CO wrote:
.........
I ended up purchasing the Tamron 45mm f/1.8 SP VC lens.
I read that the engineers traded off some focusing speed in
favor of autofocus consistency. It has less than 4% outliers.
All of Tamron's new SP primes lenses have vibration compen
-sation, a metal lens barrel, and are fully weather sealed.
.............
What CO said.
Bought it for Nikon and was so impressed I bought one
for Canon/Sony. Most of my lenses are far from state of
the art ... no problem for 95% of my ideas. But it's good
to own a really stellar lens or two, and this is definitely in
that class. Is it best in class ? In that class is no need to
pull rank. An Olympian is an Olympian regardless of who
got the gold medal that year. If some other top shelf 50
tests out a point or 2 better, feel free to pay the several
hunnert sheckels for the difference. In my case it would
be several hunnert sheckels TWICE !
As to the less common FL of 45mm, I find the difference
is basically meaningless, but in a pinch it's easier to crop
10% than to back up when there's no room to back up !
IOW safer to hedge on the short side of 50mm. Also, it's
apparently a Distagon type, already much bulkier than a
typical Gauss type 50, so the 45mm FL is prolly reducing
the size just a bit. I'm happy that it's not 10% bigger :-)
It's an astounding lens in every aspect except bulkiness.
All its peers should be quite ashamed of their prices, and
acoast all its peers are even bigger :-(