aceflibble said:
smithcon said:
It does have one issue which drives me batty -- if I am shooting it on my tripod and forget to turn the VC switch off, it *destroys* the image.
That's the same with all IS systems, though. It just becomes more apparent when the IS is effectively-implemented, as IS which is capable of correcting stronger motion will result in even more blur and alignment issues when on a tripod.
As we move forward IS is going to be more and more standard for all lenses, so it's a good idea to get into the habit of always turning IS off when using a tripod or when mounting/unmounting the lens, no matter what brand it is.
I don't disagree that that switching the IS off while on a stationary mount is absolutely a necessary habit, and I regard not doing so as completely my error, but I will say that the Tamron, at least my copy, is in a class all by itself. I have a Canon 70-200 IS 2.8L Mk II, a Canon 100-400 IS L Mk II, and a Canon 100 IS 2.8L Macro, (and back in my 7D days, a Canon 17-55 Canon IS) and I have been able to get away with very good results with all of those lenses even when forgetting to disable the IS. My workflow is usually ... mount the camera/lens on the tripod, manually set focus using Liveview 10X, then take a few frames for histogram exposure adjustments. Then I remember to turn off IS if I am lucky before I take my final shots. If I forget with my Canons, I still get pretty nice usable results, sometimes very, very slightly blurred, and sometimes indistinguishable from after I switch the IS off. This allowed me to form my bad habit. But once I got the Tamron, I always get fantastically blurred results -- they are simply not usable at any size. In fact, if I activate the shutter using a remote release on the Tamron while watching the LCD in Liveview, you see that that the lens engages in a single small but noticeable movement, seemingly always from the lower left to the upper right, and then stops. I tried this with my Canon lenses and no movement is apparent.
Now I love the IS on all of my lenses so equipped when I am *not* shooting on a tripod; it was my reason for buying the Tamron over the Canon (I didn't win the Tamron -- that was a typo, I meant to type that I "own" the Tamron). I don't find that the Tamron is in another world IS performance-wise; all of my lenses work quite well there. But the Tamron does stand alone for blur on the tripod.