Tamron 150-600 G2 Second Look | APS-C, TCs, and More

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Hi, I'm Dustin Abbott and I'm here today to take a second look at the Tamron 150-600mm G2 lens
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And last year, towards the latter part of the year, I did my review of the 150-600mm G2
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And at that point, because I had the lens for a fairly brief period
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I had to focus my efforts on doing a full frame review and also
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And as far as comparison, I had the original kind of generation one lens on hand to compare with
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and that was the extent of my overall comparisons. So anyway, out of that, there was a number of new requests that came in for me to do a few different things
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One was to review the lens on APS-C. Another was to attest how it actually performs with Tamron's new extenders
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And then finally was to do a comparison with Canon's 100-400mm F4.5-5.6L Mark II
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and using that with the Canon 1.4x teleconverter on there. And so today what I'm going to do is an episode where I cover all three of those things
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And so the first thing we're going to do is we're going to actually look at some images together
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And so you can see for yourself how this bears out on APS-C
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We'll look at with both the 1.4x and the 2x extenders, see how it performs with that
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And then, of course, we'll look at a comparison on both full frame and APS-C to the 100-400L Mark II with the Canon 1.4x extender
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okay we're going to start by looking at the 150 to 600 g2 mounted on apsc and i'm just going to
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start more towards the longer end of the focal range starting at 400 millimeters that's kind of
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where the crux is because the lens really is is quite good beyond that and frankly you have a lot
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of options of reaching 300 millimeters so let's look at 400 millimeters so here on apsc in the
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center of the frame. Obviously, we've got a pretty great looking image there. This is wide open
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And so along the side, you can see that, you know, image quality is starting to degrade some towards
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edges, just some hazing that's kind of starting to set in. On the right side, we'll see a pretty
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similar result. Good news is that the lens seems to be pretty well centered and we're getting an
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even result. Okay, now at a little over 500, 552 millimeters, and my experience with the first
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generation of the lens is that it was really strong through about 550, and that's where things
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started to fall apart. So we'll see if that remains true here. So in the center, once again
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now you are seeing more haze, a loss of contrast starting to take place. If we look towards the
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side, you know, the side really, it's a little bit less distinct in terms of some of the actual
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texture rendering, but it hasn't lost a lot along the sides. If anything, our performance in relation
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to the center is a little bit more even. Now if we go to 600 millimeters, we find that we have a
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pretty significant drop-off from what I can tell here. And overall, we've really lost a lot of
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contrast and detail rendering. And so this lens holds up better on full frame than what it does
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on APS-C when you look towards the edges. In fact, here, just for comparison purposes
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I've mounted it on full frame 5D Mark IV, and I've put the 1.4 times extender on the 5D Mark IV
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And so you know obviously the compression is still a little greater for the APS which is a 1 times crop factor on Canon compared to a 1 But if we compare on even in you know a relatively apples to apples level you see that full frame
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is, it's a much different kind of result by comparison and even out towards the edges
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Full frame is holding up fairly well with the extender attached. Now this is with the two times
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extender attached and as you can see on full frame we're still getting a pretty credible result here
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all the way out towards the edges. Now I will note that this doesn't register properly
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If we look in the XF data it's showing that we're at 600 millimeters f6.3. The reality is that
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we're at 1200 millimeters in something like f13 and so it doesn't report right and that's one of
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the quirks and using a slow maximum aperture lens with extenders. Now, if we were to compare
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side by side, we've got the APS-C result here on the right. And so now we've got obviously even
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more compression in terms of the overall focal length from the full frame, which is at 1200
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versus I think 960 millimeters equivalent for the APS-C. But you can see that it still favors
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is the full frame result. All right, one of the other things I wanted to cover on this time around
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is to do a direct comparison between the Tamron, and here we're at 600 millimeters on full frame
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compared to the 100-400 L Mark II with the Canon 1.4 times extender. So this is an effective focal
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length of 560 millimeters, so just a little bit shorter, but we can see that they're framing
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fairly similarly here. And so the Tamron's maximum aperture at this length is F6.3. So it's got an
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advantage compared to F8 for the Canon. The Canon loses a stop due to having the extender attached
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However, we can see that even with the extender attached, the Canon really, it's giving a pretty
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flawless image there. And so a sharpness advantage here in the center goes to the Canon. If we look
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towards the edge on here on the left side, the same is true. And over on the right side
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the same is also true there. However, what happens if we make this more of an apples to apples
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comparison and stop the Tamron down to F8? So both of them are at F8. What we find is that
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obviously the Canon still looks fantastic. And I think it may have just the slightest bit more
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resolution, but here in the center for field use, this is an indistinguishable result. And so
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I found with the previous generation 150 to 600 that the image quality really favored the Canon
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plus extender combination. And so here, I mean, I think that it's still, if we look along the side
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the Canon is still a little bit stronger here on the right side. It's still a little bit stronger
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towards the left side of the, on the left side of the image, but the difference now is pretty
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minuscule overall. And if we look out towards this side, now I definitely, we've got a better
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result here on the right side for the Tamron, but particularly in that center sharpness
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the gap has really closed in the G2 version. Okay, so what happens if we throw them both on
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APS-C now? And so again, Canon plus 1.4 times, so 560 millimeters. I've got them both at f8
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and so if we look towards the center here, we're going to find that our results are pretty much
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similar. However, I think there is a slight bit more texture information from the Tamron lens
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And if we look towards the side, once again, I think that that's true
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It's close, but I think the Tamron is giving the stronger performance overall over on the
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right side. Right side, I think the Canon is a little bit stronger
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It's a little bit more even across the frame. But as you can see on APS when you stopped down to F8 the Tamron is giving really just as good a result as you going to get even a hair better than from the 100 L Mark II plus 1 times TC attached
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Now here's a real world comparison of the two lenses mounted on APS-C
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Once again, it's the Canon 100-400mm L Mark II plus 1.4 times the Tamron
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Both right at around 552 versus 560mm And so obviously, I mean, there's a huge amount of reach on this
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And so if you look at this level, it looks fine However, you know, at a pixel level, neither image is really fantastic
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but the edge here on the subject, it's slight, but a little bit to the Canon combination there
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And if we look along kind of the area that's going to be the plane of focus
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there's some variance, you know, here and there. I think that the Tamron's a little bit sharper through this portion of the frame compared to the Canon
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You can see a little bit better contrast over in this section here
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You know, now I would say there's maybe a slight contrast uptick for the Canon
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right towards the edge of the frame. I like the Canon result a little bit better. To be honest
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neither one of these performances really wows me. I like both of these lenses better on full frame
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That's kind of what they're really designed for. But for those of you that shoot APS-C
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I mean, both are a credible option. Now here's a few real world images taken on APS-C
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Unfortunately, my focus calibration for this particular series of events was not dead on
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you can see there's definitely some back focus here. And unfortunately, I didn't catch that until later
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My software told me that everything was calibrated, but field results sometimes show otherwise
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And unfortunately, that was one of these cases here. But you can see on the areas where we do have focus
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that it's fairly sharp overall. And of course, here, in terms of the global look of the image
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it looks quite good. Now, this is just a backyard image that I had taken
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after I discovered that the focus calibration was off, and so I just kind of did some on-the-fly
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field calibrations. And so you can see this is wide open, 600 millimeters, f6.3. There is a little
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bit of haze to the image, so contrast could be a bit better. But in terms of the overall resolution
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there's a lot of detail here to work with. And of course, globally, the image looks nice and sharp
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overall. Now I find on APS-C that basically the further you are towards the middle of the focal
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range, the greater sharpness that you have. And you can see on this little wild boar, this is at
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about 350 millimeters that our sharpness result is really quite awesome here on a Canon 80D body
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And so, you know, used correctly, you've got extra reach, but I wouldn't recommend always going right
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out to 600 millimeters because there you're going to get your weakest performance. Only go there if
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you need to. This is also now back to a 5D Mark IV middle of the frame. This is about the middle of
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the focal length and so you can see lots and lots of texture information. If used in this fashion
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here, you can tell the individual hairs and so a good result there. And so the lens is really strong
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in the middle of the focal range. Here's another one, just a hair under 500 millimeters. And so
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if we look at the area of focus here, we've got a lot of great detail rendering there and look at
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the fine hairs along here. And so, you know, a pretty great result here along our plane of focus
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Very very nice So here is a real world result with the Tamron mounted with the 1 times Tamron teleconverter on APS a Canon 80D And so you know frankly this should be pretty close to best case scenario This is on a tripod I used a live view focus for this
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and so focus is accurate. But as you can see, the resulting image quality is really quite soft
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And while I don't mind the image results with the 1.4x or even the 2x mounted on the lens
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for full framework on APS-C. I just don't really think that that's all that a useful result. And so
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I would recommend if you're shooting APS-C, just enjoy the crop factor already in your camera
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and just forego the extenders. Here's one final result. Now this is stopped down to f11
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and so again we're at 1344 effective millimeter length here 1.4 times extender 1.6 times crop
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factor and so this looks a little bit better than the infinity focus distance but still it's it's
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pretty soft overall even stopped down here to f11 for this result and so as you can see from my
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results and probably as you can tell from the tone as we look at the images together I definitely
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prefer really both of these lenses on full frame as opposed to APS-C. On APS-C, both of their
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limitations are exposed to some extent and while I believe that the 100-400L Mark II probably holds
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up better overall on APS-C, it's just such a fantastic lens on full frame that on APS-C
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it's just a little bit less so. We saw where the focal length overlaps that certainly that the
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lenses are more similar than they are different and so in the middle of its focal range the 150
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to 600 is very very strong. We also saw that when we added the 1.4 times extender and compared it to
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the Tamron at equivalent apertures it produced about the same results basically and so you're
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not necessarily gaining anything there and of course the challenge that you're going to have
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in some situations with the 100 to 400 L plus 1.4 times extender is that it won't focus well on
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all Canon's bodies. If you have a 1DX or a 5D Mark IV, it will focus fantastic with the extender
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On the 80D, it will focus okay. Not bad, but on older bodies beyond that with the extender attached
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it's not really all that fantastic. And so anyway, I do find that for the most part
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if you're going to really shoot a certain focal length regularly, in my opinion, it's better to
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shoot it with a bare lens rather than putting an extender and that's particularly true when you're
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talking about variable aperture lenses that don't let in a huge amount of light on their telephoto
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ends anyway and so overall you know if you have an APS-C body and you're looking at the G2 by all
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means go for it just know that there are limitations to APS-C and there's limits to this lens on APS-C
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and beyond that as far as the extenders I cover that more thoroughly in my episode on the extenders
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and how it relates to the 150 to 600. But in terms of autofocus
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I have not seen any combination where it really autofocuses well with extenders attached to it
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Image quality is not bad on full frame, but I really feel like it kind of falls apart
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on APS-C with the extenders attached. I'm Dustin Abbott, and if you'll look in the description down below
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you can find links to my website, to image galleries from these lenses
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and then, of course, buying links there if you're interested in purchasing one of these lenses for yourself
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If you haven't already, please click that subscribe button. Thanks for watching. Have a great day

Tamron 150-600 G2 Second Look | APS-C, TCs, and More

Dustin Abbott

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Tamron 150-600 G2 Second Look | APS-C, TCs, and More

Dustin Abbott