The Days Zoom Past - 150-600mm Lens

Image by David Pritchard, taken with the Tamron 150-600mm lens

Tamron blogger David Pritchard, who posts independent, real-world reviews of various Tamron lenses, has got his hands on the 150-600mm lens.

David has previously blogged about the 70-200mm and 24-70mm lenses, producing regular posts on a wide variety of usages for the lenses. He's been looking forward to getting his hands on the 150-600mm lens for some time now: "This has got to be one of the most eagerly anticipated third-party lenses in a few years," he says. "It’s a modest 4x zoom ratio, with a top end of 600mm, and it costs less than £1000!"

So far, David has established a few first impressions on the lens. He found it balances very well on his full frame body, and rests squarely on the tripod foot. He's also found the manual focus to be very smooth, enabling you to adjust the focus with only a fingertip.

David has managed to get out and test the lens on the local wildlife, including butterflies and damselflies, and found the Vibration Compensation to be very useful: "The inclusion of Vibration Compensation is an important point in the saleability of a lens with a 600mm focal length and a modest maximum aperture of f/6.3. To use a lens that long places a high demand on the shutter speed requirements for sharp shots. VC enables the photographer to shoot with considerably slower speeds than the expected 1/600s or higher, bringing figures into usable territory for the majority of users."

Take a look at David's blog, the days zoom past, to keep up to date with all his posts on this lens. You can also take a look at our in-depth review of the lens in the reviews section.