I am in the market for a macro lens for my Pentax DS. The Tamron 90mm F2.8 gets great reviews and I will probably go that way, is there compelling reasons to look at say the Tamron 180mm or the 100mm Pentax macro. The Sigmas do not seem to be very competative, does anyone think otherwise? :/ I have been using manual tubes but want more, should I go for auto tubes to go with my AF lenses?
Hi Pete,
The Tamron is very highly rated and probably what I'd go for if I didn't have the Vivitar Series 1 105 2.8 macro lens. Dedicated macro lenses like these are all pretty good, it's actually quite hard to find a bad one. As far as Pentax are concerned are you looking at the original FA 100mm 2.8 or the new DFA ? If you're looking at the DFA, then there's also a 50mm version that's very good. The Pentax 100mm f4 is not as good as the faster one, by the way. The Tamron is probably just as good as the Pentax 100mm f2.8 and is less expensive. As for tubes, if it was me I'd stay with manual tubes as for macro work AF is next to useless!
Hope that helps a bit!
Jan
Hi NN,
I use a Pentax 50mm F2 lens with the tubes, great thing about that is the manual focus ring has a very fine adjustment, maybe I will get that 135-400 or 50-500 instead and continue with the tubes, I have seen some AF tubes at a reasonable price so perhaps I can play with one of those on my AF lenses.
Cheers.
Pete
I personally own the Tamron 90mm F2.8. It is absolutely outstanding. Everything the reviews say is true.
Decisions, decisions, went and bought a rotary hammer drill instead.
It's not a really, really big one (1050 Watts) but it will do for some nice medium size jobs that I have coming up.
Lol... yeah decisions... I went and bought a barbeque..
Peted Wrote:... The Sigmas do not seem to be very competative, does anyone think otherwise? ...
The Sigma 150mm Macro is a very highly regarded lens, as far as I know ...