Testing Out The Tamron 28-200mm Lens At The Indiana Fiddler’s Gathering

I am always looking for a new lens for when I travel. Heck I want one lens to rule them all when I am just walking around making photos. I have used a 24-100mm lens since my Canon days. I had two copies of the Canon lens, and my first Sony lens purchase was the 24-100. These new super telephoto lenses have gotten my attention though. There were two that I was looking at initially. The Sony 24-240mm lens and the Tamron 28-200mm lens. I usually do not base opinion on what I read online so I was going to rent them both. After watching some videos from photographers that I trust I decided to cancel that test. The Sony just was not as sharp as I would like it to be. A lens that is not the sharpest paired with a 60mp sensor is a recipe for disaster. I bought the Tamron knowing that it would be a good lens for travel as well as my walks around town. Of course the day that the lens came was the first day of the Indiana Fiddler’s Gathering. I decided to take it there to see what I could make with it. I had backup lenses with me just in case things didn’t work out, but as I started making photos I decided that the gathering would just be a good test for the lens. Pass or fail I was going to put the photos up. As it turned out the lens passed the test with flying colors. I am glad that I made the choice to buy the Tamron.

The 28-200mm Focal Length

One thing that I had reservations about was that 28-200mm focal length. On the wide side 28mm is not as wide as I would have liked it to be. Even with my 24mm lens I find myself wanting that to be wider at times. On the long side that extra 40mm that I would have gotten on the Sony would be welcome. Any photographer would tell you that they want more on either end. In practice at the festival though I never felt the need for more or less focal length. Above you can see a couple of photos showing the range of the camera. The first image was made at 28mm, and the second image was made at 152mm. I still had a little extra on the long end if I wanted it. One thing that I had to my advantage here though was that I could pretty much move wherever I wanted to. In a city or on campus I may find that the 28mm end of the lens will limit me. We will see.

The Sun Test

At some point I saw the sun coming through this tree. I wanted to see what the sun star looked like on the lens. On a lower end lens it will usually not have as many aperture blades as a higher end lens. That will show up when you photograph the sun with a low aperture. When I made this though I was happy with how it looked.

Resolving Power

One drawback to a lower end lens can be that it just will not work well with higher end sensors. They just don’t resolve the detail like the higher end lenses will. I decided to crop into one of my photos to see how the detail would come out. I was shocked to see that even though I had cropped into the photo quite a bit that it still had detail for me.