City: Pasadena
Sharp and fast lens at a bargain vs Nikon 200-500. FYI lens will not work on a Nikon Z7 or Z6. Tamron has not released a firmware upgrade yet.
Update: the picture of a bee was not taken with the Tamron 18-400. Sorry! The picture of the sunrise was.
Ive been using the Nikon 200-500mm lens for the past two years and absolutely love it. It is extremely sharp. The image stabilization is nothing short of amazing. It is a big lens and has weight. I was looking for something smaller that still had good reach, something that would fit in my camera bag. After seeing rave reviews on the Tamron 100-400mm lens I finally decided to buy it. The color and contrast are good. The sharpness is very poor compared to the Nikon lens. Its like having a very inexpensive doubler on a good lens. The lens really seems to focus hunt as well. There were times where the images would seem acceptably sharp on some of the pictures I took but most often not. The Vibration Control is a joke. My Nikon lens quickly locks on focus and stays sharply in focus. It can be hand held at the slowest of shutter speeds. I was so disappointed in the Tamron lens that I returned it in exchange for another one. The second lens, the Vibration Control was marginally better but still not good. The second lens seemed to focus hunt slightly differently but with the same mediocre results. If I was just shooting pictures to only be used online, I would be ok with this lens. I often have very large Lightjet prints made from my images and the Tamron images just arent up to par. This was the first third party lens that Ive purchased and Ive learned my lesson.
I bought this for wildlife work. I have a Nikon 200-500 but its a beast to carry. My 70-300 is nice and sharp but just not quite enough reach sometimes. The size and weight of this lens is far more manageable than the 200-500 and the zoom range is more usable for birds than the 70-300. In the field I end up most of the time shooting at the maximum 400 mm. I find that this lens, at least the copy I have is, even at 400mm, as sharp as my Nikon 200-500. Samples can vary but honestly I was disappointed in my 200-500 but very happy with this lens. Price is a big part of this. This lens is nearly half the price of the Nikon 200-500. As an extra benefit this lens has the ability to focus very close in. I am finding myself using that feature more and more as Spring domes and plants are blooming. Its very nice to have one lens that can shoot a bird in a tree one second and then turn right around and shoot a blooming flower up close the next. No, its not a macro lens but it sure can catch some good shots up close. I use this lens on my Nikon D500, D750 and D7100. It has performed well on all of these in every mode I have tried. It is a very quiet lens. It seems to focus quickly enough for me and and without any sound. Of course with any long lens like this having lots of light will always help. It produces sharp images the vast majority of the time. Yes, you can get a dud but that can happen with any lens for a number of reasons including the person working the camera! I had nearly lost faith in Tamron after that 16-300 mistake but this lens renewed my faith in their products. I needed a lens in this range and weight and this was vastly cheaper than the Nikon alternative. I am sure that a lens that costs two or three times as much might give a little better image quality but to be honest this lens, with enough light, has given me some nice photos. I would recommend this lens to anyone who needs something in this range at an affordable price. If you have lots of money go with the Nikon lens of this size, but read reviews of them first and make your decision wisely. Decide on your budget and be honest as to just how good a lens you really need. If you want perfection spring for a Nikon prime lens and spend vastly more money on it. I do prints up to about 14x19" and this lens has produced some good shots that I display. I would buy this lens again as its a great value and certainly "good enough" for my amateur work.
I bought this lens to use on my D500 for times when I don’t want the bulk/weight of my 200-500 lens. Man, am I impressed. Autofocus is not as fast as the 200-500 (to be expected for an inexpensive lens), but the sharpness is out of this world! Image quality is excellent. Don’t hesitate to buy this lens. Recent photos taken with this lens on my D500.
I just received this lens today and did some testing. I was initially afraid I got a bad copy of the lens as it appeared to be very soft at 400mm, but more or less sharp at all other focal lengths. However, upon further investigation, I realized my lens is severely front focused at 400mm. I can use my in cameras autofocus fine tuning to fix the focus problem at 400mm, but then the rest of the focal lengths would be useless. Although I have heard of this problem, I have never personally experienced this before with any of my lenses, which consist mostly of Nikon brand lenses. I spent hours just today trying to figure out what was wrong, and I suspect it will take me many, many more hours to finally fix the problem after I get the Tamron tap-in console as I have to manually test what is wrong at each focal length and adjust accordingly. I guess this is the price you have to pay sometimes for non first party brand lenses? As far as sharpness goes, I only tested it at 400mm, wide open at f6.3 and at f8. Sharpness does increase noticeably at f8, but f6.3 is still quite sharp, primarily in the center. Although not as good as my 300mm pf +1.4TC (420mm), sharpness for the Tamron appears to be in the same league, which is all I really hoped for. I will update my review after Im able to fix the focus problem once I receive the tap in console that I had to additionally purchase, and after I have had more time to test it. Update 3/19/18: It took me a long time to calibrate this lens, as the lens was front focused by +10 at 400mm using the Nikon in camera AF fine tune (+8 at 300mm, +3 at 200mm, +1 at 100mm). However, using the Tamron tap in console, it appears every +1 on Nikons scale is around a +3 on the Tamron scale for AF fine tune for this lens. That means the Tamron tap in console alone could not fix the AF issues as their AF fine tune range only goes to 20. I had to add a AF fine tune number in my Nikon camera body as well as many Tamron adjustments in the lens itself to make it accurate for each focal length. This took me a lot of time using trial and error and was very annoying. I also take back what I said about never having this problem with Nikon lenses - Now that I know what AF fine tuning is I tested my Nikon 300mm pf and learned it is also front focused by +9, I just never noticed before. FYI I am using a D7200 and D5500, and the lens front focusing issues were the same with both cameras. After spending all that time to calibrate this lens, I am overall very impressed with the Tamron 100-400mm image quality. Looking at sharpness again, the image quality at the center wide open at 400mm is on par with my 300mm pf + 1.4TC wide open - it is very hard to tell which is sharper. It is only on the edges that my 300+1.4 is noticeably sharper. This is a very impressive feat for the Tamron. Stopping down to f8 increases the IQ very marginally in the center, and makes the edges noticeably sharper. I am happy enough with the image quality wide open though that I plan on primarily shooting it at f6.3. Although I do not have the Nikon 200-500mm, there is a consensus that the IQ of that lens at 400mm is extremely similar to the image quality of the 300 pf + 1.4TC. As I find the IQ of the Tamron at 400mm very similar to the 300 pf + 1.4TC, I would expect all 3 lenses to have very similar sharpness and IQ at 400mm. On another note, autofocus does indeed appear to be pretty fast, but I have not had a chance to do any real testing on that, so Ill see how that goes.
I love this lens. When I first tried it out i put on a UV lens as I do for all my glass for protection. That proved to be a bad idea. It messed with the auto focusing. When I took off the filter the results were spectacular. For the price this lens is amazing. I hardly took it off my camera body. If you look at the bear shot, it isnt as sharp as it should be because of the filter.
Love this lens! Took me four tries to find a long telephoto to keep on my D7200. My main camera is a D500 and I wanted something that didn’t require constant changing on lenses when I needed more reach. This Tamron is nice and light...easy to carry around on a hike. Image quality is very, very good. I’m attaching a photo taken outside my window earlier today from about 300 feet away at ISO 3200 on the D7200. Handheld.
Sharp, decent autofocus speed, and much lighter than a 200-500
I bought this lens after trying out the 70-200mm Tameron GII. As someone who primarily does landscape and wildlife photography, I needed something that could fill the frame at longer distances. After quite a bit of research, I landed on this lens. Several months later and Im convinced I made the right choice. Its been very quick to lock onto subjects and reasonably sharp. (The attached image was taken on a Nikon D500 @ 320mm 1/800 sec f/6.3 ISO6400) My only issue with this lens is how it receives filters. The front element is surrounded by a rubber gasket of sorts which makes using a 67mm (the lens filter size) sized filter extremely difficult to remove. This issue is further exasperated by using circular ND and Polarizers. The first time affixing a 67mm circular polarizer to the lens took approximately 30 minutes and some careful work with needle nose pliers to remove it. I ended up purchases a 77-67mm step-down ring to comfortably use filters without the fear of them becoming perminately affixed. In future variations of the lens, I would hope that this rubber piece is removed or reworked.
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