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Home → Reviews → Cameras and Lenses → Tamron SP 150-600mm f/5-6.3 Review

Tamron SP 150-600mm f/5-6.3

By Thomas Stirr 264 Comments
Last Updated On July 3, 2020

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Autofocus Performance and Accuracy

The Tamron 150-600 was married up with my Nikon D800 for most of my testing. I found that auto-focus operation was fast and accurate, especially so in good lighting. I did not detect much of a difference with auto-focus speed at 600mm. During my testing I never felt that my shooting was restricted because of auto-focus issues when using my D800.

Nikon D810 Bird Photography (2)
NIKON D810 + 150-600mm f/5-6.3 @ 600mm, ISO 3200, 1/1250, f/8.0

Using the Tamron SP 150-600 VC with older Nikon DX bodies like the D7000 and D3200 did result in very noticeable focus lag. For example, I found using single point auto focus when shooting birds in flight with a D7000 resulted in significant focus lag, frustration, and numerous missed shots. The number of missed shots was obviously much lower with perched birds. I spoke to my contact at the Canadian Tamron distributor about this issue. I was informed that newer DSLR bodies (i.e. 18-24 months old) should not have any problems focusing with the Tamron SP 150-600 VC. I had the opportunity to try the auto-focus on a D7100 and found it to be very solid and significantly better than with the D7000.

Fish Fight #2
NIKON D800 @ 600mm, ISO 400, 10/12500, f/8.0

When mounted on older bodies, the Tamron distributor recommended that users should try to engage as many cross-type focus points as possible as this should improve auto-focus speed. I tested this out with a D7000 and I did find that the focus lag was greatly reduced when additional cross-type focus points were engaged. This did improve the performance of the D7000 when shooting birds in flight quite a bit…but it still fell short of the D7100, and did not come anywhere close to the performance with my D800.

Fish Fight #4
NIKON D800 @ 600mm, ISO 400, 10/12500, f/8.0

I read on a number of internet forums that Canon shooters also had some initial issues with inconsistent auto-focus performance with various Canon bodies when the Tamron SP 150-600 VC was first introduced. I suspect that this is a firmware-related issue and Tamron will likely address these issues with updates in the future. I understand some firmware updates were done with the Canon version of the lens.

The Tamron SP 150-600 VC was not recognized by either my Nikon 1 V2 or my Nikon 1 J1 at all. I’ve been advised that Tamron engineers are investigating this issue to see if a firmware update can be designed to address this issue. There is no answer currently available on this specific problem.

Heron
NIKON D800 @ 600mm, ISO 1600, 10/1600, f/6.3

Table of Contents

  • Overview and Specifications
  • Focusing
  • Optical Features
  • Summary
  • More Image Samples
  • Reader Comments
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