I am a bit different from most photographers (no smirking in the back row….) in that I do not believe there is such a thing as a “bad” lens. You may get a defective lens, or a particular lens may not do what you want it to do, but if you take its quirks into account, you can get great photos from any lens. The corollary is not true though, not every lens is a “good” lens. Some lenses are too specialized, or take too much effort to understand their quirks that they do not easily work for a specific type of photography. I used to have a Nikon 70-200 f2.8 lens. Many people love that focal ranged, and the lens itself was very sharp and high quality, however, for me, it was not a good lens. Using a crop frame camera, the lens was either too long, or too short. For the weight of the lens (it was a bit of a brute) it was just not worth carrying around for the number of  photos I could get from it.{{1}}

Since I was working two jobs last December, I bought myself a Christmas present, a Tamron 90mm macro lens. The owner of Japan Camera gave me a great deal and I could not say no. But since I was working two jobs, I was not able to take any real photos until this weekend.

Tamron has been making a version of this lens since forever{{2}} and it has always had good reviews. I was impressed by the build quality. It does look quite different than most Nikon or Canon lenses. Maybe it is the smooth barrel and lack of aperture ring (although the latter is more common with many modern lenses). The focus ring on the Tamron is quite slick. Click it forward and the lens is in autofocus, click it back and it is in manual focus. I have a Sigma lens with a similar mechanism, but on the Sigma, the focus ring turns while in autofocus. The Tamron doesn’t. For some reason, the reversible lens hood seems a bit cheap. Nothing I can really explain, it seems to work fine, and it clicks into placed on the lens. We will see after a few years of use…

But of course handling of a lens is very secondary to picture quality. The weekend was overcast with drizzling rain, so the light was quite even, but water drops and wet reflections provided lots of contrast.

 

 

Colour seems good, and the lens seems sharp enough. So far I like the lens. I will have to make some prints to make a final assessment though…

[[1]]And it was not just the weight. I have a 300 f4 that is about the same weight, and a little bit bigger, but the reach is worth the weight. When I bring the 300 I find shots that I could not get otherwise. The 70-200 did not solve enough photographic problems for me, so I traded it for a 60mm macro.[[1]]

 [[2]]Wikipedia says 1997[[2]]