This past weekend Sonnie took the exciting new Tamron 150-600mm F/5-6.3 Di VC USD and a Canon 5D Mark III to Blendon Woods for a test-run. Unfortunately, the weather conditions weren’t ideal for bird photography, but Sonnie managed to capture a few shots despite the relative lack of birds.

This is a sharp lens, even at 600mm. It’s lightweight for its size due to Tamron engineering, which managed to compact most of the glass elements close to the camera. While the auto-focus isn’t as fast as the comparable Canon 100-400, Tamron introduced a “limiter” set at 45 feet or longer, meaning the auto-focus will try to search for focus in a smaller range, lending to a quicker auto-focus.

That being said, it would make auto-focusing on fast-moving subjects more challenging. However, the image stabilization worked great, as Sonny barely even used a tripod, even at 600mm. Any UV filter you will probably want could be a bit pricey as the lens has a filter size of 95mm, but you will be saving around $700 compared to other lenses with comparable zoom lenses in that focal range.

Overall, Sonnie was very impressed with the Tamron 150-600, and when it comes to lenses, he’s not an easy man to impress. So far they’ve only released a version for Canon, but you can pre-order all three versions right now!