If I were asked to select only one lens for bird photography I would have to answer that it would be a 500mm prime lens. When photographing birds it is not uncommon to need lots of focal reach for your intended subjects. For me, 500 mm’s represents a good all around focal length for most situations. It can be coupled with a teleconverter for even more focal length and still give me crisp, sharp images.
However, this lens comes with some inherent traits. These are heavy, expensive lenses. It most cases they require the use of a very sturdy tripod along with a gimbal or ball style head for supporting all of its weight, and believe me it is a heavy lens. Another unavoidable fact about a fixed focal length prime lens is that it is just that, a fixed focal length. Proper composing will often involve moving forwards or backwards to properly frame your subject. So even though I use my 500mm lens often, there are times when the weight and the fixed focal length just do not make sense for where and what I am shooting. This leaves the bird and nature photographer often looking for something lighter, less expensive and more versatile than the 500 fixed prime.
This is when a lens like the Tamron SP AF200-500mm can really shine. Here we have a lens that is very light in comparison to a prime 500mm, it has the luxury of having a focal length that gives us a 2.5:1 zoom ratio, is very lightweight in comparison to the 500 prime and costs about one fifth of the price! So my question is, can a lens that offers so much for such a low cost perform well and give us good results in the field? This is what I set out to determine for myself.
Read real customer reviews of the Tamron SP AF200-500mm here.
One of my favorite destinations as a bird photographer is without a doubt the state of Florida.
I have a good friend in Florida who owns a pontoon boat that is well suited for photography. It provides access to some great shooting locations and provides a roomy, stable shooting platform while out on the water. This was to be the first testing grounds for the Tamron 200-500mm. For all of my testing the Tamron 200-500mm was mounted on a Canon 1D Mk 1V camera body.
The first thing I notice when I reach for the lens is the very well made and has a useful carrying bag that the lens comes in. It is well padded, has a quick and easy to use drawstring and a very handy carrying strap. I notice the nice finish on this all black lens and the quality feel of the rubberized focus ring grip. The one thing that really amazes me though is the small size and light weight for a lens that can give you 500mm of reach. After a few years of handholding my 500 prime, this was certainly a welcome bonus.
The next thing I notice as I attach the well constructed lens hood is a feature that Tamron calls their Filter Effect Control. This is a feature that allows the user to adjust a filter such as a polarizer without having to take the time to detach the lens hood, what a wonderful innovation this is! You simply attach the filter to the adapter and then attach it to the lens. The hood then mounts on the front of the adapter and allows the filter to rotate by turning the lens hood. The lens has a well placed and solid tripod mount that is easily detachable. Manual focus is smooth and easy to use. The af switch is well placed so not to accidentally flip it back and forth without the intention of doing so.
One thing that is very important to me as a bird photographer is a lens’ ability to auto focus quickly and accurately. The Tamron did not disappoint in this regard. The af performed very admirably even in lower light, lower contrast situations. There was very little hunting and the af was smooth as well as not being overly noisy.
The 200-500 Tamron is only 19” when fully extended with the hood and is only 9” at 200mm without the hood. This is a very manageable and flexible lens when it comes to maneuverability and ease of use. At one point, I was standing at the front of the boat about 100 feet out from a reed bed where a few Limpkins were moving about, sometimes flying around. I had to watch for movement out of the reeds and then quickly position the lens to lock onto a pretty fast moving target on a busy background. The lens performed well above my expectations in this situation. The thing I liked best was the lack of arm fatigue I experienced while waiting for my next shooting opportunity. I could hand hold this lens all day long, something highly unlikely with a heavier fixed 500mm f4 lens. Yes, you can put the fixed 500 on a tripod but this greatly decreases your chances of maneuvering quickly enough to catch all of the action.
A 500mm lens that you can handhold easily to capture action and flight shots is a thing of beauty.
I also had the opportunity to use the lens resting on a beanbag on the boat railing. Bending down and standing up with this lens was fairly easy and most of us could do it all day without issue. The lens was easy and quick to get onto the beanbag so as not to miss the photographic opportunity in front of me. The unit quickly and easily attached to the ball head on my tripod and allowed for simple relocation of the tripod without a lot of exertion or concern over the unit toppling over while repositioning from being too top heavy.
This is a very good telephoto lens for the money with a great range of focal length for bird and nature photography. It is solid and well put together. The manual and auto focus both work well and are very accurate. Optically the lens does a good job for the price range it is in (around $900). It is not as sharp as a 500mm prime lens but that would be an unfair comparison to make as it is less than a fifth of the cost. For most of us, this lens produces great images for printing average size prints and sharing our images on the web. It is wonderfully versatile with the 200-500mm zoom range. I would say that this would be close to a perfect safari lens in places like Africa. The lens hood is very functional and the supplied filter effect control adapter is a very useful and functional piece of ingenuity.
In closing, I would recommend this lens to anyone looking for a super telephoto that is well made, very versatile and quite inexpensive. Tamron has done an excellent job at putting so much into a very affordable piece of photographic equipment.
Photographs by Photography Talk member David Hemmings
Written by: David Hemmings. David owns and operates Natures Photo Adventures and has been published by National Geographic and many other magazines and books.