Tamron SP 90/2,8 AF Macro The size of the Tamron SP 90 compared to a film box.
The 90mm Tamron macro lens was recently introduced in it's fourth version, now with special coatings of the lens elements that should improve image quality when used with a digital camera. My version of the lens is not the DI version but still it has become the first thing I check for in my camera bag before I go anywhere with my camera.

The lens is a macro telephoto lens that focuses down to 1:1 and can be bought new for a very reasonable price.

Some photographers avoid using lenses made by third party companies like Sigma, Tamron and Tokina.
The argument for this is that these lenses are simply not as good as the ones made by the camera manufacturers themselves and often this is true.
With the Tamron SP 90 however (as well as Tamron SP 90 DI which is the newer version of this lens) is a very good lens with excellent optical characteristics which easily match lenses like the 105mm f/2.8D AF Micro-Nikkor and that is at half the price of the lens.

The next argument would be that the Nikkors hold their value better but I do not find that true as it matters little to me if I buy a 800 dollar Nikkor and sell it for 600 or if I buy a 500 dollar Tamron and sell it for 300 as long as the image quality is equally good; it is still a 200 dollar loss for me.

I find the focal length of 90mm very useful for a lot of different situations where I need some ability to hand-hold the camera but where I do not need a very long focal length to isolate the subject from the background.

 Burnet moth on bright yellow flower photographed with the SP 90
Having used this lens with both my S2 digital camera and my trusty old Nikon F4 it is my firm belief that the Tamron SP 90 is equally good for digital as for film photography.

The lens barrel is made of plastic which is a problem for some but not for me - I have not always treated my lens too well but there has never been any problems with it at all!
Further more the plastic construction ensures a light weight of just 405gr which is not too bad for this type of lens.

The lens has a 55mm filter thread so a polarizer should not be too expensive for it either.

Autofocus is a bit slow on this lens but I prefer to use manual focus anyway whenever I do macro photography.
I know however that this may be an issue to some people. One neat feature is a focus range limiter which can be seen on the photos of the lens where you can limit the focusing range of the lens so that if the autofocus hunts you won't have to wait for it to get all the way to infinity and back.

The only complaint on the construction I have is that the front element is deeply recessed in the barrel so you are quite close when at minimum focusing range - but on the other hand the front element is very well protected in there.

The image below is the only example I could find where the lens did not behave like I expected it to do - it displays the dreaded "Red Dot" syndrome where light reflected off the sensor or film is reflected back by the rear elements of the lens resulting in a faint red dot in the dead center of the image.
I have noticed this on two images out of thousands so I would not think that this is something people should be worried about and with the newer DI version of this lens you should not see this problem at all.

The dreaded red dot syndrome...

Well... on to the test shots.

I made test images at F:3.2, F:4, F:5.6, F:8, F:11, F:16 and F:32 and cropped out a small portion (see the size of the crops at the end of the review).
I then proceded to blow up the size of the crops to 25x normal size (5 times bigger in both height and width) to be able to study the quality closely.

Test shot at F:3.2 - Center Test shot at F:3.2 - Edge
F:3.2 - Center F:3.2 - Edge
Test shot at F:4 - Center Test shot at F:4 - Edge
F:4 - Center F:4 - Edge
Test shot at F:5.6 - Center Test shot at F:5.6 - Edge
F:5.6 - Center F:5.6 - Edge
Test shot at F:8 - Center Test shot at F:8 - Edge
F:8 - Center F:8 - Edge
Test shot at F:11 - Center Test shot at F:11 - Edge
F:11 - Center F:11 - Edge
Test shot at F:16 - Center Test shot at F:16 - Edge
F:16 - Center F:16 - Edge
Test shot at F:32 - Center Test shot at F:32 - Edge
F:32 - Center F:32 - Edge
Test shots of film packages at F:3.2, F:4, F:5.6, F:8, F:11, F:16 and F:32 taken with a Fuji Finepix S2 Pro.
All crops are blown up to 25x normal resolution using "nearest neighbour" in Photoshop (please refer to the full test picture for the size of the crops in the full image).
No sharpening was applied before or after resizing.

The size of the areas cropped out for the test relative to the full image.

The shots document that sharpness with the SP 90 is indeed very good all the way from F:2.8 to F:32 and although the image quality suffers a bit at very small apertures it is still excellent.
Maximum sharpness is obtained at F:8 to F:11 which probably comes as no surprise.

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