Today I got a phone call. My camera was back and with it the Tamron 17-50/2.8 VC. I didn’t mean to, but I left work early nevertheless.
Uhhh … what can I say? It works. Everything works. Autofocus on my D300 works again, the Tammy works again, no, the camera wasn’t even dusty. And … my, does this lens try to impress me!
And it does. Still, I wouldn’t feel comfortable to recommend this lens any more. I’ve made my experiences and I wouldn’t want you to suffer like I did. But then, so far this particular specimen works absolutely flawlessly. No focus problems, no problems with the aperture blades not closing down, no problems at all.
I’ve tried it. I’ve tried setting the zoom to 50 mm, pointing it rapidly into one random direction, at something at a random distance, and it just worked. Yes, there were some images that were blurred, but setting the minimum shutter speed to 1/30s and/or waiting just a fraction of a second to let the stabilization lock on usually sufficed.
Do I feel fine? You bet 
I made an excellent image of a bike rider. I tracked him, I took an image at f2.8, he looked at me, a little surprised but not hostile. The image was taken in bright sunlight, it was sharp, had dramatic shadows, and somehow it was just the place and the moment. Everything came together, fell in place. I loved that image. It was just the product of an impulse, seeing, raising the camera, focusing and releasing the shutter, all together in one moment.
Then I deleted the image. Accidentally. I mean, I’m no idiot, but every once in a while I do such outrageously stupid things. I didn’t take any more images and at home I tried to recover the file, but it was too late. I couldn’t find it. It was gone.
Some while later, when I already sat in my living room and tried to use one the files left, I saw this amazing light outside.
My living room looks to the east, and when the sun sets, when its rays come really low, they reflect in the windows of the buildings on the other side of the garden, and this reflected light fills my living room with a sudden flood of warm gold. It doesn’t last very long, only a minute or two, but during that time it is breathtaking.
The Song of the Day is “Goodbye Sunshine” from the 1993 Ceremony album “Hang Out Your Poetry”. Ceremony was a band around Chastity Bono, and they made no more than that single album. What a shame. I absolutely love the album.
I couldn’t find the song on YouTube, and so I took the liberty to upload it. Seems like I didn’t offend the copyright gods this time 
Try that one time: use manual focus for a few days, and preferrably do that with a manual focus lens. I have two of them now, the 50/1.2 and the 24/2.8, and both feel so enormously better when focusing than any modern AF lens, it’s a pleasure to use them. Try using such lenses for a few days, then switch to a decent AF lens and feel the awe 
