A few days ago I recieved a Tamron A17 70-300mm lens for my Nikon D5000. The full name is Tamron AF70-300mm F/4-5.6 Di LD Macro. I don’t know enough about DSLR shooting to determine whether or not the lens is any good, but for the price of less than $200, I’m quite satisfied with it. It even comes with built-in motor for Nikon cameras, like the D5000, that doesn’t have a built-in focus motor but relies on the lenses to have one.
Keep in mind that the Nikon D5000 is a DX camera so there’s a crop factor of 1.5, meaning that on a full frame camera the 300mm would actually be 450mm, when talking about 35mm cameras. Or something like that, it still confuses me a bit 🙂
Tamron A17 70-300mm with built-in motor for Nikon can be bought from Amazon for around $150.
The first two pictures (below) are shot with the 18-55mm Nikkor kit lens that came with my D5000.
18mm (Nikkor 18-55mm)
55mm (Nikkor 18-55mm)
70mm (Tamron A17)
200mm (Tamron A17)
300mm (Tamron A17)
As you can see, with 300mm, you get quite close to the subject 🙂
OMG That is just amazing. I can’t believe the zoom capability of this thing. In my opinion you can’t get any better. Amazing picture clarity.
Sure you can get better 🙂 But it’s expensive. For the price of less than $200, I’m very happy with this one.
where is this? The pictures look stunning , I know its because of the lense but give the scenery some credit =p
As Martin (below) guessed, it’s a picture of “Mosta Dome” located in Malta.
Im guessing Malta and were looking at the Mosta Dome.
Great zoom, I like the sun breaking through at the 55mm one.
300mm should be good when the bikini season breaks out 😉
Uhm, yeah… except I don’t have a beach nearby – and I’m not prepared to leave the comfort of my laptop @ home, to get out to the beach and take illegal pictures 😀
Wow, that is an excellent zoom at a fairly low price. I thought my 50-200mm had a good zoom but it’s nothing compared to this one. I have a Nikon D40 and I think this lens would be compatible with my camera too, since it has the motor built in. Where did you get it for under $200?
.-= Jason´s last blog ..Storage in Allentown =-.
Hi Jason.
Should work with your D40 too 🙂
I got it here, it’s less than $200:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=190361851861
… but it’s in the UK so I don’t know if you have any additional tax or shipping costs, compared to what I did.
hello, i got this lens when i bought my d5000 but it doesn’t fit, did u have to get an adapter or something?
No adapter is needed. If it doesn’t fit, then you got the wrong one. Tamron also makes this lens with a Canon mount (and probably others as well), you need the Nikon mount – and the one with a built-in focus motor.
Seems like a decent price. The whole crop thing can be confusing at first. Basically, it helps me to think of the crop factor in terms of cropping in photoshop.
Yeah the Tamron 70-300 is really cheap. Now that Nikon recently released a 70-300 VR, I’m guessing that might be better glass for most people (bit more expensive as well, I think around $500, but you get VR). I wouldn’t recommend the Tamron 70-300 unless you have plenty of light and image quality is not super important. I sold mine a few weeks ago, as well.
Thank you so much! I have been debating this lens for my D5000 and wanted to make sure it would autofocus and have my answer with you. Off to order it and a couple of other lenses. Thanks again!
I’m glad I was able to help, Becky. Hopefully you purchased the lens at Amazon through any of the links above 😉