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Archive 2015 · Tamron 70-30 VC Question

  
 
mshi
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p.2 #1 · p.2 #1 · Tamron 70-30 VC Question


Nikon's Quality Control is very bad. I ordered two refurbed lenses from Nikon Store, Nikon 70-300VR and Nikon 70-200/4VR in the past three weeks. Both are are defective and Nikon Store had to take them back. I don't know what happened to Nikon but it seems it just doesn't give a shit to quality control anymore. For those of you who like to buy used gear, you really need some kind of buyer protection.

Today I did the dot tune for the long end based on the recommended focus distance of 50 feet. The lens required +5 AF Fine Tune. However, at 200mm it requires +15. In the min AF distance, at long end it requires -9, and the short end requires 0. This kind of craziness makes life very tedious.

I took the lens out for some real shooting. And one thing I just noticed is that Tamron's VC drains battery. I took about 400 shots mostly in AF-S Single Center Point AF mode, and the full battery life got only 32% juice left.

I don't know if this is normal. But I doubt I want to keep the lens.



Jun 06, 2015 at 04:19 PM
WestcoastHD
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p.2 #2 · p.2 #2 · Tamron 70-30 VC Question


Below is a link to a few shots taken with the Tamron 70-300VC lens, strait out of the camera, on a D7000 with no AF fine tune. The two indoor shots were taken at 300mm with VC off, the first at f5.6 ISO 800 and the second at f8 ISO 1600 to keep the shutter speed up.

I also included an outdoor shot of my son surfing at 260mm f8 ISO 800. I have been very impressed with this low cost zoom lens. My wife uses the setup for taking surf video, so I don't have a lot of stills with it wide open at the long end. I think the IQ and sharpness is pretty impressive.

http://www.esp-sportsphotos.com/docs/70_300/



Jun 06, 2015 at 05:07 PM
DaveOls
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p.2 #3 · p.2 #3 · Tamron 70-30 VC Question


The shots look pretty good even at 300mm. I like the fact that the Tamron starts at f/4 instead of f/4.5 like the Nikon VR. Not a lot of difference, but it might be important. Cheaper than the Nikon also.


Jun 07, 2015 at 03:19 PM
mshi
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p.2 #4 · p.2 #4 · Tamron 70-30 VC Question


DaveOls wrote:
The shots look pretty good even at 300mm. I like the fact that the Tamron starts at f/4 instead of f/4.5 like the Nikon VR. Not a lot of difference, but it might be important. Cheaper than the Nikon also.


Yes it's pretty good only if we don't see the blurry part of the frame, which is in reality a crop of the central portion



Jun 07, 2015 at 03:36 PM
CanadaMark
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p.2 #5 · p.2 #5 · Tamron 70-30 VC Question


If you are 100% sure your camera and the sign were perfectly square facing each other (you can check with a level), there is probably something wrong with that lens. It should be extremely easy to confirm. Level the camera and shoot a brick wall or something similar with uniform pattern detail. Your center crop wide open should have the exact same blurry section toward the bottom - if it doesn't, it's probably not the lens' fault. The fact that it sharpens up at F16 where DOF would be greater suggests that it was not perfectly square to the camera, but again, easy to confirm.

Your dot tune experience is exactly what I was telling you earlier, it is next to impossible to perfectly AF fine tune a zoom which may have 20+ focal length and subject distance combinations. You will be fiddling with that until you're blue in the face. Unless you get extremely lucky, a single value isn't going to fix a problem lens at all combinations. At that point, I would be exchanging it and not wasting any more time with it. Your "bad copy" luck is certainly not the norm as it sounds like you've have quite a few.



Jun 08, 2015 at 10:14 AM
hjanssen
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p.2 #6 · p.2 #6 · Tamron 70-30 VC Question


I always use the 70-300 as as a 6.3 constant aperture lens, because it is a little bit sharper one stop down and I mostly use it at the long lens. Even a Nikkor 70-200 I use at 2.2 for thta little more sharpnes.


Jun 08, 2015 at 01:44 PM
mshi
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p.2 #7 · p.2 #7 · Tamron 70-30 VC Question


thanks for all your suggestions. the lens is on its way back to BH and i dont need to waste more time.

by the way it's really a pain in the neck to return anything back Nikon Store and their tech support will have you do a series of tests before they want to issue you any RMA.

In my case they asked me to shoot a series of the same target under the same lighting conditions with the purchased lens using all cameras that i own and then with some other lenses that I have based on the online warranty registration data i had submitted. I had ordered three refurbs from Nikon Store in a period of two months when 10% off was available and they had to take back two defective refurbs - Nikon 70-300VR, and Nikon 70-200/4VR. Defective rate of the Refurbs that i bought is 68%! I even had to send in my D810 so that they could verify that it has no issues at all. From my experience, I can conclude Nikon is too busy to care about quality contro.



Jun 09, 2015 at 02:34 PM
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