Tamron 60-300/3.8-5.4 Lens Test

cooltouch · Joined: 15 Jan 2009 Posts: 9096 Location: Houston, Texas

Welp, I did a search here and found a number of hits for the Tamron 60-300, a couple of which included some lens tests, sort of. I decided I'd go ahead and add to the documentation already here about this lens anyway. Why? Because it was probably my favorite zoom back in the 80s. A very useful focal range, sharp wide open, great macro capability. I shot many hundreds of photos with that lens. I sold it years ago, though, but recently ran across a clean used one for cheap, and just this week finally found an Adaptall-2 mount (Nikon AI) for it.

For the test, I coupled the lens to a N-AI-to-EOS adapter, and mounted it to my Canon XS DSLR. I mounted this to a sturdy tripod, and looked for a distant high-contrast subject. A sign about 70 meters from my driveway fit the bill.

The first shot was full-frame, taken at 60mm at f/8. Following it are 100% crops of the same scene but at f/stops from 3.8 (wide open) to f/16.

The next group of shots is at 300mm. The full-frame shot was done at f/5.6. The 100% crops were done from f/3.8 to f/16.

No post processing was done to any of the images. All I did was resize the two full-frame shots to 900x600, and crop the others.

60mm

100% @ f/3.8

100% @ f/5.6

100% @ f/8

100% @ f/11

100% @ f/16

300mm

100% @ f/3.8

100% @ f/5.6

100% @ f/8

100% @ f/11

100% @ f/16

As you can see from the photos, there is not a whole lot of difference in overall sharpness from wide open to about f/11, with f/11 appearing to be the sharpest. However, there is a noticeable falloff in sharpness at f/16 and smaller (the aperture ring goes to f/32).

I'm looking forward to putting this lens to work, both with my DSLR and my trusty old Nikon F2. Couple of 60-300 slide scans from the ole days:

Best,

Michael

Jieffe · Joined: 04 Nov 2007 Posts: 754 Location: Belgium

A great lens, raising sometimes a few eyebrows (I heard once 'look, that's not a lens anymore, that's a telescope !'!)

Love your Sea Fury (nice blur on the propeller) ... I went to a lot of airshows when I was a teenager.

Xpres · Expire: 2014-10-28

One of my favourites too, if a little heavy to lug around. The fall off at f11 and beyond is likely due to diffraction. f5.6 is about the best on my Oly.

I like the car! only ever got to watch them on telly but - great!

poilu · Expire: 2019-08-29

thanks! great test and superb samples

martinsmith99 · Expire: 2013-11-18

Great samples.

And good work on getting the moving targets in focus (something I need to work on).

cooltouch · Joined: 15 Jan 2009 Posts: 9096 Location: Houston, Texas

Thanks for the comments, guys. I agree, the 60-300 is a bit heavy. But for much of what I used it for -- namely panning when shooting cars or planes -- the weight acted as a good damper and probably aided somewhat in the pics' resulting sharpness.

Back in the 80s, I freelanced as a motorsports photographer and went to every airshow I could fit into my schedule. I have about 650 "keeper" slides from my airshow days, and probably about 500 "keepers" from auto races. Out of thousands of exposures I took over the years. It took a lot of practice before I was halfway decent catching the fast cars, the prop blur, etc. And even after I thought I had become something of an expert, there were often times I would have only one or two true keepers out of a 36-exposure roll. Oh well.

Couple more scans from the ole days -- Canon F-1 w/Tamron 60-300:

I've got some slides around here somewhere of some macro shots I took with my old Tamron. I was surprised at its sharpness, having become resigned to the mediocrity of the macro settings on other zooms I owned. If I can find them, I'll post one or two.

Best,

Michael

ManualFocus-G · Expire: 2014-11-24

Nice shots! I have this lens but haven't tried it yet. Many people have mentioned that it can be a bit soft at 300, and it's best to pull back to 290mm. Is that something you've also experienced?

cooltouch · Joined: 15 Jan 2009 Posts: 9096 Location: Houston, Texas

Honestly, I've never tried pulling back on the zoom a bit. The airplane and race car pics above were all most likely shot at 300mm.

It might be worth testing, though. Easy enough to do with it hooked up to my DSLR.

Best,

Michael

Designosophy · Posted: Tue Nov 02, 2010 3:00 am Post subject: Question about this lens

I bought my first DSLR in July - a Pentax K-x. I love it, and I love manual focus lenses - the value and quality of some are awesome. I just bought (ebay) the lens this thread is about, and I can't figure out how to get it into macro mode. Almost everyone who owns this lens has great things to say about it, and some have said that it is difficult to get into macro mode, but nobody actually talks about how to do it. I've tried all the pushing, pulling and turning I can imagine with no close focus capabilities evident.

Can anyone help me out?

cooltouch · Joined: 15 Jan 2009 Posts: 9096 Location: Houston, Texas

Forum member visualopsins was kind enough to post a complete copy of this great lens's instruction manual, which shows how to engage macro mode. It is kinda tricky and if you don't know how to get it into macro mode, you'll be messing with the lens for a loooong time before you'll finally figure it out. Go here to read through the instructions:

http://forum.mflenses.com/tamron-sp-60-300mm-f-3-8-5-4-model-23a-owners-manual-t32885.html

Well, I can see that this old thread of mine has a bunch of broken links. I probably have many dozens of threads like this here -- all thanks to my hosting service having a catastrophic server failure. So, I guess I should fix the broken links.

Designosophy · Posted: Tue Nov 02, 2010 3:43 am Post subject:

Thank you, cooltouch. That manual is a godsend. I've been hearing that this lens is remarkably difficult to get into macro mode if it hasn't been used for macro in a long time. I'm guessing that's the case with mine. It's in great shape otherwise.

cooltouch · Joined: 15 Jan 2009 Posts: 9096 Location: Houston, Texas

I own two of these lenses now that I bought within the past year. I suspsect both of them sat for quite a while before I acquired them. One was somewhat difficult to get into macro mode, and the other one was even more difficult. I found that, by moving each lens in and out of macro mode several times, it loosened things up quite a bit. If yours is tough to get in and out of macro, just try moving it in and out several times and see if that doesn't help things.

fergus · Joined: 21 Jan 2009 Posts: 61 Location: Surrey, UK

Hi Michael

I really like this lens also. When I first got one, I was not expecting much for my £15, but went well beyond my expectations. It changed my view that zooms are always much inferior to primes.

"the 60-300 is a bit heavy" never really considered that, well compared to my other 200-300mm capable lenses it seems quite compact, in fact it's usually my first choice for a long telephoto walk-about lens.

A little "nit pick" your 100% 300mm pictures go F/3.8 to F/16, I guess these really go F/5.5, 8, 11, 16, 22 (using orange aperture marker for 300mm). May explain why last shot looks very soft through diffraction.

Some great action shots, though I think they show off your skills as a photographer more than the qualities of the lens Laughing

Excalibur · Expire: 2014-04-21

visualopsins · Expire: 2025-04-11

Michael: Thanks for fixing the photo links! Very Happy

ManualFocus-G: That is interesting! Independently I also notice the lens is sharper at 275-290mm than at 300mm.

cooltouch · Joined: 15 Jan 2009 Posts: 9096 Location: Houston, Texas

visualopsins, not a problem. I've been fixing them as I come across them rather than try to go back through all the threads I posted messages in and do it that way. It can be time consuming, which is why I just fix 'em as I find 'em. If somebody comes across broken links of mine and wants to see the photos, they should contact me and I'll fix 'em.

Excalibur, Yeah the Kiron 80-200/4 -- as well as most all Kiron optics I know of -- is a first-rate zoom. I'm not surprised it equals the Canon FD 200/4. Some time back, I did a comparison test between the Canon New FD 200/4, an older Vivitar 200/3.5, and a Tamron SP 60-300 (on topic!). I posted the results here at the forum. The Canon's performance was just a tad superior to the Vivitar's, but the real surprise was how well the Tamron 60-300 performed against the primes. It essentially equaled them. Here's a link to that comparison -- the 2nd page of the discussion where I show duplicates of the negs (1st page showed scans, which weren't as sharp):

http://forum.mflenses.com/vivitar-200mm-f-3-5-t21678,highlight,canon+vivitar+tamron+200mm+300mm,start,15.html

This thread ended up being a nice discussion of Vivitar 200mm optics.

Fergus, good catch about the minimum aperture. I always tend to neglect that niggly, even though it shouldn't be neglected. Thanks for the compliments. Back in those days most of my photographic output was from auto racing and air shows. I got pretty good at photographing high-speed subjects using manual focus gear. It's a skill that requires practice, though. Last year I took my Canon F-1 and Tamron SP 60-300 (on topic!) to an air show, along with my Canon XS/1000D DSLR and EF 75-300, and it was embarrassingly obvious that I was way out of practice. I was getting maybe 20% of my shots of high-speed passes in focus, whereas with the XS and its AF capabilities, maybe only 1 shot out of 10 of my high-speed shots were unsharp. I'm hoping to make another air show this coming weekend, and I'm debating on whether or not I should even bother packing the film gear.

ManualFocus-G · Expire: 2014-11-24

My only beef with this lens on digital is the out of the control purple fringing at f5.4. Stopped down to f8, the lens is pin sharp and exhibits very little CA.

Great film shots BTW!

Designosophy · Posted: Wed Nov 03, 2010 12:37 am Post subject:

FYI, I got the lens into macro mode today, and it works quite well. Nothing worth posting yet (it was dark when I got home today), but I'm really looking forward to using this lens.

Thanks again to you who helped me!

cooltouch · Joined: 15 Jan 2009 Posts: 9096 Location: Houston, Texas

Designosophy · Posted: Wed Nov 03, 2010 3:10 am Post subject: