Opinions on Tamron SP AF90mm F/2.8 (Di) Macro 1:1

[DrunkenGiraffe]

Hi, I'm looking at buying my first lens (apart from my two kit lenses)
At the moment I'm mainly shooting pets and sports. I considered getting a new lens for sports but decided I wanted to wait a while for that as I am quite happy with using my 55-200 kit lens as the sports have usually been in good light.

Anyway, I really like macro and have wanted to get more into, so I want to get a macro lens. I'm using a Nikon D5000. I have read a tonne of reviews, and the tamron has got quite a lot of good reviews. I know that this lens won't autofocus on my camera, but is that really that big of a deal? I would think that manual focusing would probably be the better option anyway for macro. Also I read that this lens is a good portrait lens as well, which would be a huge plus because I enjoy doing portraits as well. I don't have a huge budget, but then this lens seems like a really decent price.

tl;dr Will Tamron 90 Macro + Nikon D5000 be a good choice for someone wanting to use it mainly for macro but also portrait as well?

 

[shaunly]

I've never use the Tamron, but I know that for macro, I found it easier and much more accurate to MF. Even at f/16 DOF can be very shallow and so AF can often miss focus. As for portraits, MF can work fine too but AF is very helpful as well. Here are some reviews I found. Seems like a great lens.

Tamron AF 90mm f/2.8 Di SP macro - Review / Test Report - Sample Images & Verdict

Tamron SP AF 90mm f/2.8 Di Macro

 

[DrunkenGiraffe]

Thanks, that's the main thing I am unsure of. I would be mainly using it for macro, so I wouldn't miss the auto focusing there, but then if I did portraits it would be a pain to manually focus. I could spend more money and get a macro lens that auto-focused, but then it would only be the sometimes that I would even use it...

 

[edouble]

Check out this thread.

 

[pgriz]

I've got the lens in a Canon mount. Excellent performer. However, it is difficult to get the full potential out of the lens if you neglect all the other things that can rob your image of sharpness. Focusing is critical, since you have such a shallow DOF. You could compensate by increasing your aperture to f/16 or more, but then diffraction effects start robbing you of resolution, and the slow shutter speed makes any camera or subject movement extremely obvious. You could compensate by using closeup flash which then allows you a high shutter speed, but you then have more gear to deal with, and you have to use diffusers and the like to avoid having hard specular reflections off any shiny parts that you may be shooting. As well, shooting with flash will usually kill the ambient light and your backgounds go black. Great, if that's what you're going for, not so great if you want the shot to look "natural". All this to say that it takes a lot of things to go right for you to reach the practical limit of resolution that your lens is capable of.

Oh, and for true macro, manual focus is just about the only way to get the right part of your critter in focus, since the DOF is now measured in millimeters, or fraction thereof, and what the camera wants to focus on is not necessarily what you want.