Went to the Isle of Wight this weekend, ostensibly for the powerboating, but there was also a display by The Blades, a civilian display team comprising four ex-Red Arrows pilots in propellor-driven Extra 300s. It proved a rather more photogenic scene than the boats themselves, which needed rather more than the 200mm (300mm effective) lens I had on me. My two favourite shots are below, you can find all 17 here.

I’m still getting to grips with the K10D. I need to do some tests with the shake reduction to see when it really works and when it’s counter-productive, and I’m still not convinced its handling of small, contrasty areas of images (such as the aircraft) is as refined as the Canon, but the handling and control is certainly much better.

The lens I was using leaves me underwhelmed as well; it’s a Tamron 28-200 LD, and whilst the zoom range is fantastically useful, which means I use it a lot, the glass – despite claiming to be low dispersion – produces aberration and flare round highlights; noticeably so when it’s wide open, but the artifacts are still clearly there when it’s stopped down. My previous Tamron 70-300 flared up badly round specular highlights, too, so I’m not bowled over by Tamron lenses.

I’m vaguely tempted to eBay it and move to a Sigma 28-300 or 18-200 in the hope that it’ll be better… comments from anyone who’s used one would be most helpful.