Tamron has proven to be one of the most successful designers of zoom lenses in the modern era. They are the largest third party lensmaker in the world (in 2025), and part of that is because there are actually a number of lenses sold by first party brands (Nikon in particular) that are actually Tamron lenses. Tamron’s first generation of Sony E-mount zooms included the trinity of the 17-28mm F2.8, 28-75mm F2.8, and 70-180mm F2.8 lenses, all of which were great successes. Tamron has been released G2 (second generation) replacements over the past few years, and while previous G2 lenses have had the same focal range/aperture combinations as the first generation lens, Tamron has decided to expand the zoom range of their newest G2 zoom on both ends. Rather than a 17-28mm lens (which I reviewed here), we now have a 16-30mm lens, which dramatically expands the usefulness of this zoom range. What’s more, we’ve got an improved build, faster autofocus, more features, and a price tag that has only increased by $30 to $929 USD. Does that make the 16-30 G2 a winner? Find my full thoughts in my video review shared below or by reading on in the text review.

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Thanks to Tamron USA for sending me a review loaner of this lens. As always, this is a completely independent review. *The tests and most of the photos that I share as a part of my review cycle have been done with the Sony a7RV along with the Sony Alpha 1 that serve as my benchmark cameras for Sony lenses. You can visit the product page for the 16-30mm F2.8 here.

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Sony E-mount wide angle zoom competitors

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AI Summary:
Tamron’s 16-30mm G2 lens represents a significant upgrade over its predecessor, offering an expanded zoom range, improved build quality, and faster autofocus, all at a competitive price point. The lens features excellent weather sealing, customizable controls, and impressive optical performance, especially in controlling distortion and chromatic aberrations. While it lacks built-in stabilization and has some distortion complexity, it maintains sharpness across the frame and is highly suitable for professional wide-angle photography. Overall, the lens offers strong value, delivering high-quality images in a compact, lightweight package, making it a compelling alternative to more expensive options like the Sony GM series.

Strengths:

• Slightly smaller and lighter than competitors
• Robust build quality with weather sealing
• Fast, accurate autofocus with excellent video performance
• Lower distortion and well-controlled chromatic aberrations
• Good sharpness across the frame when stopped down
• Customizable controls via Tamron Lens Utility

Weaknesses:

• No AF/MF switch on the lens
• Slightly complex distortion profile
• Corners at 30mm don’t reach peak sharpness
• Limited stabilization options (no VC)

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I’m doing this review on Sony E-mount, as mentioned, but Tamron is also releasing the 16-30 G2 simultaneously on Nikon Z-mount, where it will also be extremely welcome.

Tamron’s initial 17-28mm F2.8 was a prized lens because it was competent, compact, and reasonably priced. But a lot has changed since 2019, and in the ensuing 6 years the market has become much, much more competitive. The top competitor that emerged was Sigma’s 16-28mm F2.8, which I reviewed here. The biggest advantage for the Sigma was that it went wider than the original Tamron, though Tamron has solved that problem by going as wide as the Sigma while also having a bit more telephoto reach.

Here’s a look at my shoes from 16mm:

…and here’s the same view at 30mm:

That’s a 107° 2′ to 71° 35′ angle of view. If you want a more extreme angle of view, I definitely recommend that you check out my review of the LK Samyang 14-24mm F2.8, another zoom I really liked.

The top lens in this class is the Sony 16-35mm F2.8 GM II, which I reviewed here. That lens is amazing, but it is also a whopping $2300 USD. There’s a lot of ways you could spend that additional $1360! And, at the end of the day, the Tamron 16-30 G2 is very capable of taking beautiful images.

We will see if Tamron can recreate their success with the 17-28mm with this new offering.

Tamron 16-30 G2 Build and Handling

Let’s parse out the “Tamron speak” in the 90mm F2.8 Di III Macro VXD lens.

• Di III = Designed for Mirrorless
• VXD = Voice-coil eXtreme-torque Drive (the Linear autofocus motor)
• G2 = second generation design

I think the Di-III designation is becoming increasingly meaningless for the simple reason that essentially all current lens design is on mirrorless, with DSLRs seeming to be done at this point.

New design efficiencies have allowed Tamron to increase the build quality, features, and zoom range of the new 16-30 G2 while largely preserving the dimensions of the former lens. The 17-28mm was 73mm in diameter and 99mm in length and weighed 420g. The new 16-30 G2 is 74.8 x 101.8mm (2.9 x 4″) and weighs 440g (15.5oz). That’s less than 2mm greater in diameter and length, and just 20g more. Tamron is managing to undercut the Sigma’s 450g weight even though the Tamron has a bigger zoom range, more features, and more thorough weather sealing. Not bad!

The Tamron employs a 67mm front filter thread that is a match for the vast majority of its lenses over the past five years. They have very intentionally tried to standardize filter size where at all possible to allow filters to be shared across their lenses.

The design language is similar to a number of recent Tamron lenses, which is clean and modern but not necessarily a standout in any way. The lens shell is primarily engineered plastics with a rubberized focus ring. The lens has a satin finish with some sculpting here and there to give it more shape than the previous lens.

The 16-30mm is a nice aesthetic match for the trio of G2 zooms.

You can also see that it remains easily the most compact of this trio, all of which are amongst the smallest and lightest lenses in their class.

This is a typical modern Tamron lens, which means a global product. It has various badging proclaiming that it is “Designed in Japan”, but a closer look reveals that the lens itself is manufactured in Vietnam and the hood is manufactured in the Philippines.

There isn’t much here in terms of features, though we do have a Fn (custom) button on the side whose value can be assigned through the camera body.

There’s also a weather sealed USB-C port to allow you to connect the lens and run firmware updates or customize the behavior.

Tamron’s Lens Utility software is available from the Android app store or you can visit this page to download the software and/or get more information:

There are a variety of functions that can be set in the software itself, everything from a preset focus position to switching between AF/MF to even establishing a proper Astro/infinity focus point. The nice thing about being able to use the Lens Utility function to assign this value is that you can program a function specific to this particular lens rather than using the default value from the camera. This lens has no AF/MF switch, for example, and that happens to be one of the choices that I could set the button to accomplish.

You also have a lot of specific control over how the manual focus ring functions. You can choose which direction it moves, whether it is linear or non-linear, how long you want the focus throw/rotation to be, etc…

You can also do direct firmware updates through the software, ensuring that your lens stays future proof. I’m not sure that anyone is quite matching the degree of customization available from Tamron at this point. You really can optimize the lens’ behavior to your preference.

The first ring you encounter is the zoom ring, which has a raised, rubberized texture to it. This is an internally zooming lens, so the zoom action is very smooth and definite. There’s about 75° of rotation between 16 and 30mm, and the overall length of the lens stays constant. This is a definite positive for gimbal use as the balance point stays constant.

The focus ring is located near the front of the lens and occupies a section of the lens barrel where it flares out. Manual focus emulation is quite good, and the damping, though a bit light, gives the impression of being a real manual focus experience. 

Tamron has included a fairly shallow, petal shaped hood with the 16-30mm. It reverses easily for storage, and doesn’t seem to be as complicated to reverse as some of the earlier hood designs.

Tamron has really been nailing weather sealing, and that’s definitely the case here.  There’s a rubber gasket at the lens mount that suggests at the weather sealing inside, and Tamron also shows a total of 7 other internal seal points along with a fluorine coating on the front element to give further protection.  A fluorine coating not only helps protect the front element from scratches but also makes it water and fingerprint resistant and thus easier to clean.  This is a professional grade lens ready for professional use.

Tamron has elected to not include their VC (Vibration Compensation) in the 16-30 G2. That’s very standard for this class, as none of the competing lenses have any kind of lens based stabilization either.

The aperture iris has 9 rounded blades. I actually like a lower blade count with straight blades on wide angle lenses, as you have a better chance of producing sunstars than round specular highlights. The 18 bladed sunstar from the Tamron is okay but not exceptional.

As is frequently the case with Tamron zooms, the minimum focus distance varies according the focal length. You can focus as closely as 19cm (7.5″) on the 16mm end or 30cm (11.8″) on the 30mm end, with the higher magnification level coming on the wide end. You can get up to 0.19x on the wide end but just 0.14x on the telephoto end. That’s a little better than the Sigma 16-28mm but considerably worse than the Sony 16-35 GM II. Here’s what the highest level of magnification looks like:

I don’t love when the highest magnification is on the wide end, as that means you have to get very close to your subject to get the magnification.

All in all, this is a very nice package. Tamron’s G2 lenses aren’t quite at the level of Sigma’s ART series lenses in terms of features or build, but the competing lenses from Sigma is actually part of their Contemporary series, and it actually has lower build quality, less features, and less thorough weather sealing. And, at $929 USD, the Tamron is still the value option in the class.

Autofocus for Stills

Tamron has utilized their premium focus system here, which they call the Voice-coil eXtreme-torque Drive (VXD). This is a quiet focus motor with a lot of thrust.

Autofocus speed is near instant, able to snap from one subject to another without sound, hesitation, or drama. I was able to snap this photo in extremely low light conditions and got perfectly focused results.

Wide angle lenses put less stress on focus systems because the depth of field is much deeper than longer focal lengths, but that doesn’t change the fact that it was easy to grab fast moving subjects with a quick snap up of the camera.

Taking “people pictures” was effortless, too, with effective eye tracking and accurate focus.

There is nothing to complain about for stills, as focus is fast, quiet, and accurate.

Video AF

Video AF is likewise excellent. When I tested focus pulls, they were snappy and confident. No settling or pulsing. Focus breathing exists but not strongly.

My “hand test” where I alternately block the camera’s view with my hand and then remove the obstruction of my hand also went well. The camera moved easily from my face to my hand and vice versa.

The bottom line is that AF was pretty effortless. Tamron’s VXD is a very good focus motor, and this is one of the best focusing macro lenses that I’ve used.

Image Quality Breakdown

This is a new optical design, with 16 elements in 12 groups compared to the simpler 13 elements in 11 groups for the 17-28mm. This includes three molded glass aspherical elements, one XLD (eXtra Low Dispersion element), and 2 LD (Low Dispersion) elements. The MTF Chart reveals a good center and mid-frame performance at 16mm but with a sharp drop in the corners, while the 30mm end shows slightly less sharpness generally but with a more linear fade towards the corners.

I was curious to see how this compared to the older 17-28mm lens, as part of what enabled Tamron’s optical success with that lens was working with a more constrained zoom range. I’ve put both MTF charts on a single page and put a line through the 80% threshold, as I find everything above that generally looks excellent even on a high resolution camera like the 61MP Sony a7RV I’m using for testing here.

I wasn’t overly surprised to find that the 17-28mm is very slightly the better lens optically. It’s within a few percentage points, but while both lenses have a similar optical profile, the older lens has a bit more of its performance in the excellent range.

We’ll dive into the technical side of things first with a look at vignette and distortion on the wide end.

Tamron was able to have less distortion than competing lenses by only going to 17mm previously, but they’ve gone further here and it does come at the cost of more barrel distortion. The amount of distortion isn’t significant (+7 to correct), but the pattern is a little complex with some obvious mustache pattern left after correction. Still, this pales in comparison to the Sigma 16-28mm, which required a whopping +21 to correct the barrel distortion and similarly left a mustache pattern behind. Even more surprising is the Sony 16-35mm F2.8 GM II, which required a +24 to correct the distortion and also had some mustache style distortion Vignette isn’t bad at 16mm, requiring a +55 to correct. The Sigma essentially required maxing out the slider (+100) to correct it. The GM lens had a bit less vignette. Clearly these compact 16-XX zooms suffer from barrel distortion, but the Tamron is better than the competition.

Moving on to 30mm we find that the distortion pattern has flipped to a pincushion style distortion.

This distortion is more linear and corrects better (though not perfectly), requiring a -10 to correct for the distortion. Vignette was negligible, requiring just a +32 to correct. This is similar to the distortion on the Sigma, though that lens has a bit more vignette (+50 to correct). The GM lens shows both less distortion (-4) and vignette (+23). The bottom line is that the Tamron is very competitive when it comes to distortion and vignette with competing lenses.

The distortion will be similar on Nikon Z, though my experience suggests that you will see at least a stop of additional vignette on the Nikon Z mount version. This is probably due to the larger diameter of the Z-mount.

Tamron also receives good profile support in either Sony or Nikon bodies, and that does a more effective job of correcting the distortion pattern than what I have manually shown. Here’s an example at 16mm:

LoCA (Longitudinal Chromatic Aberrations) present as a color fringing before and after the plane of focus.

There is a minor amount of fringing after the plane of focus, but we can also see that there is some spherical aberrations that are reducing contrast a bit.

More important for wide angle lenses is how well they handle lateral chromatic aberrations (LaCA) near the edges of the frame. LaCA exhibits as fringing on either side of dark lines, but you can see from the image below that there isn’t much to be found. There is the faintest hint of fringing at the nearly 200% magnification shown here, but nothing that could be seen in real world shots.

The bottom line is that the area of weakness here (distortion) could actually be considered a strength relative to the competition.

Here’s my test chart that the crops will be taken from. Tests are done on a 61MP Sony a7RV and crops and comparisons are shown at 200% magnification.

Here’s a look at F2.8 crops from the center, mid-frame, and bottom right corner:

That’s a very strong performance across the frame, and the corners look a bit better than I expected. That’s great detail in the corners for being examined at 200% on a 61MP camera. It’s definitely sharp enough across the frame to get perfectly credible images even at F2.8:

One thing important to understand about macro lenses is that physics dictate that the effective aperture will be smaller at macro distances, so even if you’ve got the aperture opened to F2.8, it will be behave more like F5.6 at very close focus distances, which is why you need a good amount of light for macro work.

I noted that centering was very good in the copy of the lens I tested, with consistent performance in all four corners.

By F4 the corners are already impressively sharp for a 61MP camera at 200%. No problems there!

F5.6 and F8 (typical landscape apertures) look fantastic, though I would say that F5.6 is slightly better than F8. You can see from the crops of this real world F5.6 image (at 16mm) that detail is good right off the edge of the frame, with just a bit of a drop in contrast there.

As per usual you can expect a significant dropoff in sharpness after F11 due to diffraction. Minimum aperture is F16 here, and it is considerably softer than larger apertures.

Moving to the middle of the zoom range (21mm), I found that the sharpness and contrast pattern were roughly the same. As before, contrast takes a nice step forward even with a mild stop down to F4:

Performance is close to the 16mm result, though I would say that 16mm is probably 1-2% sharper (not enough to appreciate at any magnification but 200% or greater). Real world images in this range look nice and crisp.

Moving on to 30mm, we find a familiar pattern. Wide open contrast is a little softer at 30mm, but, as before, it quickly improves when stopped down.

Bokeh at slightly further distances was also nice. This difference is really obvious if you look at the midframe. There’s a very obvious uptick in contrast if you stop down to F4.

The corners never quite get to the sharpness level that we’ve seen at other focal lengths. Contrast improves when stopped down, but the detail level doesn’t really come up to great levels.

I noticed a big difference between F2.8 and F5.6 in real world shooting. This 100% is near the edge of the frame, and you can see a vast difference in contrast and detail at F5.6:

The good news is that at F5.6 images looked nice and crisp across the frame even with the very high resolution body. Expect results to look even comparatively sharper on the lower resolution Nikon 45MP sensors.

You don’t buy lenses like this for the bokeh, but the bokeh is decent for this type of lens. The nature of the wider focal lengths and only somewhat large aperture means that backgrounds are often in that “in between” stage where they aren’t strongly blurred but aren’t really in focus either.

This image is pretty good because the ratio of the distance to the subject and then subject to the background is favorable.

But in a more difficult environment, like this, the results are still quite good.

The quality of the bokeh isn’t much behind the GM lens, but I did find the GM lens to be much sharper at close focus distances.

Tamron’s BBAR 2 coatings are doing a nice job here, and I found flare resistance to be really solid.

My review period did not come with any favorable “shoot the stars” conditions. I did shoot a fireworks display and didn’t see any strong coma issues. There was some stretching towards the edges of the frame, but part of that comes down to the acceleration of particles out of the frame with fireworks. No wings or other odd shapes, however.

I got good (not exceptional) results with the 17-28mm (which I owned for several years), and I see no reason why this lens would deliver much different results.

My expectations for wide angle zooms has increased since the release of the 17-28mm as this is an area where many mirrorless zooms are much, much better than the options available for DSLRs (which was still largely the standard in 2018/2019), but I would say that the Tamron holds up very nicely to 2025 scrutiny. It doesn’t blow my mind in any one area, but the sum total is an extremely competent performance for such a compact zoom.

I can safely say that I would choose this lens over the Sigma 16-28mm, which is its most logical competition. It will also be very welcome on Nikon Z mount as it is a clear upgrade over the Nikkor Z 17-28mm F2.8, which is, as you might have guessed, a rebranded Gen 1 Tamron 17-28mm with a few cosmetic and functional tweaks. The fact that you can get the Tamron 16-30mm for about $300 less is a bonus. Check out the image gallery link here for more photos.

Conclusion

The Tamron 16-30mm F2.8 Di III VXD G2 is both an expected and unexpected lens. I certainly expected a G2 version of the 17-28mm that would look and handle much like this lens, but I didn’t expect the expanded zoom range. That’s a welcome surprise, as this becomes a bit more of a compelling alternative to the Sony 16-35mm F2.8 GM II, which is a more expensive lens than what many can afford.

The Tamron 16-30 G2 has a nice compact build and remains the lightest lens in the class. It has great autofocus, good weather sealing, and delivers very competent image quality. It is easily filtered due to the very common 67mm filter threads shared across not only a few dozen Tamron lenses but many other lenses as well.

The price tag of $929 USD is probably only higher than the $899 USD launch price of the 17-28mm due to tariffs (a theme in 2025 as the US President attempts to balance trade relations), but it still manages to undercut the competitors by either large or small amounts. It’s probably enough lens for most potential GM customers, though the GM remains the best in class for those with deeper pockets. I see no reason why Tamron shouldn’t have good sales success with this lens, particularly on Nikon where there are fewer alternatives.

Pros:

• Slightly smaller and lighter than competing lenses
• Nicely built
• Useful features
• Thorough weather sealing
• Ability to customize controls
• Extremely fast autofocus
• Good focus accuracy
• Video AF works well
• Lower distortion than competitors
• Chromatic aberrations nearly perfectly controlled
• Good center and midframe sharpness
• Corners sharp when stopped down
• Low coma
• Good flare resistance

Cons:

• No AF | MF switch
• Distortion a little complicated
• Corners at 30mm don’t get super sharp

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