Summary: Great lens for what it is.

Comment: Having acquired this lens yesterday as a general purpose walk around lens I wanted to post my initial feelings on this piece of glass. Tamron optics tend to be "middle of the road", neither super stellar nor super awful. This lens, however, does go far beyond the middle towards stellar.

The good:
The VC on this lens is on par with Nikon's VR. Tamron will tell you it's better because of 3 axis control, but I'm not buying it. Still, the VC is really capable and at 300 mm you can get a usable result at 1/40th of a second with good technique.

Color reproduction is good, too, and the lens provides a nice amount of contrast. Probably the best result I've seen out of a Tamron to date.

Sharpness is actually amazingly good stopped down, and not bad wide open either. This is what impressed me the most with this lens.

The bad:
The VC is loud. You can hear it work. I guess some people may find that assuring, but I find it slightly annoying.

Focus is about as slow as a glacier indoors. Outdoors, it's OK, but not super snappy. It hunts a lot and I find myself using manual focus in somewhat dim indoor light. This is not surprising, given the lens maximum aperture of f/6.3 at telephoto and 3.5 at wide angle.

The small max aperture also dims the viewfinder substantially, again, not so bad outdoors but indoors, it's like you're wearing sunglasses.

The Neutral:
Like all lenses on a 35mm sensor, there is light fall off on the corners. It is pretty well controlled, and disappears by f/8. But, it is helped by the fact that its maximum aperture is small, so that helps mitigate light falloff.

Overall:
If you are looking for a capable walk around lens that won't break the budget or your back, this is the lens to buy, period. Probably not suitable for APS-C sensor cameras (it becomes a 42-450 then), but on a 35mm sensor camera, this lens is a gem. If you have a APS-C sensor, consider the Tamrom 18-250 VC lens. It is every bit as good as this lens is.

Summary: better than expected

Comment: I bought this lens for D300. the overall built quality is fair for $599 lens. With my D300, I used AF fine tune to maximize the sharpness, however, it turns out that it always back focus when I shoot the object on the shadow and the background is brighter.

So, I suggest to turn AF fine turn off. (- -")

VC is so good and very useful

Summary: Wonderful lens for many situations, not good for low light environments

Comment: I am a serious amateur photographer and the types of photos I do the most are of people, street photography, architecture and landscapes.

I was attracted to the Tamron 28-300 given its broad range and its very light weight and compact size. I also own the Canon 75-300 USM IS and the Canon f4L 70-200. The Tamron seem to me like a great lens for travel and field trips in which I do not want to take a big bag of lenses and accesories with me.

I am very satisfied with the lens. It does a great job across the whole range and is very sharp and delivers great colors. It is quite compact when it is closed or at 28mm and it grows significantly at 300mm. It is a great lens for street photography as it is not a big, intimidating canon. It does an awesome job on street photography, where you can capture buildings by opening the lens or zoom into people easily with the 300mm zoom. The VR shake redeuction also works great, I do not have a very steady hand and still, I was able to capture very crisp photos at 1/100th of a second with the zoom at 300mm.

Where the lens performs poorly is in low light situations. I recently shot a Salsa dance show with low light and the Tamron's performance was very dissapointing. It took too much time to focus, and by the time it was ready you probably had missed the moment you were trying to capture. It basically turned my Canon 1D Mark III into some kind of a compact camera in terms of its low speed.

In summary a great lens for daylight photography and a rather poor lens in demanding night and low light environments, like dance shows.

Find street photos and salsa dancer photos I took with the lens here(cut and paste this in your browser):
http://www.flickr.com/photos/carreon/tags/tamron28300mm/

Summary: Incredible value

Comment: This is a great lens for anyone that wants the versatility of such a wide focal range and the portability of this size lens. I have even used it for some wedding shots. (Outdoor shots only) Most everyone will love this lens.

Summary: Tamron AF 28-300 Di LD VC Lens

Comment: Purchased this lens as a gift for my son who shoots lots of railroad pix and was in need of a zoom lens for his beloved Canon DSLR. Got a call from him yesterday to tell me once again how much he loves this lens. He has shot some amazingly crisp photos, hand-held, at long distances in various light levels, and at times, from a truck with the motor running. He is extremely pleased with the lens. A close friend of mine owns the Nikon version and some of her garden and wildlife pix are professional quality, from a person with little photographic knowledge or experience. So far, the only disadvantage I've seen with the lenses is that owners want to spend too much time wandering about taking pictures! They become addicts and I can't wait to add myself to the list.