Glass

Readers of this blog may remember the story of my Tamron AF 28-75mm f2.8 XR Di lens that I often refer to as my “miracle lens” after the horrible accident.

I had noticed that the lens was not performing well, at least not as well as I thought it should based on the reviews so I sent the lens back to Tamron for a warranty adjustment. I wasn’t sure if the drop had affected it or if I had a bad copy. I figured it wouldn’t hurt to send it in.

After mailing it to Tamron I called them up to verify they had received it and they indicated they had it and that repairs were running 3 weeks on average. I expected I would either get the lens back adjusted or get a call saying the lens was destroyed and not covered by warranty.

3 1/2 weeks later the UPS guy rings the bell and there’s a package from Tamron. It’s my lens and some paperwork that seemed to indicate that they had calibrated the lens.

After playing with it a bit this thing is even more amazing than I remember. This is a shot I took through the kitchen window. f/6.7 - 200 ISO - 1/1000
The top half is the un-modified full size image and the bottom half is a 100% crop

This is one bad ass lens. I get better results cropping the 75mm at 100% than I do with my 70- 300mm kit zoomed in to the full 300mm

This inspired me to buy the Tamron SP AF 17-50mm f/2.8 XR Di II LD which is also highly rated and should arrive in the mail this week! I am giddy in my anticipation.

There’s also a 1985 vintage Minolta 70-210 f/4 “Beercan” lens on it’s way that I am anxious to try out after reading all the reports of what an amazing lens this is, especially given the price which is relatively cheap for something that is apparently quite special in terms of optics.

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