Unique Photo recently held a trip to the Lakota Wolf Preserve in Columbia, New Jersey. Unique has partnered with Tamron to run this trip on multiple occasions, and give customers a rare opportunity to see these beautiful creatures up close and personal. The lighting looked fantastic in the early morning where there were multiple species of wolves to see, including tundra and arctic wolves. Also in attendance to be photographed were a few bobcats and foxes. Tamron reps were on-hand to offer loaner lenses so people could try out something new on their cameras. That something new for me was the brand new Tamron SP 70-300mm f/4-5.6 Di VC USD lens. You may already know this lens from Mike’s review a little while back, but I wanted to give my take and share some of the images I made with it. Keep reading after the break to see my sample images and a video we made about our trip!
My Take On The New Tamron 70-300mm
My experience shooting with the new Tamron 70-300mm can be summed up in two words: pleasantly surprised. I thoroughly enjoyed using the lens to get some sharp close-up photos of these beautiful creatures. The build quality is solid, the weight is balanced, the focusing is smooth, and the vibration compensation made me feel like my hands were as steady as a tripod. Most important of all, the sharpness was superb. I am hoping this is a sample of what is to come from Tamron. It is nice to see third parties create a lens that rivals the conventional first party glass, and keep everybody pushing forward to create the next great innovations.
Why I left The Wolf Preserve With A Sore Shoulder
The rest of my time at Lakota was spent shooting with the gigantic Nikon 200-400mm f/4 VR lens. There is not much to say about this lens. It costs as much as it does for a reason. The images I have posted here that were not taken with the Tamron 70-300mm were taken with this behemoth. I shot everything with this lens wide-open at f/4 and they were still tack sharp. That is what you expect from a lens that costs nearly $7,000, requires a monopod, and kills your shoulder when you are lugging it around. This was my first experience shooting with such a lens, and I have started to understand why people will spend more than the value of my car on such a thing. For us more conventional folks, we do rent this monster out. Check our rental list and fees at uniquephoto.com/rentals.
[gallery link="file" columns="4"]