Hello everyone!

I will be showing you some pictures of a request I got to take a picture of a Swedish 20 SEK banknote from 8 meters away with the Tamron 150-600 mm lens. I will be using a Canon 60D for this test. There have been rumors that the Tamron 150-600mm lens might not work so well with the 60D, so lets test this.

The above picture is taken with a mobile to show how far away the camera was compare to the object. The picture quality of the mobile picture is not good but it will give you an idea of the distance. I have circled the banknote to make it easy to see the object we are aiming for in this test.

Lets try different distances from 300m-600mm (480mm-960mm on crop censor). There is one light directly on the banknote and one flash on the camera which is 8 meters away from the object. I do not have a slave flash that could have helped to get more brightness and maybe more detailed pictures.

Starting the test with 300mm (480mm with crop censor) taken with f5.6, 1/60, ISO-400:

Crop 100%. The camera might have moved a little when I pushed the trigger to take the picture, unfortunately I only took one picture with 300mm:

400mm (640mm on crop censor) f 5.6, 1/56, ISO-400:

Crop 100%. If you compare this picture with the 300mm crop then this picture looks better:

Next is 500mm (800mm), f6.3, 1/60, ISO-400:

Crop 100%:

600mm (960mm on crop censor), f6.3, 1/60, ISO-400:

I have heard that you should take at least with f8 in aperture when you take 600mm, but this picture is taken with the highest aperture on 600mm just to test the limits.

Crop 100%:

This picture below is taken with following setup 600mm, f14, 1/250, ISO-400. Since it is taken with a Canon 60D which is a crop censor this makes it actually 960 mm. With the 600mm (960mm) you can come pretty close to the bill and still see it clear.

Here is a 100% crop of the same picture. Look at the details in the face of Selma Lagerlöf who is the woman in this picture to the right. You can even see each hair on the fur she is wearing and this is with the 600mm.

Conclusion:
At 300mm it looks worst then the details at 600mm, but this might be because im getting more used to the lens after taken different shots up to 600m. If I would go back and use 300mm again it might have been a different result. It all depends on the moment I take the picture and the result will vary from one shot to another. It can also be a movement when i take the picture and push down the trigger. At 600mm when I use f14 I get better result than f6.3, so there are good chances of using 600mm with the Tamron 150-600mm lens. You just need to experiment for awhile.

This is just one way of testing the lens. There are lots of obstacles, for example the flash I was using was very far away from the object. If the flash would be closer to the object the result might have been different, it might have given the banknote more details. So do not take this test as a quality result of the Tamron. I am just starting to get used to this lens. There are lot more to learn about it before I will get the hang of it. With time I will master this lens to perfection, I hope.

I do not have any other ultra zoom lens to compare with so for me I am happy with the result. Till next time I will try to do some outdoor photos if the weather permit. This lens needs lots of light and since it is only cloudy outside it is hard to really test the lens at the moment.