Over the years, many of these companies disappeared, or stopped producing suitable lenses for bird photography. However, one such company that continues to compete in the marketplace has now brought out a well-priced zoom lens that would appear, at first glance, to be a good option for those on a tight budget.

The Tamron 200-500 mm zoom is a small, lightweight, compact lens. It weighs in at a modest 1,226 g and is only 26 cm long without the lens hood attached, so will fit comfortably into a large pocket or small camera bag. It feels sturdily built, has a detachable filter holder on the front element and a rotating tripod collar, has manual and auto focus, stops down to f5 at the 200 mm end and f6.3 at the 500 mm maximum zoom, and focuses down to 2.5 m (8.2 ft). It is supplied with front and rear lens caps, a removable lens hood and a black carrying case with strap.

Using the lens was very easy. A large, smoothly turning zoom ring made changing the focal length simple. When fully extended the lens is 35 cm long, but is still manageable for handheld flight shots.

The auto focus is faster at the lower end of the zoom when the aperture is f5; it does slow down at f6.3 when using the lens at the 500 mm end, but is still very acceptable. I found sharpness to be very good, better than I was expecting in fact, and the photograph of a Common Tern wing-stretching which is shown here is already in my files.

Colour rendition and contrast are both very good, while the tripod collar is a most useful accessory to have on a lens this size, making it easier to attach the whole ensemble to a tripod without putting any strain on the camera body.

My only criticism is of the location of the manual focusing ring, which is situated at the very rear of the lens and which I found quite difficult and fiddly to use in this position. It would have been better placed nearer the middle of the lens, but I imagine that perhaps production costs prevented this, and would have made the lens far more expensive. But as it would appear that 99 per cent of people use auto focus anyway and I’m in a minority, this shouldn’t be a problem for most potential buyers.