Customer Reviews:
 Excellent choice for macro & closeups January 26, 2006
Michael Sandman (Brookline, MA United States)
33 out of 33 found this review helpful
This is an excellent choice if you're interested in close-up and macrophotography -- it's sharp corner-to-corner, and you get life-size photos down to the size of a large bug. Usually you end up focusing macro shots manually, and the Tamron manual focus ring travels about 270 degrees, giving lots of smooth fine-tuning capability.
For portraits and medium telephoto shots, the autofocus capability works well but it's audible. You can set a limiting switch so that it won't hunt through the entire range, from 8" to infinity. It's easy to switch from autofocus to manual by feel -- you can do it without moving your eye from the viewfinder.
There are probably better choices if you want to do portraits first and macrophotography second -- Canon's 100mm and Sigma's 105mm macros, in particular, but the Tamron is an excellent choice for macro work.
The lens body is plastic, so it's lighter than OEM lenses from Canon & Nikon. The light weight makes one wonder about how rugged it is, but it feels well put together, and anyway you shouldn't be using a lens to drive nails.
Note that the 90mm designation applies only to full frame SLRs. On digital SLRs like the Canon 300D & 350D or the Nikon D50 & D70, the lens gives you an effecive focal length of about 130mm. So you get a bit more working distance for macro subjects, but you may have to stand back too far from the subject for portraiture.
A gem of a lens at a reasonable price March 25, 2007
P. Lastra
20 out of 20 found this review helpful
I am professional photographer specializing in botanical and nature photography. The 90mm has proven to be excellent optically as well as ergonomically well designed. The light weight, for its size, coupled with the very intuitive af-mf push-pull design are great in the field. I work at Fairchild Tropical Botanical Garden in Miami. For images taken with the above lens, please visit [...].
This lens has a couple little advertised qualities which make it double as a superb portrait lens:
First, it is not bittingly sharp wide open at f2.8, just about perfect for softening skin flaws, Stopped down to f5.6 and beyond, this lens is simply too sharp and contrasty for the average face. Second, wide open and at f4, this lens produces very attractive out of focus backgrounds, perfect for outdoor portraiture, where backgrounds can easily be distracting and intrusive.
Regards
Excellent Lens for the Job April 29, 2008
David Bellow (Boston, MA)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
This is my second Tamron DI series lens. I purchased this for my Canon 10D DSLR camera and I have had a lot of fun using it. I like to take photos of strange looking bugs and flowers and this lens is dead-on accurate both in image quality and ease of use. I do wish that the housing was made of a more substantial material (weight wise) but otherwise this is a great lens at a pretty reasonable price.
 Tamron AF 90mm Macro September 28, 2008
Robert J. Reed (Ellicott City, MD United States)
VERY sharp focus and a reasonably fast focusing motor. I see no downside to this lens at all.
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