Tamron 500mm f/8 SP Review Round-Up

tamron-500mm-f-8-sp

If you own or have used this lens, let us know what you think! Leave your comments and thoughts below.

Photo Zone

When used with care the Tamron 500mm f/8 SP mirror lens can be able to produce decent results but don’t expect this to be easy – most of my real life sample images were blurred (caused by shake). A (max.) aperture of f/8 is very slow for a 500mm lens (750mm equivalent on APS-C) to start with and effectively this is a f/11 (or to be precise: T/11) lens due to the light loss caused by the secondary mirror. For reasonably sharp results you either need a very sturdy tripod or extremely fast shutter speeds (1/750sec or faster). When used “hand-held” you will need to choose very high ISO settings even in bright light conditions which can’t be desirable in terms of image quality and a tripod would destroy the weight advantage of a mirror lens in field conditions. The rather poor bokeh may be a funny effect in the beginning but once the initial coolness is gone it is just odd and often disturbing. Unless you want to have a lens for “emergency” use you should probably better consider conventional tele lenses. “¦ READ FULL REVIEW

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