help me pick a lens.

famas

famas

famas

Soldato
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hello all

im currently using my nikon 18-70 kit lens that came with my d70 as a walk about lens.

Im after a new general purpose lens. will be using it for a bit of every thing. a new walk about lens. for my d90.
more than likely to use it for landscapes so need one with low barrel distortion at the wide end. The most important factor is IQ and sharpness tho.

i have a maximum budget of £300

the 3 main ones i've come across are the

Sigma 17-70mm f2.8-4.5 HSM Lens.

Sigma 18-50mm f2.8 Macro HSM Lens

Tamron 17-50mm f2.8 XR Di-II LD ASP IF Lens

I like the extra reach of the 17-70 but am a bit put off that its nots 2.8 through the entire range. Also i've heard its not as sharp as the other two lenes???

the tamron 17-50 and sigma 18-50 both get good right ups. the Tamron is 1mm wider, but id go for the sigma if the IQ/sharpness was superior.

I think its between the latter two lenes, unless im wrong about the 17-70???
i just cant decide, need a helping hand.

also if there are other lenses i have over looked within my price range please say.

thanks.
 
The tamron is a great lens from what i have heard. I have the 17-70 and its quite sharp. I think from reviews the other sigma is not that great.
 
I'm very interested in this too, so will be keeping a close eye. Heading off to Japan on holiday at the start of Feb, so would like a good walkabout lens for that. Saying that though, I wonder if I'd be better just buying in Japan, I get the impression that it'll be pretty expensive there too considering the value of the Yen at the moment.
 
The Sigma is every bit as good as the Tamron, both companies suffer from a little bit of variability and quality control so it's important to check for sharpness as soon as you can after purchase, Sigma's after sales is better in this respect.
I've read reviews where the Tamron pipped the Sigma but I've also read reviews that put it the other way round, one thing I would say is that the Sigma's got better all round when the HSM was introduced (even the non HSM ones), it seems that they may have re-jigged the whole line.
I've also read reviews where both lenses edged out Nikon's own 18-50 F2.8 which makes them remarkable value.
Buy either with confidence, the 17-70 doesn't make enough of an upgrade over the 18-70 to be worth it, it's mainly aimed at Canon owners (old) 18-55 where it represented a good upgrade.
 
tom_nieto said:
I'm very interested in this too, so will be keeping a close eye. Heading off to Japan on holiday at the start of Feb, so would like a good walkabout lens for that. Saying that though, I wonder if I'd be better just buying in Japan, I get the impression that it'll be pretty expensive there too considering the value of the Yen at the moment.
Click to expand...

I was in Japan 26/12/08-05/01/09, and it wasn't cheap...pretty much the same pricing as UK shops, though you may save VAT. Plenty of 2nd hand camera shops with thousands of lenses, mostly overpriced. What I will say for them is the bigger shops in Akihabara had incredible stock of the top-end lenses. For some reason the HR-2 lens hoods are only Y600 whilst they're ~£23 here, so stock up on those if you have lenses with 52mm filters.

I can't really help on the cheap general purpose walkabout lens (I sprung for the Nikon 17-55mm f/2.8), but I can say that my Sigma 10-20mm came in massively useful for photographs of buildings, so you may find 17mm isn't short enough.
 
The Tamron 17-50 is by far the best of those 3 and IS better than the sigma 18-50. All the lnses suffer form severe barrel distortion at 17-20mm. All have less desirable chromatic aberration. The Tamron 17-50 and Sigma 18-50 both suffer from spherical aberrations in the focal plane so don't make ideal landscape lenses - but so does the Nikon.
 
D.P. said:
The Tamron 17-50 is by far the best of those 3 and IS better than the sigma 18-50. All the lnses suffer form severe barrel distortion at 17-20mm. All have less desirable chromatic aberration. The Tamron 17-50 and Sigma 18-50 both suffer from spherical aberrations in the focal plane so don't make ideal landscape lenses - but so does the Nikon.
Click to expand...

Do you have a source for all this information D.P.?

I assume you don't own all the lenses in question?

Is this taken from web reviews etc, or are they your own findings?

Genuine questions, as I'm interested in a lens of this type, but it's difficult sorting the wheat from the chaff so to speak.
 
I look up a lot of trusted review sites like Thom hogan, and get the technical details from places like SLRgear and photozone. The raw numbers speak a lot about the sharpness, chromatic abberations etc. You then have to read peoples thoughts like Thoms who will give you pro thoughts on things like quality of the brokeh, flare resistance, real world focusing speeds, micro contrast., color rendition.

Reading dpreview and such like these common comparison questions arrive ever other day.

From this I have pictured a good idea of which lens fits in where. Tamron is definitely the better, but a good sigma is better than a poor tamron. Nikon is best, but probably not worth the money unless the focusing is needed or you planto stick to DX cameras for a long time.
 
Ok, cheers for that! :)

Like you, I've been trying to move to FF for a while, but the latest price increases have meant that it is less likely to happen for me for a year or two now.

So, DX for me for the foreseeable future.

I might give the Tamron 17-50 f2.8 a road test now then.
 
I'm in the same situation, don't want to invest in expensive DX optics but FF seems just too far away.

I'm thinking of buying the Tamron. But I'm stuck on a D70 so it is tempting to contemplate a D90 or D300 as a half way. But I dont want to keep spending money on bodies.
 
I know what you mean.

I've got both a D90 and a D300, so I'm not 'stuck' in a bad place so to speak, but I'm kind of regretting the money I spent on the D300.

The D90 for me does 95% of what the D300 does for about 60% of the price!

I got the D300 for the 51 point AF as I thought it would help with my in flight bird shots, but I find myself switching it to 9 or 21 point AF anyway as the 51 point seems to be more of a hindrance than a help most of the time!

The D90 is also better in the noise department, even if only slightly, and I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it.

If I had to choose only one body, it would be the D90.
 
There are a few things the D300 does better, auto focus adjustments for each lens, better metering, its not only the 51 point focus but the whole focusing system is better with better 3d and color tracking (the D300 does have the very best focusing system Nikon creates, identical to the D3).

I can buy a D300 2nd hand for 250£ more than a new D90, but then for the price difference I can buy a 2nd hand Tamron 17-50 2.8..... The D90 with Tamron 17-50 should produce better images than the D300 with 18-70... I would then sell the D70+18-70.
 
Just to be clear, I wasn't saying there were not other differences between the D90 and D300, just that for me it was the AF system I was after with the D300.

Subsequent use has shown me that the D90 AF/metering never put a foot wrong anyway for the type of photography I've been doing, which is a mix of landscape, portrait, wildlife and other action photography (so a bit of everything really!).

Basically, the pictures I'm getting with the D300 are no better/no worse than the D90. I'm sure there may be specific circumstances where the D300 performs better than the D90, but I've yet to find them!

Of course, depending on the type of photography you do, your experience may differ.
 
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