Tamron 28-70mm f3.5-4.5 (59A)

This is one of those purchases where you notice the seller has made an error in the listing, as they didn't know anything about what they were selling. I did contact them offering to pay for the Adaptall 2 to Canon FD adapter and they let me have it for the price it was sold for, a whopping £9.99 plus postage which ended up costing me less than £14.00 for the lens and FD adapter.

When it arrived a couple of days later I let it get up to room temperature which is my standard practice anyway regardless of what the purchase is and cleaned it all up. It didn't need any elbow grease, it was in great shape with no mould or scratches on the lenses, I was stunned at the quality of it and reflected nothing about its condition in the item description. There was one thing that puzzled me though and that was the filter ring that was screwed on, with no glass and no internal threading whatsoever, the seller tried to remove it but couldn't. The secret of removing anything from the filter thread of a lens is not to squeeze and just rotate using just a gentle hold and rotating. 

I wasn't expecting too much from my purchase, the lens itself had various reviews mainly complaining about it's plasticy construction with some great sharp, image examples with lots of contrast and colour. I wasn't expecting anything from it as all I got it for was the Canon FD adapter which at the time were going for around £12.00 plus postage on average, I took a gamble and it paid out.

The lens is in great shape, the focusing is rather grinding in one spot but that will eventually settle down with use and from my experience with older lenses it won't take too long. As usual, I took to my front door and took a few photographs and as usual the weather was absolutely shite, rain, wind, no sunshine whatsoever which is normal for a Wednesday afternoon in September. I entered the lens details into my E-M1 II on-camera database and took a few shots. The one below is the first one I took, and it took me by surprise. The camera was set to Auto ISO using Aperture priority, which set the shutter to 1/100th second and ISO to 200, with the lens aperture set to f6.3. 

I was just going to sell it back on to recover the cost of getting the Canon FD adapter but I'll have to rethink what I'm going to do with it. I have more than enough Tamron Adaptall lenses but getting one like this just for the adapter at a ridiculous price and ending up with a decent lens as well makes you wonder.

I'll have to take more photographs and see how it performs on my E-M5 II.  I may have been extremely lucky and got a salesperson's sample copy, ;).

The lens with the Adaptall 2 to Canon FD Adapter and both end caps weighs in at 330g (11.6 Ounces), which is quite a weight for a lens constructed mainly of plastic. I put it down to the quality of the glass lenses used in its construction. My Tamron 135mm f2.5 with the same adapters weighs in at 503g (17.7 Ounces), and is mainly made the old-fashioned way out of metal and glass. A couple of comparison shots below.

Here are the shots of the 28-70mm mounted onto my OM-D E-M5 II. And, as the weather looked good, I took a few quick shots out of the front door. The camera may be weatherproofed, but this poor lens isn't, and it looks as though it wouldn't take much of a downpour to get it soaked and probably destroyed. 

The shots above were taken with the E-M5 II without any care about exposure and using focus peaking as the only source of making sure stuff was reasonably in focus. The dark looking images which were taken at around midday is typical of the weather lately, one year ago roughly I was in hospital getting ready for major surgery to glue my lungs and everyone was complaining about how hot and stuffy it was, I missed nearly a month of really nice weather. 

The Straight Out Of Camera images actually surprised me in how good they looked, taken at around f6.3 and not at any particular focal length and the light was pretty poor. With some editing these would look really good. The deliberate search for flare seemed to fall apart as the lens performed really well. 

Some more shots were taken while the sun was shining below, with a deliberate focus on the sun through the trees. The lack of flare was quite good, actually and not what I was expecting.

This is one of those purchases that will probably get more usage than intended, with having a focal equivalent of a 56-140mm on the M43 cameras makes it ideal for a walkabout lens but I don't think it will replace my 35-70mm f3.5 zoom anytime soon. I'll be messing about with it for a while and wonder how it would cope with the Focal Reducer.

Right, I've stuck the focal reducer onto it and the next stage is adding it to the Database on my E-M1 II and then waiting for the weather to get a bit better, as it's now raining. This is the lens with the focal reducer attached:

While checking out the lens I noticed there was a clickable "M" setting just after the 70mm value which is underlined. I focused the lens at its closest setting at 70mm, moved the "M" position towards the focus indicator, and it clicked into place, but nothing else changed, though the focusing remained the same without any noticeable difference. I'll have to take a few shots to see if anything is going on here. Here is a shot of that "M" mode selection:

I finally figured out what the "M" setting does, it doesn't change the focus but if you pull upwards on the focus barrel it exposes 1:7 and 1:4 settings on the barrel. You can't close the "M" setting off unless you hide the magnification ratios again by pulling the focus barrel towards the camera, see the newly added bottom image above.

While waiting for the weather to improve I added the lens data to my E-M1 II with the calculated values using the FotoDioX focal reducer, which in 35mm film speak, a zoom lens 20.16 - 50.4mm f2.52 - 3.24 lens, but on the M43 system, it has a FOV of a 40 - 33mm zoom with a depth of field (DOF) of an f4.4 - 6.48 lens. Is this a plastic fantastic lens from the 80s worth keeping or should I just sell it on to recoup my costs, even though it means I'll get the FD to M43 adapter for free?

Here are some shots taken using my E-M1 II: