TAMRON AF 28-200MM F3.8-5.6 ASPHERICAL ZOOM LENS NIKON
I bought this lens and thought I would give it a try. It's light weight and small enough to carry around if you want 1 lens or an all purpose lens. I bought this item here on eBay. No reviews here on eBay so I thought why not give this lens a try.
Pros: Light weight, smaller filter size, wide zoom range, internal focus, Compactness, Versatility, Clarity, Build Quality, Ease of Use, Price
Cons:: Distortion, clumsy manual focus, AF-focus hunting in low light, Slow, manual focusing takes some concentration, distortion at focal length extremes, Not as sharp or contrasty as a prime lens. Doesn't have Nikon name on it
"Asperical Lens: Aspherical lenses are lenses with complex curved surfaces, where the radius of curvature changes according to distance from the light beam axis. "Normal" Spherical lenses are subject to aberration and therefore cannot concentrate all the light into one point. Aspherical lenses, however, offer excellent aberration correction performance, providing superior resolution performance, even with compact optics composed of a small number of elements." (Nikon Definition).
"The asphere's more complex surface profile can eliminate spherical aberration and reduce other optical aberrations compared to a simple lens. A single aspheric lens can often replace a much more complex multi-lens system. The resulting device is smaller and lighter, and possibly cheaper than the multi-lens design. Aspheric elements are used in the design of multi-element "wide-angle" and fast "normal lenses" to reduce aberrations. (wikipedia definition).
I used this lens on my Nikon N90S and I started out with taking pictures of my roomate looking under the hood of his car. The lens didn't want to focus on the dark areas under the car hood, in broad daylight, however, I can see that there wasn't enough light. Something that My 24-1200mm Nikon Lens or 28-80mm Nikon Lens would have picked up. I didn't think anything of it. But kept trying to focus on a flower that was right in front of me. Distance of 2 feet between me and the subject. The lens would not focus. Then I went to a local Home Depot, there was a bale of hay and I saw a photo op when I saw baby birds playing in the hay. I got the picture. I tried walking up as close as I could not to scare the birds away. Tried taking a picture of flowers at about 3 feet from the flowers, the lens would not focus. I tried to take a close up shot of my roomate and couldn't do it. Then I looked at the lens and it says 6.9 feet to infinity meaning that this lens cannot be used for close up shots. Even when I switched the settings on my Camera for Close up shots. I was quite disappointed in that. I finished the roll taking pictures of the sky and clouds because the sky was a blue like I had never seen before. Almost cartoon like. I developed the roll and I wasn't too disappointed (other than I couldn't take close up pictures) but when I noticed when I zoomed out to the max, the pictures where a little fuzzy, not crisp nor clear. Still it created nice photographs. Would I take this on a trip? I am not sure. I got better results with my Nikon 24-120mm lens. A friend recommended that I pick up this Tamron lens because he swore that it was a great lens. I am disappointed in the performance. It's Sluggish. Has a hard time focusing on dark items. Contrast is okay. It performed the best between 35-70mm. But I read some reviews that this lens performed well on a Nikon N70. I have a Nikon N70 and a few other Nikon cameras. I am going to try it and see. Do I recommend that you buy this lens? Hmm, Well be aware of the limitations that this lens has. 28-200mm might sound impressive but I wasn't too impressed, however, I wonder if the Nikon 28-200mm would have done better. I got this lens at a real bargain with free shipping. Make sure if you buy this or any lens that you look for information regarding the lens such as: Is the lens/elements clear? Fungus Free? Any scratches on the element(s)? Do a little research, too. Become knowledgeable in the product that you are seeking. Good Luck!
)