to do with JPEG, because I shoot RAW, and that's what the RAW images looked like..

Your Canon 400 has a very good reputation if it's the lens I'm thinking of.

For comparison's sake, take a look at this thread, images shot with my Nikon 70-300 VR lens.

[paulnj]

your main issue was trying to manually focus an auto focus lens... VERY HARD to do. and the optics seem a bit lacking (personally I never liked any tamron zoom I owned)

[mjs1973]

I've had a long range zoom like this for several years and they really do take a lot of practice and good technique to get good results. My lens is a Sigma 170-500mm. As you found with your Tamron, shooting wide open is really not an option. I pretty much set mine at f/9 for the best results. In low light this puts my shutter speeds pretty low so cranking the ISO is a must in order to freeze motion. Mine does AF but it's slow and if time allows I will switch to MF. Shooting at 500mm with slow shutter speeds also requires a good support. That could be a tripod, a beanbag, a monopod or whatever else you can find to hold it steady. I have also found the same issue you have with the bokeh. If the background is too close to the subject, the bokeh becomes a distraction. If it's unavoidable at the time of capture, I will often times try to add a bit more blur after the fact in Photoshop to help smooth it out.

I see you already got rid of the lens but if you get something similar in the future you may want to keep these things in mind.

[Don Schaeffer]

You took a very scientific approach. I admire that.

[LPLIV]

I recently picked up a used Tamron 200-500 for a song and a dance (plus a trade in) from my local camera shop. The first outing was sort of a disaster because the EV was set for a previous days shooting at a local wildlife refuge. Everything was under exposed so I spent a lot of time in PP to get what I could out of the shots.. I also discovered that with a D7000 and no vibration reduction made hand held shooting extreemly difficult. The next day I corrected the EV, kept my tripod on with a remote wireless shutter release and or shot out the window using both hands, my arms and the glass to stabilize the lens. As I learned how to do it thru out the day my results improved almost to my satisfaction... The only reason I bought the Tamron was because my friend (shop owner) said that this was an unusually sharp lens and it had never really been used that much by the former owner. I don't regret only having to spend $300 out of pocket when the options would be 6-8K for a Nikon prime tele... When I have the money I will probably get the Nikon 500mm but until then I have a pretty good lens. As soon as a master posting shots on this site I will put up some for some C&C...

In the interim... Keep shooting...

Phil

[wfooshee]

For $300 I probably would have kept it. I paid 579 for it, and sold it for 580, believe it or not. The thing lists for over a grand retail!!!

And "sharp" is not a word I would ever have used to describe it!!!! It was OK close up and at small apertures, but useless when opened up. (I can say that now that I got paid...)

Edit: I just saw that I missed in your post that the 300 was with a trade-in, so you probably had about the same money in it as I did, if not more. here I was thinking you got it for just the cash!!!

[LPLIV]

Hi Woe:
I traded in a no VR 70-300 and an 18-105 kit lens, both were in good shape but used by me one for six years (70-300) or so the other was bought used on ebay for $150.00 or so. I gave my friend the better of the trade in deal but this lens was really owned by a pro who didn't think it matched up with the $8-10K prime lenses he was shooting with. The owner of the camera shop I buy from has often given me a great deal on things I have purchased from him so I didn't have an issue with the lesser trade in values. Both owners also take a lot of time to mentor me on my phototgraphy skills during the work day as well. I also talked with the camera shop owner that the original owner bought it from who confirmed the story as well. I paid probably 200.00 or so in trade ins and 300+ tax in cash for a nearly new lens. That being said...
1. The lens works well on manual focus of stationary objects but moving targets are difficult to shoot with.
2. Where ever possible I shoot with a mono or tripod and get sharp results.
2.5. I have taken hand held shots but trying to do it with a camera that requires af-s lenses manually is nearly impossible... No matter how hard you try to get it right the ability of an indivual to hold the camera still enough to get sharp pics is pretty much impossible. I am a strong man (although older now), 6'4" former weight lifter with a strong athletic background and I struggle to hold my tele lenses still enough get a tack sharp pic... Adding the fact that you are trying to manually focus, get the correct light, dof and negate any shutter movement on your D5000 said that it probably was the wrong buy in the first place.
3. I have a camera that has an internal lens motor which gives fairly quick responses to focusing request.
4. I took pics with this lens at objects 70-100 yard away that although weren't as sharp as a prime lens only required minor PP to correct. The 500mm focus point isn't tack sharp but still allowed me to get some good shots.
5. Before I bought my lens I set it up on a tripod outide the camera shop and aimed at various points for test pics. One of the points was a cell tower 65 yards or so away from from my position. The day was a cold winter overcast, low light day shooting at a galvanize pipe with varying shades of gray in small patches... the shot came out perfectly clear and my camera picked up all the shades well.
Moral of the story.... when you invest in a tele or a lens you have never used before go to the local camera shop and test it out on your camera, this can save you a lot of grief. The Tamron 200-500 is a difficult lens to shoot with at best.. If it had a VR system in it I would say that it is a pretty good lens for what they are asking for it new....

Please don't take this reply out of context, it isn't a criticism of you or your skills... You may have had a great lens, it may have been a poor one but you were at a serious disadvantage from the start trying to use it in the method you did.

Best of luck to you in picking out a new lens....

PS if you would please tell me how to attach pics to my threads, I would greatly appreciate it.. I have had little feed back and the help built into this forum didn't work like it was suppost to. I have an album but it won't attach to a thread I started about this lens correctly.. I am sure that it is a case of operator error but I can't seem to find a help section...

Phil

[wfooshee]

Agree with all you said 100%, but I have no issue with buying something on eBay to try, and if it doesn't work out, putting it back on eBay myself. That's what I did here, and while I was disappointed with it, I don't think it was so much because of the D5000 limitation of manually focusing.

As for the method of using it, I did a lot of testing with it that I've not posted, other than the handheld use on that first day with it at the park.

That lens gave me some strange behaviors optically that I've not seen elsewhere. While focusing, the view distorted in an almost circular fashion rather than just blurring or sharpening. And as I mentioned in the earlier post, the bokeh was just weird, making me wonder if something wasn't a bit out of kilter internally. Look at the second image in my first post....

Test shots that I've not posted (or even kept, for that matter) did show markedly better sharpness when I could stop it down some, but it still never compared well to my Nikkor 70-300 VR, whether handheld, tripod-mounted, or whatever. I shot some well-lit subjects from a tripod, using the self-timer so I wasn't touching the camera, and even at f:22 it was not as sharp at 300mm as my Nikkor lens was wide open and handheld. (And just to be sure, I bracketed my focusing, moving the ring just a hair, then a hair again, both directions from the green dot being on, and the dot was the best focus, as expected.)

Maybe I got a bum lens, but I got what I paid when I put it back onto eBay, so no harm done. Being a hobbyist and not a pro I have to be able to buy what I have with walking-around money, I have no way to actually justify it. That puts pretty much all of the long glass out there out of reach. Especially if it's fast long glass! (Which this wasn't.)

As to attaching pics, I don't know how to use the album on the site, I link to pictures I've stored elsewhere, like Photobucket or Picasaweb, using the "insert image" tool.

[LPLIV]

Thanks Woe... I'll give it another try, you must have gotten a bad one or I got the only good one.. I sort of miss the 70-300 but since I live near several wild life refuges I need a longer lens than the 70-300. We aren't supposed to leave our cars although I occasionally sneak out the back side and set up my tripod as descreetly as possible... The only real panicing birds are the small ducks..Phil

[LPLIV]

Hi Woe... One more small favor to ask.. Please be the first to give me your C&C on my entry entitled Merced Wildlife Refuge... I finally figured out how to post pics... Sorry, case of the elevator going 1/2 way to the top... I mentioned that the downloads weren't quite as sharp as they were on the system, on Flickr or my album....

Phil

[Vikinguy]

lotta reach on that thing though.