Nick wrote:
>I am looking for a zoom to replace my old 35-80 and I am casting my eyes
>over the new Tamron 24-135 SP. Has anyone seen any reviews of this lens? I
>am going to use it on my PZ1p. I suspect it will be quite a bit cheaper than
>the Pentax 24-90 and has a more range but I have no idea how the quality
>will stand up.
Nick, in my experience and from what I heard, such super-zooms are
generally not much good. I have Tamron SP 2.8/35-105, and I like it, even
for big prints (well stopped down,of course!), although it has lots of
colour fringing in the corners. The newer, "better" version was SP
2.8/28-105, which by all reviews sucks - even more fringing, etc... Newer
is not always better. I would guess the 24-135 SP be even worse. And for
the price of it, you can propably buy two 2.8 zooms from Tokina (for
example, 28-105/2.8 costs ~40 000 Kc /1000$/ here. A Tokina or Sigma
2.8/28-70 zoom costs from 15 000-20 000 Kc! And both are considered way
better than the 28-105/2.8).
But if you are simply looking for an universal lens to produce 4x6" prints
and not much more, any quality zoom will be be ok. But maybe the new Tamron
is really good, some 24-x zooms are considered to be very good (e.g. the
Nikon's 24-120/3.5-5.6), although I still think a zoom that's 5.6 WIDE OPEN
at long end simply sucks because my zoom is already STOPPED DOWN 2 STOPS at
5.6 - while my zoom's quality at 2.8 maybe sucked, at 5.6 it outperforms
the Nikon anytime (and at f/4 it outperforms it by a full stop :)
Sorry I couldn't help you much with the _actual_ quality of that new
Tamron, but I just wanted to tell you that a 2.8/28-70 from Sigma or Tokina
or an used 2.8/35-105 Tamron might be a lot better, and propably at least
1.5x cheaper. (the SP 2.8/28-105 Tamron started to retail around 800$ in
the US I think). There are still some relatively cheap 24mm primes (e.g.
the Sigma 1.8/24, told to be cheaper by 100$ than the Pentax one), or
~20-35 zooms to complement a 28-70 lens.
Frantisek
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