Tamron 28-105mm f/2.8 thoughts

Due to a little mix-up with an eBay purchase, I had the chance to play around with the Tamron 28-105mm f/2.8 LD Aspherical (IF). A heck of a name. I only had a few minutes with this lens before bringing it back to the post office, but I did take a few test shots before I sent it back.

I knew it wasn't the lens I'd purchased before I'd gotten it out of the bubble wrap, because the the lens is quite large (it takes 82mm filters), and weighs about two pounds. It's an older model lens from the mid-90s, and is no longer produced by Tamron. The build quality seemed quite decent. I didn't put the autofocus to the test, but compared to say the Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II, it was fairly quiet.

I didn't have it long enough to really test out the color or contrast, but in that sense it seemed decent enough. There was some barrel distortion when zoomed out, as you'd expect. The f/2.8 constant aperture seems nice in theory, but it was so amazingly soft wide open that I don't know if I'd ever want to use it below f/9 or so. It was much more impressive closed down.

100% crop of 105mm at f/9.0

100% crop of 105mm at f/2.8

For me, the biggest issue was the size of the lens. On my lightweight Rebel XT, it was ridiculously front-heavy. I can't imagine wanting to use this as a walk-around lens. I did get the overall sense that, if I had longer to play with it, I'd have liked the results of narrow-aperture work -- I could see myself using it for landscapes -- but the short time it was in my hands didn't make me fall in love with it.