Photography is very hard to do with a digital SLR camera such as my Canon Rebel XTi without a decent lens to go with it. For years I have been using a Tamron 28-200mm 1:3.8-5.6 as my mid range telephoto lens.
Recently the auto-focus on it, unfortunately, has started to deteriorate. It would fail to lock on to anything, instead it would just keep on hunting and hunting until I had to switch to manual focus to get the job done. It has been a good trusty lens and I’ve been taking photos with it for the last 20+ years so it will have aided many, many, thousands of pictures. The time has come though to replace it.
I did a lot of searching on the internet, checking the review websites to ascertain the best lens to go for, that would meet my requirements of focal length, aperture, quality and cost.
Now there are a lot of lenses on the market for my camera from manufactures such as Canon, Sigma, Tamron, Tokina and a few less well known brands. I decided in the end to go with a Canon lens.
Its the Canon EF-S 55-250mm f/4-5.6 IS
It seems a great lens so far (it only arrived this morning) purchased from Amazon, the zoom is smooth and importantly the auto-focus operates effortlessly. An added bonus with this lens is, it has image stabilization, which will cut down on any camera shake and is meant to gain you the equivalent of up to 4 f stops, which is a bonus when shooting in low light conditions. We will have to wait and see how effective it actually is though in real life shooting conditions.
It is slightly different in size to my old Tamron lens being slightly longer, but thinner and lighter…
When I start to take a wide range of photos with it, will be when I will be able to tell exactly how good a lens it really is.
I did take a couple of test shots in the back garden this afternoon, well I had to make sure it was all working didn’t I?
It focused well on this dandelion head giving a sharp image and a nicely blurred background.
The rose though seems a little too soft focused in the middle, but, then I think that may be more the photographers fault, than the camera lenses.
I will aim to bring you a more detailed review of how the lens fares once I have used it a bit more in the coming weeks.
If there are any readers who already have this lens then I would love to hear from you. It’s always fun getting new things now I need to go out and use it.
2 comments:
Sounds like a photo trip is in order here my friend.
Looks a good lens too.
My 18-200 VR is a wonder.
Like Stewart, I'm a Nikon boy. I've got the 18-105mm at the moment, but would like a bigger zoom too. Look forward to seeing what else you shoot with it.
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