Tamron 70-300mm F4.5-6.3 RXD Z-mount Review | More Complete on Nikon?

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Hi, I'm Dustin Abbott, and I'm here today to give you my review of the Nikon Z-Mount version of Tamron 70 to 300-millimeter F4.5 to 6.3 RXD lens
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Now, Tamron actually initially released this lens back in 2020. I reviewed it in the fall of 2020, and I gave
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it a largely positive review because of a good autofocus and optical performance overall and the
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fact that it was very reasonably priced. I did wish for some in lens stabilization and I also missed
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having a lock for the actual zoom to prevent kind of a zoom creeping and there was a few other things
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little critiques along the way. I was interested however in taking a look on z-mount as as
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As Nikon started to open up the Z-mount protocols, this was actually the first of Tamron
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Zoom lenses that they ported over to Nikon Z-mount. And I wanted to see how things held up as far as the optical performance, the autofocus
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performance, and things like that. I've been actually very pleasantly surprised here because while this lens is a little bit more
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expensive on Z-mount, it currently retails for 599 US dollars, whereas it released for
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549 on Sony. However, I think the MSRP on the Nikon version is basically $100 more than what the Sony was
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But in many ways, it feels like you're getting a more complete experience. A tiny bit of that is because of what Tamron has done
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but the big part of it is just the way that Nikon is handling third-party lenses
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now that they've opened up their protocols. So we'll dive into why this is actually a better lens on Nikon today
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So obviously, this is a very useful lens, 70 to 3.3. 300 millimeters has been a mainstay when it comes to a zoom ratio because it's very handy and can be produced in a size that is reasonable to pack along to bring if you need to travel light
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And that's certainly the case here. This is the smallest and lightest lens here in the class
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Now, as noted, it is better on Nikon. Part of that is due to Tamron having added one tweak to the actual lens design and that we now have their weather sealed USB C
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port that will allow for firmware updates and through their lens utility software in theory you can make
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tweaks to the actual performance of the lens now in some cases tamron's newer zoom lenses there's a variety
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of different things that you can customize on lens performance that's not the case here there's no
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custom switches or buttons to interact with and so basically all you can do in the lens utility
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software is update the firmware and to this point you know well more than a year into its existence
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there is no updates to the firmware. And so right now it's not necessarily that useful
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but it will be useful should there ever be changes in the camera protocols
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and there does need to be a firmware update. What it does is allow this lens to be more future-proof
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So I am glad for the inclusion there. It's more improved, however, due to the way that Nikon approaches things
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And so I'm doing this test on a Nikon Z8, a camera that's capable of very high burst rates
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30 frames per second. If I was using this on my Sony Alpha 1, also capable of 30 frames per second
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Sony has artificially limited third-party lenses to 15 frames per second as a maximum cap on the
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burst speed, which means I can get twice as much speed using this on my Z8 as I could on my Alpha 1
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And it's quite refreshing to be able to use these third-party lenses with full capabilities
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rather than always knowing that you're being hamstrung a bit. I also find on a practical level
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that the VR or the in-body image stabilization in the Z8 works much better, particularly with telephoto focal links
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than what I have found on Sony's bodies. Now, when I did the original review
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I was doing it on the A7-R-3 and then also on the Alpha-9
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And so while both those cameras claimed about five to five and a half stops
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not much less than the six stops claimed on the Z8, the truth of the matter is that Sony's in-body image stabilization
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worked well 100 millimeters and under a whole lot less well over 100 millimeters
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And so what I found is that practically I maybe got two stops of assistance in handholding
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when I tested this lens on Sony. Whereas in this case, I was able to easily repeatably handhold one eighth of a second at 300
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millimeters, which is over five stops of assistance in a way that actually I had better
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results with this combination than what I did using my A7R Mark 5
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which is rated at up to eight stops, and Tamron's new 50 to 300 millimeters that also has inland stabilization
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And I was actually able to do better handholding with this combination than I could with that
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And so, again, I found that for both stills and video, I had more stability due to the excellent VR here
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So it really does help to eliminate my critique of a lack of inland stabilization
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I really noticed it on the telephoto end on Sony. I don't notice nearly as much here on Nike
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And so that is certainly an improvement. Now, unfortunately, I complained about not having a Zoom lock on the Sony version
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That's still not there. And there are no switches. There's nothing really here outside of the two rings on the lens
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And in that case, the Zoom ring is really big and large. It works fine
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If you go fast, there feels like a little bit of a pump action. But at the same time, this is a thoroughly weather-sealed lens, as you can see here
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There's a gasket at the lens mouth. There's internal seals. re-coding on the front and over four years of it existing on Sony. I've really not heard any anecdotal
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reports of people having issues with dust. So it feels a little bit bumpy, but it's probably okay
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The manual focus ring I don't love for a couple of reasons. First of all, it is very flush
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And as a result, if you're trying to do it with your thumb, kind of the natural position
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I find that sometimes you're going to put pressure on the actual ring because it's flush
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with the lens barrel next to it, you actually end up putting pressure on the lens barrel, which
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which stops the smoothness of the rotation. And I also find that the damping is not great here
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It's not a great manual focus experience, and certainly on Tamron's newer 50-300 millimeter
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which unfortunately is not available for Z-mount, that it's a much better experience there
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We do have a lens hood that is included. It's a good, robust hood
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and it does help with shading from the sun. Now, the size here is just a little bit larger
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to accommodate the fact that Nikon Z-mount is, considerably wider in diameter than what Sony e is And as a result of that the lens does grow just a little bit Now the overall diameter is still 77 millimeters or three inches
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because what's growing is the diameter of the area near the lens mount
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which is not the widest portion of the lens. So that figure remains the same up front
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We continue to have a 67-millimeter front filter thread that is shared across almost all with just a couple of notable exceptions
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of Tamron's mirrorless lenses. and so that is great to have that ability to share filters across a wide variety of lenses
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The length has grown a little bit, however, just two millimeters, but it's grown to 150 millimeters in length or 5.9 inches
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And that combined with the extra diameter back here makes the lens a little bit heavier
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It is now 580 grams, about plus 35 grams. Again, not a big deal
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Or 20 and a half ounces. So a bit larger and heavier, but still the lightest
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and smallest in the class, so we're not going to dock them too much on that
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There is no tripod collar, but that's typical for 70 to 300mm lenses
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It's also not compatible with teleconverters. Again, that's also standard for this class of lens, so I'm not going to dock it on that
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Now, this is a variable aperture zoom, F4.5 being maximum aperture on the wide end, telephoto end
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maximum aperture is F6.3. This lens will hold F4.5 until 112 millimeters, and then at 113 millimeters, it becomes F5, and that's through 154 millimeters
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At 155 millimeters, maximum aperture is F5.6. It will hold that to 241 millimeters, and then it becomes F6.3 at 242 millimeters through 300 millimeters
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And by the way, this is one area where it actually is better than the new Tamron 50 to 300 millimeter
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in that it remains brighter throughout the zoom range, this lens does compared to the newer lens
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I will note that on Nikon, there's a little bit of a tweak in that. Nikon is a little bit more accurate in measuring effective aperture
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And so you'll actually see, rather than going right to F5, you'll see a switch at some point to F4.8
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And then before going to F5.6, you'll see F5.3. And then you'll also see F6 before you get to F6.3
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and so it's reporting smaller fractions of that, but the basic light gathering that I've just reported is the same
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Now, unfortunately, one area where this lens really kind of lacks compared to the new 50 to 300 millimeter is when it comes to its minimum focus distance
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and maximum magnification. At 70 millimeters, you can focus as closely as 80 centimeters
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but you get a really low 0.11 times, not very useful. On the telephoto end, you can only get as close as a meter
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and a half, 150 centimeters, but the magnification is more useful at 0.20 times. Both of those
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figures are definitely improved on the newer lens, most notably on the wide end. It's on
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300 millimeters, it's still useful, and so I appreciate having it, and you can get some lovely
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shots with backgrounds really blurred out, shooting at 300 millimeters and at that minimum focus
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distance. But again, this is a pretty bare-bone, straightforward lens, but it does have the
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important things like weather ceiling. It handles fine. The build quality is good. Lenses from this
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era have held up really well. I've owned several of them and had no issues with them over the years
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Now on the autofocus side of things is where we start to see some improvement. This is the same
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basic auto focus system. It's an RXD focus motor, which is Tamron's kind of higher-end stepping
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motor. It's not as good as their new VXD, which is a high-thrust linear motor, but it is a very
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good stepping motor. And I found that autofocus works really great here on my Z8. It's, as you can see
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for the actual speed. It's not as instant as VXD, but it is very, very close. It's very fast
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and I found that in the variety of situations that I shot in, autofocus was always fast. Now
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if you're shooting in really dim lighting conditions, note that a slower maximum aperture
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lens like this is not going to be as good as, say, an F2.8 zoom, but, you know, that's par for the course
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In shooting sports, I shot a lot of softball. I'm part of a softball league and I was able to shoot
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off those bursts and I could get good autofocus tracking the action, good focus on the eyes
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good stickiness, good responsiveness there. I also saw very good effective results when shooting
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a variety of wildlife, various birds, turkeys, deer. I found that eye tracking was very good
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For example, this shot of a duck that was down, even though the duck obviously is dark near
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the eye, I found that, you know, due to the nice firmware update on the Z8 body that helps with
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birds, it is able to lock onto that eye and showed really good precision and produced a really
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great-looking end result as well. This shot of Nala, I was shooting through a sliding door
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and even though I was shooting through glass, it locked onto her eye and delivered a great-looking
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end result. And so I really appreciated its work for that. And as you saw in the auto-focus
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test, that it's able to stay lock onto the eye in my test subject and be really really
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sticky as I move it all around. So all of that is very, very good and it's awesome to just be able to
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shoot with that full burst speed and not feel limited. On the video side of things, overall, it's good
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I found that my video focus pulls were quick and confident, though I did see a very quick
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micro pulse a couple of times. I don't love that because it could in theory run a shot if that
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became an issue, but overall, it felt good. It felt confident. In the case of my hand test
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the camera did a great job of staying locked on my face, knowing that my face was there even when I
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blocked it with my hand. I may have to tweak some settings in my Z8 body, which I'm still learning
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right now, to see if I can allow it to be a little bit more distracted by my hand. So you can consider
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this a good news, bad news scenario. Great job of staying locked on what is the important subject there
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But in this case, I was trying to make it shift focus, and it didn't do that
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Out in real world shots, I found that it was relatively well damped and making focus transitions
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They weren't really abrupt feeling. And so a fairly cinematic quality. So overall, pretty good grades here when it comes to the autofocus
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And particularly for stills, it was flawless. I was really, really pleased with it
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Now, on the image quality side of things, I'll give you an overview of the optical performance
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and then if you want the deeper dive into the optics, stay tuned until the end of the video
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But I found that this is the same optical formula, 15 elements and 10 groups
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The same performance is what I saw on Sony with one exception, and that is that there is more vignette on Nikon
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And what I found that often to be the case with the lenses that are first engineered for one lens mount It seems like they do often have more vignette when they pour over to another lens mount and that certainly the case here
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At 70 millimeters, there is no measurable distortion, so nice and clean
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but I needed a plus 74 to correct for the vignette, which is definitely more than what I saw on Sony
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As you start to zoom in, you start to encounter some pincushion distortion near the middle of the range
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It is most exaggerated there. And so at about 150 millimeters, I had to use a minus 8 to correct for the pincushion distortion
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Less vignette, however, only a plus 44 to correct. As I zoomed on in to 300 millimeters, there's less distortion, a minus 6 to correct that, but much more vignette
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A plus 90 to correct for. And so I really noticed a jump in the vignetting at the telephoto end on the Z-mount version
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I continue to find that longitudinal chromatic aberration. that's fringing before and after the plane of focus were very well controlled
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No fringing to mar images, so great on that. I also found that lateral climatic aberrations near the edges of the frame were well controlled as well, so that is great
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Moving on to sharpness and contrast, testing on the 45 megapixels of the Z8
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I found that I saw really excellent center and mid-frame results at 70 millimeters
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but there's a steep drop off to the corners, which is what the MTF charts suggest
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and what I found on Sony. Unfortunately, those corners never really sharpen up at 70 millimeters
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That's an area that's definitely improved on the new 50 to 300 millimeters. It's a little bit softer in the corners at 50 millimeters
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but it sharpens up as you stop the lens down. That doesn't really happen here
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Now, if you will zoom in a little bit, as you get towards 100 millimeters
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the corners are much, much stronger. And so if you're shooting like a landscape image
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and you have the room to zoom in a little bit, you'll get better results if you shoot more at, you know, 85 to 100 millimeters as opposed to all the way back at 70 millimeters
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And the lens is really strong as you stop it down. Now, this is also a variable aperture when it comes to the minimum aperture
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And so at 70 millimeters, minimum aperture is F22 and it will close down to F32 at the telephoto end
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And you're going to want to avoid anything past F11. after F11, diffraction will really start to soften the image
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and that's particularly true on a higher resolution body like the Z8
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At 200 millimeters, the optical performance is still really, really strong. You know, there's basically give and take versus 100 and 135 millimeters
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stronger in some places, a little bit weaker in others, but a really great performance
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At 300 millimeters, the lens is very slightly less sharp than at 200 millimeters
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but still quite consistently good all across the frame, and I had plenty of images shot at 300 millimeters F6.3 that I was really impressed with
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impressed with the sharpness and contrast, but also quite nice bouquet that's achievable there
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In fact, I would say that the bouquet quality for a zoom lens is good in general
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and I found that in many images I was just pleased with the overall rendering and look of this
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I think it's quite a strong budget option when it comes to the overall rendering and optical performance there
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When it comes to flare resistance, it's less of an issue, obviously, with a telephoto lens in general because the bright light is less likely to be in the frame
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But I found that the B-bar coatings from Tamron do a pretty good job, and flare was pretty well controlled in all of the images that I shot
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So in conclusion, this is a lens that I think is a really great value, and I just felt like it's a more complete lens here on Z-mount
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And a lot of that has to do with a good body like the Z-8 and the Nikon's overall approach
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to third-party lenses. And so while it's a little bit more expensive than the Sony version
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it would be my preferred way of owning the lens because I think in particular having that full burst rate
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and then also having the VR work better on the telephoto end
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really makes the lens to feel like it doesn't have holes in it
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in the same way. So I do think that it's worth the price upgrade
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Now, the elephant in the room is the fact that Since I started reviewing this lens
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Sonny, or excuse me, Tameron has released their 50 to 300 millimeter VC lens
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which is a better lens in almost every way, though it's exclusively on Sony eMount at this point
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And so obviously that may create a pause for you, should you wait for the superior 50 to 300 millimeter lens
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And I can't really give you that answer. It seems like at this point, there's quite a lag between releases on Sony
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and how quickly they come to Nikon Z. I don't know what all factors are involved there
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but it seems to be not just a year, but a longer development cycle than that
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That may change, of course, obviously in the future, but I would be surprised if we see the new 50 to 300 in 20204 on ZMount
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And it will be more expensive when it comes. It's about $250 more on Sony
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I would expect at least that disparity in price here on ZMount Nikon as well
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And so it's really up to you whether or not you want to make that plunge
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but I can tell you that this is a really great value lens, and it certainly fills a hole that's not really covered by Nikon first-party lenses
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and definitely nowhere near this price point. So it remains a very strong value
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I'm Dustin Abbott. If you want more information, you can look at the full text review
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that's linked to in the description down below. Also, there is a image gallery link to along with buying links if you'd like to purchase one
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If you want to take a deeper dive into the optical performance with me, Stay tuned. We're going to jump right in
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All right, so we'll start by taking a look at vignette and distortion. You can see that as far as distortion goes, nothing to correct there
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And so I didn't have to correct anything on this side. I did have to correct a fair amount of vignette
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And as noted, it is heavier here on Nikon. I'd use a plus 74 to correct for that
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And if we pop back for a moment and we look at the uncorrected version and we enable the profile
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you can see that I'll toggle on and off. You can see that the edges still look a little bit dim
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And that's because this profile was set up for the Sony version
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And so you can see that we could really scale up the amount of vignette correction that is being used there to get us up to what is necessary here on Nikon
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Now, as you start to zoom in towards the telephoto end of things, you'll start to see this pincushion distortion
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This is the zone where it's about the strongest in the middle of the range here
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So this was a minus 8 to correct. You can see it's nice and linear and correctional problem
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Less vignette, however, and so that does correct a little bit easier
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I was able to use a plus 45 to correct for it. At 300 millimeters there less of the pincushion distortion I used a minus 6 to correct for here Again nice and linear But vignette as you can see is pretty heavy and it penetrates pretty far into the frame
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And I was over 90 plus 90 to eliminate all of the vignette
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On more positive notes, we can see that there are only very minimal amounts
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of fringing before and after the plane of focus. That is well controlled
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And that carries out into real-world shots. We can see here, looking in closely
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there's a little bit of fringing around this, very high contrast blossom here, but it's only basically in that spot. We look over in this
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zone here, and as we go further out of focus, just nothing really to see. So no big deal on that front
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A little bit longer away, I found just a little bit of a haze on this Tom turkey that was in my
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backyard here. We can see, however, looking at the blossoms behind in the tree, no real fringing to see
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there. Likewise, I found lateral chromatic aberrations fairly well controlled. You can see here
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there's no real fringing to see in these transitions from black to white
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So going on to contrast and resolution, this is a 45 megapixel Z8 body, and this is at 200% magnification
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Center of the frame looks fantastic. You can see lots of contrast and detail
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We go towards a midframe. Midframe is very slightly softer, but still looks really, really good
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Nice and strong. However, you can see there's a transition from this end to this end, quite a different
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and the performance, and then as we get towards the corners, the corners, by comparison, are quite soft
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Stopping down to F5.6, you can see doesn't do much to improve those corners. F8, they still don't
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look great. And by F11, a little bit better, but still pretty soft. Now, of course, in real world
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results, I look at 100% rather than 200% magnification, so you can see middle of the frame
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looks fantastic here. But as we pan up towards this corner, you can see that they're
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result is getting considerably softer as we go. You look from here, even towards the top, as we get up
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into this zone, just much, much softer. You're getting less and less detail as you go out towards
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that last 20% of the frame. Now, the minimum aperture relates to the maximum aperture. So on the wide end
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where we start at F4.5, minimum aperture is F22, as we see here on the right. By the telephoto end
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it will close down to F32. You can see that there is quite a big drop off between F11
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and then F-22. And so I recommend using F-11, if possible, as your limit for your minimum aperture
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particularly if you're using a higher-resolution body because diffraction will take a hit to your image quality after that
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Now we can see if we compare 70 millimeters to 100 millimeters that 100-millimeter looks even better in the center of the frame
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better contrast in detail. The mid-frame is noticeably better. If we look down into this zone
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we can see looking from this. corner which looks a little bit sharper but then definitely look sharper down on this
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corner and then even down into the extreme corner we can see that it's better
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it's still not amazing but it is definitely better we look over on this side it is
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improved but not radically improved there's a bit more potential for sharpness
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in the corners however at a hundred millimeters we can see it starting to look better here and then by f8 corners are looking decent if not amazing we can see
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however that if we look just like at the edge performance now, the edges look really, really crisp
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So let's take a look at another real-world shot. Landscape images is at 100 millimeters
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Center of the frame, as we're expecting, looks great. You can see in this case where you're mostly looking at the sharpness in the edge
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that the edge performance looks fine. Now, it would look softer if we could, you know
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have this front corner in here. But frankly, with the telephoto lens
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it's not going to be all that often where the extreme corners are actually a part of your composition
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At 135 millimeters, we can see, again, very good center performance. Excellent mid-frame performance
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Looks very, very strong there. You can see we're now very good down in this point
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And frankly, this is the best I've seen the corners look for wide open all along
24:57
This real world shot of Nala shot in this part of the zoom range looks really good, nice, crisp detail
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You can see just a lot of fine hairs delineated. This is shooting through glass, and it still looks fantastic
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Now we can see at 200 millimeters that the center is just a little less sharp, but still very sharp
25:17
Mid frame continues to look excellent. And we can see that we have a more even performance to where now the corners at 200 millimeters actually look really, really sharp
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And so a much better performance there. Now we can see looking at a comparison of 300 millimeters, that 300 millimeters is good but not as good as it is at 200 millimeters, just a little less detail in contrast
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but what we're going to see is a continuation of this theme of having a very consistent performance
25:44
to where if the peak performance is not quite as high as at 200 millimeters
25:48
it's still very consistent to where even going down into the corners
25:53
we can see that the performance remains very good and very consistent
25:57
And what I found is that even in less than optimal conditions, the good autofocus combined with the good sharpness allowed me to catch good-looking detailed images
26:08
on the fly. Even here where I kind of drag the shutter speed to allow for the bat, you can see
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the focus and the detail on the face is really great, even though we're catching the action
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of the batting. Now, as noted, at minimum focus distance on 70 millimeters, your magnification
26:24
is not very high. It's 0.11 times. Detail looks good, however, nice and crisp, but close. At 300
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millimeters we have a much better magnification level of around 0.20 times we can see that the detail and
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contrast continues to be very nice up close and we have quite a flat plan of focus that allows us to
26:45
get you know quite nice images up close here you know you're not particularly close to the subject at
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1.5 meters but the detail is nice and crisp and we can see 300 millimeters f6.3 that's a really nice
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looking in result and so very useful kind of images you can produce
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This shot here will re-look at this one last time. We can see how that the focus has nailed the eye and the detail is all nice throughout
27:13
the feathers that are there. And then the bouquet quality looks quite nice
27:18
So overall, I would say this is a really strong optical performance for the money
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As always, thanks for sticking around to the end. And I hope that the optical deep dive has helped you to get a better sense of performance
27:30
performance nice and up close. As always, thanks for watching. Have a great day and let the light in

Tamron 70-300mm F4.5-6.3 RXD Z-mount Review | More Complete on Nikon?

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