Canon or Tamron

Greetings....

Decisions, decisions, decisions.....

I am in the market for a good Wide Angle Zoom Lens for Piggyback Astrophotography. At the moment it looks like a toss between a Canon EF 17-40mm F4 L Ultrasonic USM AF and a Tamron SP AF 17-50mm 2.8 XR DiII.

The Lens will be used on an unmodded 350D. Any sugestions as to which of the above lenses would be the better bet. ( I am leaning towards the Tamron due to it being F2.8........ but the Canon is an "L" series)

Any comments would be welcome.

Tamron make good lenses so the quality should be fine. Bearing that in mind the f2.4 sounds a lot better than f4!

Bart.

I just got a sigma DC17-70 lens for my 400d. Its f2.8@17mm also. Just to add more complication to your decision :-)

Steve,

Have a look at the discussion on DPReview:
forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?foru...amp;message=25690384

The build quality and the sharpness of the optics would win it for me on the L glass if they were the same price.

One f-stop in difference isn't going to make a huge difference and if you really need to shot that quickly, the 50mm f/1.8 might be good addition to your kit if you don't have it already.

Now this has got me started looking at some expensive L glass at the B&H website and I feel my credit card is about to burst into flames.

Darragh

The build quality and the sharpness of the optics would win it for me on the L glass if they were the same price.

if... the Tamron if €450 and the Canon €800. The sigma is ~€300.

For wide angle macro use the 2.8 makes a bit of a difference.

Thanks to a good friend, I was given a superb set of Tamron lenses to go with my 350D body - 28 to 80mm and 70 to 300mm, and each is superb. For their price, and considering I have used Canon lenses on another camera, I can't really find a visual comparison of one better manufacturer than the other.

Seanie.