Tamron SP AF28-75mm f/2.8 XR Di LD Aspherical (IF)

Great price for a 2.8 constant aperture. Lightweight.

Autofocus is inconsistent and a touch slower than I hoped for.

Range is not wide enough for a "walkaround lens" on a 1.6 crop camera.

I have seen some excellent images come from this lens on other user's galleries. I think it is a very capable lens, but does not suit my needs as well. I will be trading it in for a Canon 17-55 f/2.8 IS lens. So far my experience is that you get what you pay for.

f/2.8

Autofocus inconsistent.

Lens filter size is unique to Tamron, therefore my other lenses require other filters.

This is the best lense you can get for this money. F2.8 over the whole zoom range, good built quality, reasonable filter size .... but serious quality control issues.
My story: bought this from a german online shop for the bargain price of 300 EUR. The first shots showed the serious front focus problem on my 350D all people write about on the net. Well I sent the piece to tamron service Germany and it came back within 2 week including a official looking piece of paper saying that it has been calibrated.
Well .... it wasn't. Same front focus problem. After a few emails with tamron service I sent the lense to them a second time - this time with camera. After two weeks the lense came back - again nothing has changed.
I am really pissed with the tamron service since the front focus is so visible that a blind man can see it. I would have expected that they just admit that they cannot correct the problem but they just sent it back with another official looking piece of paper saying that it has been calibrated. It is such a shame since the lense is wicked. Tack sharp if manually focused.
I have sent mine back to the online shop and will buy one on Oxford Street this weekend where I can try things out.

Sharp, cheap, F2.8 over whole zoom range, good filter size, build quality

Quality control is awful, Tamron service (at least Germany) is useless, must not be bought in internet shops - I repeat - DO NOT BUY FROM INTERNET SHOPS - TRY BEFORE BUY

Friendly and useless

After 4 stores and 6 copies I found one that was sharp all the way through. I had recently tested the canon 24-70L and had a bad copy. I liked the mm range but even the canon would not keep up for heavy indoor sports like my 200L. As said I liked the zoom range and for $400 and about a week of searching found 1 out of six that I brought home. It is true about CQ for tamron. Keep searching and would recommend as I did: go to where they got them. You'll go through several before you find the right one. I had heard it was 1 out of 10. Guess I got lucky with 6. (There were 3 more to try, maybe the average was right). Three stars because of wasted time and energy. Price was great.

Sharp and light

Hard to find a good one. Not tank quality build.

200L 28-135is 50 f/1.4

none

I only use it on a Nikon DSLR, so I can´t say anything about its performance with film. This is a very, very good lens for a very good price. Sharpness and contrast are really good even wide open, from f 4 very good. Bokeh is nice as well. I often use it for portraits and normally you can´t see a difference to very good primes. You must use a lense like the AF-Nikkor 85mm f 1.4 to get pictures with more crispness. Build quallity is adequate, I think it´s better than it looks like. It is very small and lightweight for a zoom with a constant aperture of 1:2.8. For me this lens is a sleeper for people who don´t want to sell their houses AND want to have a very good lens. With a DSLR you may miss wide angel a little bit, I don´t. I use it as a lens for people, portrait and details I see here and there... it´s a variable 50mm :-)

Price, sharpness, AF speed, weight and size.

Some samples are not calibrated well for DSLR (so mine had to be calibrated)... but after that it was very good. Manual focus is difficult due to the very short adjustment range Nothing else for the price...

Nikkor AF-D 50mm f 1.8 Nikkor AF-D 85mm f 1.4

Very good, fast, friendly and qualified