Do I really need my stock lens?

[Chris Harding]

Well I just sold my one stock lens ..I'm keeping the other one as it's still a useful lens.

Now I need to decide whether to get a Sigma 24-70 F2.8 or the Tamron 17-50 F2.8 to use at ceremonies and speeches. The Sigma will give me 20mm more zoom but the Tamron will also allow me to back off to 17mm which can be very useful when you run out of space!

I already have a Tamron 18-200 which is much like the stock zoom (except it's manual) if I get caught with a reading lectern that's really a long way away but I'm usually up front at the Church anyway ...I wonder which will be sharper??

Decisions, decisions!!!

Chris

[Chris Harding]

Just for interest I decided to go for two lenses now for ceremonies!! If the Church is tight and cramped I now have a Tamron 17-50 F2.8 constant to use on the A-Cam and if I have a nice spacious layout I also bought another Tamron 28-75 F2.8 constant which will also cover me if the lectern is a longer way off.

With the stock lens I was suffering with zoomed up shots of the readers as they were either F5 or F6.8 and gain would often shoot up to 24db making walls behind the reader very grainy...Having 75mm at F2.8 will be a huge asset and in dark and dingy Churches I prefer manual lenses anyway cos the stock lens auto focus struggles!!!

The Tamrons after testing seem to be a bit sharper than the stock lens in zoom and most definitely sharper at 18mm !!

Chris

[Peter Rush]

Big fan of my 24-70 f2.8 Tamron Chris - Way sharper than the kit lens and also sharper than my canon EF L-Series lenses!

[Chris Harding]

Hi Pete

That's what I wanted but could only find new ones at crazy prices ..nice to know that the 24-70 is so sharp..I was using the 17-50 on my Nikons doing stills and my wife had a Nikon 18-55 on the second body and really, our photos were chalk and cheese!! I don't use the Nikon lenses anymore not even for stills.

I nearly bought a Sigma 24-70 but was hesitant as my last one had a zoom issue as they are so heavy and the bearings in the zoom barrel collapsed making the zoom sticky so I was reluctant to buy another.

Randy has bought a Tamron 17-50 F2.8 so it will be interesting to see what he has to say. I find that the stock zoom even during early evening outdoors at dusk struggles with autofocus and I end up blinding guests with a light so now I use the Sigma 18-35 F1.8 and it is really awesome.

That really leaves the stock zoom only for use on my stedicam but I'm even considering trying another Tamron I have which is a 10- 24mm ... in bright light at F3.5 it has a massive DOF so I find I can set it around 0.7m on the ring and not bother to focus and as long as I keep at least 4' away from the couple the footage is sharp. I was using the sock zoom on the stedicam for the AF but at 18mm it highly unlikely to fail in bright light anyway. I think I should be able to get away with shooting around 15mm and just zone focusing and the footage should be good ...worth trying??

That essentially leaves the zoom just for sport videos only now (I have been doing a few soccer games recently and wouldn't like to try and zoom and focus with that sort of action so the stock lens is awesome there.

Chris