Is this Lens sharp ??

[psran]

I have been very dedicatedly testing my Tamron 70-300 vc and have made all attempts from my side to eliminate human error. Please go through these shots and guide me whether I have got a Bad copy or is it alright

All the Images were taken with Shutter speed 1/1500, f8, VC on or on Tripod, good light and I have also attached the orignal uncropped image showing where my focus was and how much I had to crop out

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[Braineack]

how about one of the pictures you took where the subject isn't 5% of the total pixels.

 

[psran]

how about one of the pictures you took where the subject isn't 5% of the total pixels.

How much frame should be generally occupied, birds seem too far to me even with 300mm

 

[Derrel]

I would say YES, pretty sharp actually. Those are MASSIVE crops, and on the focused shots (the first one is NOT focused properly), the detail rendered at those long distances is good. Very good. It looks to me like atmospheric conditions (haze/smoke/dust in the atmosphere,etc) and or a bit of sensor noise are the limiting factors. The lens appears to be focusing well at long distance, and the detail seems pretty good on what are MASSIVE crops. You are looking at very,very small frame segments here. You are cropping these frames down to .003 of the frame, and the birds still look pretty well-rendered for being such utterly tiny parts of the whole image.

 

[Gavjenks]

how about one of the pictures you took where the subject isn't 5% of the total pixels.

Every bird looks sharp when it takes up the entire frame... Unless you're shooting through the bottom of a coke bottle smeared with vaseline. 100% crops are where you usually tell the difference in sharpness of modern lenses.

If that seems silly to you ("you don't print photos that big!") then congratulations: you have just discovered why "sharpness" shouldn't be as big of a concern as people treat it as. Kit lenses are mostly already sharp enough to give you all the resolution you need if you compose a shot correctly in-camera and print it under normal circumstances. Upgrades should be more for the purpose of wider apertures, better autofocus, better build quality (if you care about that), more extreme focal ranges, etc. more so than sharpness.

The only time you need sharpness at 100%-ish crop amounts is if you're intending to use a tiny portion of your image as the final print. However, it's often as cheap or cheaper to get a longer focal length than it is to get a sharper lens and continue cropping tiny portions of it. Or get closer to your subject.





@OP, Yes they are sharp, considering the crop. But they are pretty bad final images, because even though the lens is trying its hardest, if you only give it 0.5% of the frame, it just can't compensate THAT much. So they look fuzzy. Yes they sell lenses that will look significantly sharper than this one at 100% crops at the same focal length. However, they cost several $1000's more. You're better off buying a longer focal length consumer lens if cost is an issue, or even cheaper: improve your stalking skills or location and get a hell of a lot closer to your birds.

I can get photos of robins that are way more detailed and sharper than those herons are, despite robins being like 1/15th as tall as a heron and despite me using a $35 manual focus 135mm (not 300mm) lens off ebay, because if I go slowly and take nonthreatening stances and wait until they get used to me for half an hour and blah blah I get 1-2 feet away from them before they fly off. I mean you can't just swim out onto those islands I'm guessing. But perhaps you could wait for them to come to YOUR side of the bank. And wait there long enough to not be threatening / consider a blind to hide in / etc.

 

[psran]

Shot from 30-35 ft

 

[Derrel]

Shot from 30-35 ft

View attachment 67507

NOISE seems to be the limiting factor here, in a very big way. What ISO was this? 1,600? 3,200?

 

[ToddnTN5]

OP said that the first series of shoots were all at 1/1500 and f8, which means the ISO had to be cranked up some. I would think that 1/500 and f5.6 with a lower ISO would help.

 

[psran]

^^ ISO 3200, I know it was kinda high but this bird was very active so I couldn't compromise Shutter sp

 

[vimwiz]

Noise, and crop, lens itself seems ok.

 

[psran]

Anyone else using this Lens ? I had seen pretty good reviews about this Lens but it seems to be at par with 18-55 kit lens

 

[DarkShadow]

I had the Tamron 70-300VC I used with a Nikon D3100 and it is a very sharp lens,Especially stopped down to F/8. Here is one from it @ 2800 ISO with no Cropping.DSC_0002 by DarkShadow191145, on Flickr

Here is another at 3200 ISO.DSC_0068 by DarkShadow191145, on Flickr

 

[psran]

I had the Tamron 70-300VC I used with a Nikon D3100 and it is a very sharp lens,Especially stopped down to F/8. Here is one from it @ 2800 ISO with no Cropping.http://www.flickr.com/photos/darkshadow1911/8842603737/DSC_0002 by DarkShadow191145, on Flickr

Here is another at 3200 ISO.http://www.flickr.com/photos/darkshadow1911/9488132411/DSC_0068 by DarkShadow191145, on Flickr

Very nice photos, you seem to have got pretty close to the Birds.

I am guessing that reach is my biggest problem, how about using 1.4x or 2x kenko TC

 

[jaomul]

Using a 1.4 teleconverter you will lose autofocus unless you have a camera that focuses at f8. A 2x will lose af with all cameras. Image quality will also take a hit

 

[DarkShadow]

Thanks psran. As I was told and learned for my self, the key is getting close as possible. The way I look at it,if my subject doesn't fill a good portion in the frame looking through the finder then its to far and probably not worth shooting. I am not sure about a TC on that lens as jaomul pointed out the downside of using one.300mm was never enough reach for me but a few occasion that didn't require massive cropping.

From looking at some off your images they look a tad under exposed,that with high iso noise and excessive cropping will destroy IQ.