Also my first third party lens a Sigma 120-300 2.8, traded a 70-200 2.8L for it.
I thought maybe I'd done something stupid, I had nightmares about focus issues the entire time it was in route to me.

Turned out great it focuses fast, is very sharp, and has been a great all around. Still getting my long lens technique down and thinking about buying a 1.4x extender to get a 420mm F4 (which is more like 670mm on my 7D) awesome for sports, birds, critters of all sizes. I really wanted a 300 2.8 prime but didn't want to spend the $$$$.

The only bad things are the weight and the need to spend more money on a gimbal head of some sort. I can hand hold it if the light is good but it gets old after a day of shooting.

Anyone else have big non-ue type lenses in your collection? Post up about them and what you do with them.

Never been a big user of telephotos, sold my EF 24-85 3.5/5.6 & EF 70-210 3.5/5.6 to pay court fees, but I knew I had to replace my loss of a zoom lens eventualy. Was thinking about a used EF 100-300mm 3.5-4.6 canon for ~$100 at adorama until I discovered Tamron's USD lens.

I paid $261.88 shipped for a Tamron AF 70-300mm f/4.0-5.6 SP Di VC USD XLD like new condtion amazon warehouse deals (I paid for regular shipping, fuck amazons free "lets wait 7 days to ship it from one state away bs" shipping)

Build quality is absolute shit. But for under 300 bucks, an IS lens @ 70-200 that's sharp enough and is ok @ 300mm? I can't complain. Weather's been shit when I have time off so not much opportunity to use it, but here's a link to another forum which convinced me to buy it:

http://photography...p?t=941292&page=75


I'd like to get a 70-200L just can't justify the $600-2000 price tag.

no sharpening, straight RAW AWB:

click for fullsize

6" f/8 ISO 100 70-300 @ 70mm


5" f/8 ISO 100 70-300 @ 161mm

Yeah Uzi, the 7D's awesome AF system + micro adjust can more than make-up for shitty third party autofocus, that was the deciding factor in me buying a 7D over a 60D or 600D.

Posted by Uzi- Also my first third party lens a Sigma 120-300 2.8, traded a 70-200 2.8L for it. I thought maybe I'd done something stupid, I had nightmares about focus issues the entire time it was in route to me. Turned out great it focuses fast, is very sharp, and has been a great all around.

that was supposed to be a modify not a reply with quote ... oh well.

Posted by TheVicariousVadder I paid $261.88 shipped for a Tamron AF 70-300mm f/4.0-5.6 SP Di VC USD XLD like new condtion amazon warehouse deals (I paid for regular shipping, fuck amazons free "lets wait 7 days to ship it from one state away bs" shipping)

That's a steal for a lens with IS and 300mm if you only use once in a while why pay big money for something. The sample shots look good enough to use for about anything I can think of.

I'm glad that the 7D mirco-adjust feature is there but the big sigma didn't need it as a bare lens. I've got a 1.4 converter that supposed to be here today so I'm going to check things with it installed and see how things are.