There's a lot of 'retro' about this Sony lens, from its appearance and finely ridged focus ring to the grumbling autofocus motor.

The autofocus also seems as slow and imprecise as anything from 25 years ago. In our tests, the lens frequently gave up and settled on a focus point way off the mark.

There's no on-barrel switch for manual focus, but at least the AF/MF switch on the Sony Alpha 100's body is near to the lens for convenience. Given the vagaries of the autofocus, the focus limit switch is a welcome addition.

Optically, it performed well throughout the aperture range, providing high levels of detail and contrast. For sharpness, the Sony was no better than the Tamron, despite costing £330 more.