Tamron 15-30mm F2.8 G2 (A041): IQ Breakdown | 4K

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Hi, I'm Dustin Abbott, and I'm here today to give you an image quality breakdown of the new Tamron 15 to 30 millimeter F2.2. G2 lens
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I'm also going to give you a comparison with the original 15 to 30 G1, if you want to call it that, VC lens
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The A012 was the original model number. The new one is the A041
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So we're going to break down and see how these two compare out and then of course look at the actual attributes of this new lens
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Now, I'm not going to linger here in my intro because we've got a lot of ground to cover
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I recognize that not all of you may be interested in going through all the nitty gritty of what I'm going to cover
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because this is a somewhat nuanced topic that's going to take me a little time to work through to demonstrate everything to you
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And so if you want to check in at the towards the latter part of the actual video and I'll throw a link in
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into the description down below to where you can see where that comes
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You can just check back in for my actual summation at the end of the image quality
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and instead of looking at all the details along the way. And so without further ado, let's jump in
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Let's see how these two lenses compare. So first let's take a look at how it looks 15 millimeters
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uncorrected versus corrected. Now, I'm borrowing the profile from the 15 to 13 millimeter
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first generation, that's AO13. However, I think that as we can see here, it's there's enough similarity between the two lenses optically that it works fairly well
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So you can see that there certainly is both then yet and some barrel distortion inherent in the AO41 or G2 lens
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At the same time, it is a fairly even pattern as you can see, not a mustache kind of up and down
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So the byproduct is that it really corrects fairly well here. without a whole lot of issue. So we'll see how that vignette clears up of its own accord. And so here at f2.8
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Moving on to f4, you can see a pretty general lift and then at f5.6 only the most minor lift in the corners
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So what happens when we compare the G2 lens on the right with the first generation lens on the left
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So looking at the center of the frame, what we see is a fairly similar performance
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There may be a slight bit, I would say there's a little bit of difference in exposure value in the center of the frame and
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We can kind of verify that here by looking at the histogram and so in this case if we look at the one for the G2 lens
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You see how it moves a little bit towards the right if I hit the one on the left which is the generation one you can see the histogram shift towards the left which means that's moving towards darker
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this is moving towards lighter. And so what that tells you is that the exposure value
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just a tiny bit, does favor the G2 lens, which I'm going to swap these back again
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What you can see is giving a little bit brighter a performance. Now, center of the frame, as we could see, looks pretty similar
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I wouldn't call any kind of advantage for the new lens there
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and this was always a strength for the original lens, really, really punchy in the center of the frame
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but, you know, with that fading a little bit towards the edge. So we'll take a look here at the edge performance
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And here is where I think we see a more even performance across the frame
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And so in some ways, Teramon is focused on, you know, even taking a little from the center
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although that's basically impossible to see and evening out the optical performance across the frame
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You can see looking at this that it's the same optical formula, same basic behavior
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but we just have a little bit better performance out at the very edge of the frame
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and a little bit further into the corners themselves. And so you can see that there's a loss of texture there that the G2 has
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Looking at the other side of the frame, we see something similar
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and both of these copies seem to be fairly well centered. and so just a little bit of performance or get better performance for the G2 out at the edge of the frame
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Now stop down to F4. In some ways, the advantage for the G2 lens as far as the light transmission is lost here at this point
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and they're fairly equal. And basically what Tamron has done, and I've seen this looking over a lot of images and comparing
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is that they have optimized for where light exposure or light transmission is needed the most
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which is at F2.8 and improve that somewhat. But in the rest of the aperture range
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where you don't need it the same way, you see that the advantage is no longer there
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So center of the frame here, both images look very, very sharp
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and it's impossible really to tell a difference. I can't call an advantage for one or the other
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On the edge of the frame, however, it's pretty easy to see that the G2
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is a little bit better here at the edge of the frame You look at this brick here, and you can definitely see more texture rendered on it
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Now, if you look closely at this line right here, what you're going to see is a little bit of purple fringing there and a little bit of green fringing
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This is what's called lateral chromatic aberration, and it's there basically regardless of aperture
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It only happens at the edge of the frame. You can see a little bit of it here. And Tamron says that they have improved this, and I'm not saying that they haven't in some kind of
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of measurable sense maybe in the lab. For real world purposes, I find that they perform
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pretty much the same. But once again, we do see a little bit of an improvement
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in edge performance here at F4 moving into the corners. At a 5.6, they look basically the same
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in the center of the frame. At the edge of the frame, there is still an advantage
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for the G2 lens. And so for shooting landscapes wide open, the G2 is going to give you just a little bit stronger
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performance in the edges and you know it was already a good lens
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Now it is really competitive with some of the very best lenses along the edge of the frame So moving to 18 millimeters we can see that at 18 millimeters distortion has you know calmed down a fair bit here
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And so now your lines, even without correction, are fairly reasonable and fairly straight here
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Looking at the image as a whole once again, we see a similar truth that the light transmission is just a little bit better
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wide open at F2.8 for the G2 version as compared to the A.O.12 or the first-generation lens
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Now, looking at our sharpness performance, in the center of the frame, once again, they look
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very, very similar, more similar than different, and I wouldn't call an advantage necessarily
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for either one, but certainly not an advantage for the G2 lens over the first generation lens
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But once again, if we look out towards the edge of the frame, what we're seeing is
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a more even performance with that sharpness really being quite strong right off to the edges of the
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frame on the G2 version where they are not on the G1. Now and if we look up into the extreme corner
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here we see a similar truth in that really right out to the very edge of the frame we have got
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the G2 holding on to resolution in a stronger sense than what the G1 did. For the sake of time
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I'm going to jump right to the F5.6 image. So looking at
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at these, what you can see is what I mentioned previously, that the light transmission favors the G2
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lens wide open, but as we can see with exact same settings stop down, that's no longer the case
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And if anything, I would say that the G1 delivers a slightly brighter image. And so once again
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Tamron has wisely focused on improving light transmission where you really, really want it
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If you're shooting at F2.8, it's because you want more light. At F5.6, that's no long
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really the case. Now stop down resolution looks basically identical in the center of the frame between the two
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lenses. Moving off to the side of the frame, even stop down, we can easily see an advantage for the G2
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lens, which just delivers a stronger performance here at the edge of the frame. So once again
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at 20 millimeters, a same pattern regarding light transmission. You can tell that we've got a brighter
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image on the G2 than we do on the G1 lens and that is confirmed when we look at the
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histogram. Now in this case I would say that the center of the frame performance
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actually favors the G1 here at 20 millimeters at least in this particular test but
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the edge performance once again definitely favors the G2 and so here at
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wide open we've got a you know a pretty nice performance across the frame from the
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G2 with stronger edge performance, but we have got a stronger center performance
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You know, not by a large margin, but I would say it is there on the original G1 lens. So here
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stop down to F5.6. We see kind of a similar pattern to what we've seen so far, and that is
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that there's a little bit better center punch from the G1 lens, but there's definitely a
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more even consistent performance right out to the edge from the G2
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version. By the way, that's a pattern that I have seen with basically all of these G2 lenses
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Tamron's engineers have optimized for a consistent performance across the frame, and so less about
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wide open punch in the center of the frame. And so it's, it just gives you a more consistent
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more even performance. Now at 24 millimeters, which by the way has always been one of the strongest
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points in the focal range of this lens, same pattern here, a little bit brighter image
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Better light transmission wide open for the G2 version. Center of the frame, once again, image quality looks more similar than different
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You can see that the new coatings in the G2 version gives you just a slightly, it's very, very slight
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but just a slightly cooler image than what the G1 is here
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And so looking here, we can see, I mean, just great resolution center of the frame
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I mean, that's fantastic. Moving off at the edge of the frame, there is
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still a bit of an advantage for the G2 but it is it's smaller than what we've seen
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before and that is in part because the G1 was particularly strong on the edges
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at 24 millimeters in my test in the past and so we can see that here it is the
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advantage is not as significant it's mildly there for the G2 but it is mild so
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stopping down to F5.6 looking at the center of the frame I mean both of them
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look fantastically sharp I can't say that one looks better than the other off at the edge of the frame
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Again, they both look really, really sharp. You know, a mild contrast advantage, I would say, for the G2 out at the edge of the frame
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We'll look down into the extreme corner. And I think it's the same truth
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I mean, they're more similar than different there. Other side of the frame is about the same when it comes to that
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So at 30 millimeters, we see that Vignette is in some ways probably heaviest
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here or close to it, but once again, particularly in the center of the frame, you can see that
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brighter light transmission for the G2 version. And of course, that very, very mild difference in the
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color temperature produced by the lenses. Now at the center of the frame, both of them once again look
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fairly similar. This is where the G1 is strongest, looking off towards the edge of the frame
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And here, once again, we're back to the pattern where the visual difference on the edge of the
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is more clearly defined for the G2. G1 is actually fairly good out to the corners of the frame
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but the G2 is better. You can just see better contrast, just more clarity in the textures that are there
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They're just more finely rendered on the G2 than on the G1 lens
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So stop down to F5.6, center of the frame is fantastically sharp on both lenses
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and looking off at the side of the frame. Both of them, of course, are very, very sharp
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very sharp, but the G2 I think is more consistently so. There is a occasional a little bit of hazing
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on some of the textures that are rendered more crisply on the G2 Look at this section right here for example and you can just see the better kind of contrast between the you know dark areas the bright areas and moving up into the corner we can just see that you know you just you tack sharp still right off to the very corner on the G2 version
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Now, when I took the lenses out to infinity, I'll have to say that, frankly, I wasn't able to see a major difference between the two
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you know, it's a little less controlled. And while I, you know, I can see a little give and take here and there in different areas
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really, I would say the image quality is pretty similar. I saw a few mild advantages when I looked off towards the extreme corners
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which is kind of what we would expect after what we had looked at before
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You can just see that there's a little bit better texture on some of these grasses here
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on the G2 version, but I mean, seriously, there's not really a whole lot of significant difference there
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Maybe a little bit better contrast on the G2 here. You can see here that lateral chromatic aberration, green on one side of the trunk, purple on the other
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And again, there may be, if you measure it in a lab, there may be a difference there
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I'm not really seeing it. Here's stop down to F8, and there are some raindrop as it was rain
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a little bit while I'm shooting that so there's some rain droplets here that are showing up but
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I mean both of them look fantastically sharp here across the frame um does one look sharper than the
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other you know it's not really that I can tell I mean they both look very very good and and I don't
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I wouldn't say once again at this kind of landscape difference stop down that that there's a big
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optical difference between the two other than the G2's got some raindrops there. Good thing it's got that flooring coating on the front. Here's 24 millimeters
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and once again, I mean, you look at the center of the frame, they look very, very similar
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Shifting over here to the side wide open. And once again, I mean, I have to say that they look more
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similar than different at this distance and I don't see a strong advantage for either one. I mean
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I do think that going right out to the very corners, as we saw in our test, it holds up a little better
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into the extreme corners on the G2, but I mean that's really, that's about as much as you can coax
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out of the difference here. It's true in this corner also, but for the most part, I mean, you
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have to be looking at a pixel level to tell those differences. This is on a 30 megapixel
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Canon 5D Mark 4. So taking a peek at 30 millimeters, F2.8, we see, once again, they look more similar than
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different center of the frame and moving off to the edge of the frame. You know, once again
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it's more similar than different and it's only in the extreme corners where you see a very mild
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advantage for the G2 version. Now I've mentioned that the lateral chromatic aberration is still
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present and here you can see on the left side I've got an uncorrected. So on this branch you can
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see green on one side, purple on the other. And what I've done on the right side is I've just
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hit the one-click remove chromatic aberration button on here in lightroom. Great news about lateral chromatic aberration is it's very consistent in the way that it behaves
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and so it's actually very easy to correct for more so than what longitudinal chromatic aberration is
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And so, you know, it may not be a major issue for you anyway, but it can actually correct fairly easily and non-destructively
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So Tamron also claims with new coatings to have improved flare resistance
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We're going to take a look at those claims here for a moment. So same setting
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We've got the G1 on the left, G2 on the right. What we can see is that here there are some extra ghosting artifacts that aren't present to the same degree on the G2 version
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You can definitely tell that these are, you know, similar lenses in terms of the way that they behave
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And then down here, what we can see is we can see the same, you know, pattern, but it's more pronounced on the G1
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they've managed to kind of tame it somewhat on the G2 lens
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So there is some improvement in this particular comparison. Now my experience with the G1 is that the flare was actually more pronounced if the
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light was coming in at more of an angle. And so I'm just kind of kind of slowly
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angle the camera away. So we can see here on the G1, there's definitely a few more
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artifacts here. But down here is where the you know kind of the main magic
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if you want to use that term, happens here. And so the this particular kind of ghost pattern is pretty similar
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But what we're seeing is that here you had on the G1, you had a more pronounced kind of double area
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On the G1, you know, this artifact is almost a little bit more pronounced
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but it is much milder and smaller compared to the larger flare artifact
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coming off of the G1. Now, the Tamron 15 to 30 millimeter has always been a strong performer
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for shooting the night sky. It has relatively low vignette, which is an asset, and its combal performance is pretty good
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So I expected that the same would be true with the G2 version, since once again, it is a optimized version of the same optical formula
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Unfortunately, conditions have been just brutally bad for shooting the night sky
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And even here, you can see that the sky has a bit of a veiled look, and it's still actually fairly overcast
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I have an app that tells me the kind of the night sky viability for shooting stars, and it only gave a 38% out of 100 or very poor conditions
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Unfortunately, that was as good as what it was showing on the immediate radar for the next week or so when I need to have this done by
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So I went ahead and did it, and fortunately, I think we've got enough data to work from
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So I say that saying, don't think that this represents optimal conditions
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It doesn't, not even a little bit. So looking at the center of the frame, Tamron's done a really good job at F2.8 of producing really nice crisp star points
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That's an area where it excels. Very clean in the center of the frame. Moving off towards the edge of the frame you know through most of the edge of the frame it actually really good You can see a little little bit of a coma on the edges of the frame but let look on this side where you got a they a little bit brighter
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what we can see is a pretty low deformation i mean there's no like really wings forming and still
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you have for the most part you have fairly circular shapes right off to the edge of the frame and so that
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is why once again this is going to continue to be one of the better options for shooting astrophotography
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It's a nice, nice wide focal length, you know, and now light transmission is a little bit better
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So it's a marginally better lens for this than the G1 was
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So I'll show you just one final night sky image. Here I looked the opposite direction and there was some light pollution and there was some mist coming off of a dryer vent
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But, yeah, I just kind of tried to make it into a cool type image
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So what we can see, of course, is that wide open, even in these conditions, you've got really nice crisp detail on everything
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So this is at ISO 6400, and so that's a great performance for that
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Lots of star points, particularly considering how terrible the night sky was
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And what you can see here is look at right out the edge of the frame. It's very consistent with what you see in the center of the frame
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It's only when you get off into the corners. And in this case, we see a little bit more
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And part of that, frankly, is a little bit of distortion because I have the camera angled at a more extreme angle for this shot
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But even so, I mean, this is worst case scenario in this corner, and frankly, it's not really all that bad
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And, you know, other side actually doesn't look as bad. And, you know, really quite an even performance
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I've shot lots of night sky images with the Tamron 15 to 30, the first generation, and it's been one of my favorite lenses for doing so
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And you can see that that's going to continue on with the G2. I'm going to show you one final shot
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demonstrate the low longitudinal chromatic aberration that the lens has. It does have some
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lateral CA, but longitudinal is basically non-existent. You're not seeing as you go in and
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out of focus here, you're not really seeing any green or purple fringing. Beyond that, this also gives
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you a look at the kind of bouquet you can produce with the lens. Obviously this is not going to
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be a supreme lens for that, but you can get a 0.20 times magnification. And as you can see
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all of these raindrops. The bocha circles are quite circular across the frame and so
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really, you know, not bad for this kind of look. And so as promised, here is the summation of what I
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found as I have been running these lenses through a battery of testing and comparing them
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What I found is that a fairly consistent pattern in that in the center of the frame as far
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as sharpness and resolution, that the image quality is more similar than different. In fact, in some
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cases I found that the original lens had a little bit more punch. I mean, we're talking
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inth degrees but visible, at least in the formalized kind of charts, not so much in the
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world world images. But what I also found is that the G2 is a more balanced lens with
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a sharpness profile that extends more consistently right out to the edges of the frame
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where it was a little bit weaker before. And so now it is more consistent there and you
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get a very even sharpness profile across the frame. And so, that makes a strong lens even stronger because it was always very good in the center and it's still
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very good in the center it's now also better towards the edges of the frame so an advantage there i also
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noted that wide open the light transmission favors the new g2 lens and i wouldn't even say that it's
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necessarily a full third stop but it's somewhere close to that and in terms of the actual amount of
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light that it's letting in now ironically i found that when stopped down that that
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if anything, the opposite was true, or at the very least they were very close and there was no
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advantage for the G2. And so I think that Tamron's engineers have optimized light transmission for where
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it's most important, which is at wide open. And so again, I think a solid move when it comes to that
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Now, Tamron also indicated that they had addressed lateral chromatic aberration to some degree
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And I'm not saying that they didn't, but I can't really perceive it in my test, at least with
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two copies I'm comparing. They seem pretty much the same for me in that. The same applies
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to distortion in that I don't really see much of a difference between the two lenses when it
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comes to distortion either. Beyond that, what I did find is that they're also consistent when
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it comes to things like Vignette. But a very, very important aspect is that Tamron, while you
24:15
can tell it's still the same basic optical formula, only optimized, what I did find is that
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the new coatings do make a difference when it comes to the the flare resistance from the lens and the lens original one was particularly vulnerable to
24:28
kind of angled flare coming in, not so much full on at the light source, but coming at the
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side where it would create fairly pronounced ghosting patterns along that. And while you can tell that the beginning of those patterns is there, it is really, really
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muted and so definitely an improvement there. And so at the very most you could say this is an evolutionary
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improvement rather than a revolutionary, but of course the original lens was already a very, very good one
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Now, there is more to this upgrade than just those basic image quality improvements
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And so in my final review, which I'll come back to you, I will focus on that and to talk to you about
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the VC performance. I'll also talk to you about the improved auto focus performance
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And another thing that I will cover as a part of that is that I have started to look at them some at how they
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adapt onto like Sony, for example, using the MC11. And so I will give you some feedback on that as well
25:30
So stay tuned and I will be back with that final verdict shortly
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I'm Dustin Abbott. If you look in the description down below, you can find a linkage there to the image gallery
25:40
that I've been sharing images and will continue to share images too. There's also buying links if you'd like to purchase one for yourself
25:46
And of course, you can follow me on social media, become a patron
25:50
And if you haven't already, please click that subscribe button right here on. YouTube. Thanks for watching. Have a great day

Tamron 15-30mm F2.8 G2 (A041): IQ Breakdown | 4K

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Tamron 15-30mm F2.8 G2 (A041): IQ Breakdown | 4K

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