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Tamron 100-400mm VC | Autofocus and Tracking Review | 4K
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Jul 25, 2023
Tamron 100-400mm f/4.5-6.3 VC USD | Autofocus Accuracy and Tracking Review | Join photographer Dustin Abbott for a highly detailed breakdown of whether or not the new affordable telephoto lens from Tamron can focus accuracy and quickly enough to keep up with action photography like sports, wildlife, and BIF work. | Visit the Image Gallery: http://bit.ly/100400vcIG | Read the PhotoNews Review: http://bit.ly/100400VCPN | Purchase the Tamron 100-400 VC: B&H Photo: https://bhpho.to/2Ax5Dwc | Amazon: http://amzn.to/2yvvsvW | Purchase the A035TM Tripod Mount: https://bhpho.to/2hqQwAy | Want to support this channel? Use these affiliate links to shop at: B&H Photo: http://bhpho.to/1TA0Xge Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/shop/dustinabbott Ebay: http://bit.ly/DustineBay Make a donation via Paypal: paypal.me/dustinTWI Get a discount off all Skylum Editing Software (Luminar, Aurora HDR, AirMagic) by using code DUSTINHDR at checkout: http://bit.ly/LuminarDLA Become a Patron: https://www.patreon.com/dustinabbott | Check me out on: Personal Website: http://dustinabbott.net/ | Sign up for my Newsletter: http://bit.ly/1RHvUNp | Instagram: http://bit.ly/DLAinsta | Google+: http://bit.ly/24PjMzv | Facebook: http://on.fb.me/1nuUUeH | Twitter: http://bit.ly/1RyYxIH | Flickr: http://bit.ly/1UcnC0B | 500px: http://bit.ly/1Sy2Ngu My filming setup: Sony a7R III: B&H Photo: https://bhpho.to/2D6ibNO or Amazon: http://amzn.to/2CNxOvH | or | Sony a9 @ B&H Photo: https://bhpho.to/2HyWIyt or Amazon: https://amzn.to/2s1vYE0 Tamron 28-75mm F2.8 RXD @B&H Photo: https://bhpho.to/2FA00la or Amazon https://amzn.to/2G2kaEr Lights: Rotolight AEOS @B&H Photo https://bhpho.to/2IK7mqV | Genaray Contender @B&H Photo: https://bhpho.to/33HbGNM | and Aputure AL-MW: https://bhpho.to/2N3MtZV DISCLAIMER: This video and description contains affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links, I’ll receive a small commission. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
View Video Transcript
0:00
Hi, I'm Dustin Abbott, and I'm here today to take a look at the auto-focus performance of the new Tamron 100 to 400 millimeter, and this is an F4.5 to 5.6. It is a VC-USD lens
0:22
Now, earlier this year, when I did a review of the Sigma 100 to 400 contemporary lens, I was very
0:29
really impressed with the actual image quality from a lens that, you know, cost a fraction
0:37
of like the Canon 100 to 400 L Mark 2 lens that I typically use for this kind of work
0:45
And the Canon often cost in excess of $2,000. Sigma came out with this lens at $799
0:51
And after I did my image quality comparison, people were just, well, were blown away as I was
0:59
with the resolution and the image quality from the lens and really, you know, getting ready to sell
1:05
their candy gear. And I said, well, just, just wait. And because I knew having already started to
1:11
shoot the test, that it just wasn't really ready to keep up with the action that a lot of people
1:17
will want to shoot with a focal length like this, everything from some outdoor sporting events
1:23
and maybe being indoor under decent light, but also things like, you know, bird and flight
1:29
or wildlife. And so I just didn't feel like it really had the autofocus speed
1:36
to keep up with a lot of those situations, at least in my test. And so when I did my image quality review here of the Tamron
1:46
which you definitely want to take a look at that if you haven't already, I noticed noted once again that the image quality is exceptional
1:53
And while there is some very minor give and take with the cannon
1:57
and it basically is pretty much as good. The cannon has a little bit better wide open contrast
2:05
and I find it definitely has a little bit more better light transmission
2:09
but at the same time, it's also guilty of some pretty serious focus breathing
2:13
and the Tamron is not. And so, you know, there's kind of strengths on both sides
2:18
But what I really wanted to determine is if the Tamron could do a better job
2:22
in keeping up with action. And so what we're doing today is we're going to take a look at Autofield
2:27
focus in general. One of Tamron's stated priorities is that, you know, now that they have the
2:32
tapping console, and I've been noting in Tamron reviews that it's, the tap on tapping console is
2:38
great, but you have to invest a lot of time to kind of get the best out of lenses. And so in kind
2:44
of private conversations with some Tamron people, one of the things that they've expressed to
2:49
me is, is that Tamron's goal is to give a better autofocus out of the box experience. So I was
2:57
to see if this lens was capable of doing that. And so we're going to take a look at some stills
3:03
focus, even before calibration. And then we'll also take a look at its ability to track and keep up
3:10
with action. Let's jump in. Let's look at some photos. I did something that I don't really recommend
3:15
doing, and I took it and I shot at an event at my children's school without having calibrated it
3:20
at all. But as you can see from a distance of about 35 feet away, this is 400 millimeters, you can see
3:27
that obviously we're shooting at higher ISO here but the focus is pretty much flawless here and even
3:33
despite the high ISO you know wide open it's actually resolving really really well so right out of the
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box this lens focus well also in a crowd here my son this is he's about 45 50 feet away across a
3:48
gym here but you can see that autofocus really just nailed in there you can actually read you know faintly
3:55
ray band there on the side of his glasses So I mean that pretty impressive at that kind of distance Also here another shot All of these are you know phase detect viewfinder
4:07
autofocused here and you can see that at a close to you know medium distance focus is
4:14
just nailed. I mean shallow depth of field here but this is where I wanted to focus on
4:19
and you can see it's both focused and resolved really well. Here you know I wanted to
4:25
shoot kind of a subject that was a little bit more chat. challenging against a very blown out bright sky and this also shows off the low chromatic aberration
4:34
But you can see that it's grabbed focus despite the challenging focus conditions now this particular shot is at very high ISO
4:43
It's 3,200 here and so the light was low and let's see the shutter speed was only one 160th and so you can see that
4:52
You know despite you know the higher look kind of low light condition
4:57
that we have grabbed on auto focus as we should. And I can't remember I was probably shooting for an eye
5:03
but it may have been big enough that it caught the nose there instead
5:09
But obviously it's done a good job. Now, I shared this one for the reason that, you know, number one
5:16
it is accurately autofocused. But this is the one occasion where I remember getting a little bit of pulsing in the field
5:23
This was a backlit subject. The sun was shining through more. brightly than what you can tell here and obviously it's quite slender blades here to latch
5:33
onto so I did get a quick bit of pulsing back and forth however it did lock
5:39
focus accurately and that really was about the only situation I saw that now this
5:45
was switching to a Canon 80d previously we've been looking at a Canon 5d mark 4 and so I
5:52
wanted to see if it would focus you know accurately out of the box on more than one
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body and so here we can see that this quick shot you know shot through branches my wife couldn't even
6:04
see what i was shooting at at first we were out on a walk but you can see how that it's avoided the distractions
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it is focused in nicely and um you know i if it's not perfectly pin sharp i don't see that it's
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either focused uh front or back and so i think it's focused accurately there and so that was great
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this I just wanted to show kind of a comparison to where I shot this this is again Canon 80D
6:32
just these fungi growing on the side of a trunk of a tree here and so I shot it
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phase detect and then I switched to live view and a shot again and frankly you know you can
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tell looking at it that the focus on one is really no better than the other and so it's
6:55
focused accurately for me with the phase detect, again, on two different camera bodies. So that's
7:01
positive. Switching back for one other shot here to 5D Mark 4, this is pretty near minimum focus
7:08
distance, and so I just wanted to show you that it's focused accurately here. Obviously, depth of
7:14
field is really shallow here, but even at a minimum focus distance, it has focused well. Now, before we
7:21
transition into a tracking series just to show shooting some action here and you can see that
7:28
you know it's it's it's locked focus quickly here my shutter speed probably could have been a hair
7:35
higher to freeze the action just a bit more but you can see that the actual auto focus here is
7:42
just nailed down and so has done a great job okay in this test we're going to look at a series of
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images that show how the new Tamron 100 to 400 VC does and tracking. Now this is a bit of a torture
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test It a small dog moving towards the camera and you know moving very very fast chasing a ball And so my experience in doing this kind of test for years now with a variety of lens says that this you know pretty much puts the lens to the test
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And so as we can see here, you know, in this particular sequence
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the lens is doing a good job of keeping up with the action. Obviously, the dog's moving very fast here
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But we can see that, you know, there we have a... We have a bit of a missed focus, but we also see that the dog is shifting direction
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and it looks to me like maybe the ball is the point of focus there as the action shifts
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and then as the dog turns and cuts chasing the ball, that the focus has picked back up once again
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Now, this particular series, this is one of the early ones that I shot at first
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I thought, oh, this is a throwaway first few images, because the dog, who is what I was expecting to be in focus
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was obviously not out of focus. But then I noticed that the plane of focus
9:03
kept moving forward. And I clued into the fact that actually it's the ball that was being tracked
9:09
by the autofocus here. And that actually was even more impressive to me
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that such a small object and it's not to say that each one of these
9:19
are perfectly focused. Don't get me wrong here. But we can see that the plane of focus
9:24
is moving very rapidly ahead chasing after the ball and in fact, you know, here once again, let's just give that a second for textures to load
9:36
You know, again, it's not perfectly focused, but at the same time, the tracking is moving forward at the
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appropriate speed. And so it's not until the dog actually catches up to the ball that, you know
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that actually begins to come and focus. So, you know, that was encouraging to, that at least the
9:58
auto focus wasn't getting left behind. I would be more concerned if the autofocus was really lagging
10:03
backaways and not able to keep up. So we'll look at another series here and so here obviously the dog
10:10
is very nicely in focus and has caught up to the ball and kind of lost it, but we can see that in that
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sequence the tracking is held up nicely there. Now just to give you an idea of how the Canon 100 to 400 L
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Mark 2 does in a similar situation here we'll see that it does you know quite an excellent job in this
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kind of application of tracking and it's you know I think it's one of Canon's best in terms of the
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autofocus you know not to say that it's perfect you know as you can see this the action moved a little
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bit ahead of the dog and in this case you know focus wasn't perfect although you can see that
10:53
even after it lost, it picked back up again, which is always impressive to me. And also impressive
11:00
is that it's, you know, it's locking on even when you're getting quite close. And at 400
11:05
millimeters, that's a challenge. I mean, obviously. But, you know, we can see here, you know, just
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another series here, you know, it probably switched over to the ball. And so as a result, the dog is
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out of focus. Ball has moved out of frame. And so it's shifting over to the dog. But, you
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know, again, it's not perfect. And here we can see focus is actually behind. What's in focus is the
11:29
spray behind the dog. And here, obviously, it hasn't caught up. And so while I felt, and this is
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just a few of the many such series that I shot, and so what I found is that both the Canon and the
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Tamron can be guilty of, you know, losing focus sometimes, but they actually both track remarkably
11:48
well. I do think that the Canon still has a bit of an edge in terms of keepers. But my
11:53
biggest takeaway is that the tamron was keeping up with this kind of action which is a far cry from what I saw when I did a similar type test with the Sigma 100 to 400 contemporary lens So I encouraged by that Now if you move to a different kind of venue here what I done here is I shot a number of series of my son
12:14
who is running competitively right now, of him running towards the camera
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So obviously, occupying a bigger target, you know, higher contrast, easier to keep up with
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However, I purposely shot on a road where there's a lot of stuff going on
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So we're going to see as we move through this series, I had him running, just sprinting towards me
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And what I found is that despite the fact that there is a lot of stuff going on here
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and I was just bursting as quickly as what the Canon 5D Mark 4 could do
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we could see that despite some movement in the frame, other things that could grab attention
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we can see that it has actually done a remarkably good job of a truble
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tracking focus accurately throughout this. And so if you're dealing with a little less challenging object
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and maybe just slightly less speed than the small dog moving at speed
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it's actually done a really remarkable job. And this was true of all the series that I shot
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and I won't bore you with all of those here, but I thought I'd take you all the way through one
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And there's just one shot here that I remember towards the end
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where autofocus wasn't right. and out of that though like 40 something different frames auto focus was keeping right up there it is right there for whatever reason
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auto focus seems to move too far ahead but next frame it's right back on there and so we can see you know maybe starting to lose it here
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it's perfect starting to lose it here focus goes out here but even though he's starting to get close to the camera
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it picked it right back up and so that was great to see there. And so, you know, all in all, a pretty strong performance in terms of the focus
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speed, and accuracy with the lens. So as you can see, the report here is a lot more positive
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at least with this copy that I've reviewed. And so I've now shot it on both full frame and APSC bodies
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And, you know, afterward, I did do a very, very minor calibration on the wide end. But, you know
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bottom line is the 400 millimeter telephoto end was pretty much bang on out of the box and I needed like a
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plus one or two on the wide end to have that nailed down as well. So a really positive
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auto focus accuracy report. But beyond that, as you could see, a surprisingly strong performance when
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it came to the tracking. And while I still think that the cannon is the best of the bunch
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you know, it helps having that little extra bit of light transmission and, of course, the, you know
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the first party autofocus system, and it has one of Canon's best. But frankly, the Tamron
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seemed to be every bit as fast in my just kind of focused test, and it was able to keep up with
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action nearly as good. And depending on what kind of action you're doing, it can nail it pretty
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much perfectly as we saw. And so a lot of encouraging things there. And so while I'll come back to
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with my final verdict. Now I'll have a kind of a shorter segment that just kind of gives you an
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overview of all of these things. Also, a look at the VC performance. But, you know, I'm feeling
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pretty positive about this lens, that it's a lot of bang for the buck. And so stay tuned for my
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final verdict coming in a few days along with my written review. I'm Dustin Abbott. Take a look in the
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image gallery below, or excuse me, in the description down below, and you can find a link to the
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image gallery, some pre-order links there, all of those things. And of course
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stay tuned for my final verdict. You haven't already, please click that subscribe button
15:57
Thanks for watching. Have a great day
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