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Hi, I'm Dustin Abbott and I'm here to give you my final verdict on the new Tamron 17-35mm
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f2.8 to f4 di osd lens. This is Tamron's new wide-angle zoom lens for full-frame cameras that
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comes in obviously at a much smaller price point and physical size compared to the majority of lenses
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that it competes with and of course it is considerably smaller and weighs essentially
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half as much as what Tamron's own 15-30mm f2.8 G2 lens that I just reviewed does
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So let's take a closer look at it today and break down whether or not it is a lens that you should
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consider if you have either a Canon or Nikon DSLR or as we'll also see maybe you've got a new
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you know Canon EOS R or a Nikon Z camera and you're looking at you know potentially using
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the lens via adapter there. So in our first episode we take a look at this lens hands-on
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and broke down some of its physical attributes. This is as I've noted made for full frame DSLRs
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It has a fully weather-sealed body, but unlike Tamron's higher-end SP line of either zooms or prime lenses
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this is primarily made of, you know, engineered plastics, more of a consumer-grade build when it comes to that
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Now, one of the things that I noted as a part of that is that this is the smallest and lightest
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you know not by huge margins but when you're comparing it to lenses like the
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Canon 17 to 40 millimeter f4 lens it is smaller and lighter than those. It also of course is a
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variable aperture zoom range and so while the the zoom is a little bit smaller than Tamron 17 to
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or excuse me Canon 17 to 40 millimeter it does have the advantage throughout the majority of the
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focal range of maximum aperture. It starts on the wide end at f2.8 and it's around 21, 22 millimeters
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that it shifts to f3.2 or one third stop of light and it will hold f3.2 until you know somewhere
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close to 28 millimeters maybe a little bit after that and it goes to f3.5 and then eventually
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somewhere around 30 millimeters it'll go to f4 but point being over most of that zoom range you
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actually get considerably better light transmission than competing lenses be it the 17 to 40 millimeter
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or the 16 to 35 millimeter f4 from canon or nikon and and so some an advantage when it comes to that
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it has a moderately sized 77 millimeter front filter thread that basically all of these
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competing lenses share. And so that means that unlike, say, the G2 lens or, you know, the other
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15 to 30 millimeter f2.8, you are able to use traditional filters, which is certainly a plus
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when it comes to that. Now, I'm going to elaborate a little bit more on autofocus here today and talk
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to you a little bit more about the OSD focus motor This is a new focus motor for Tamron and it stands OSD stands for Optimize Silent Drive
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Now, silent is maybe a little bit euphemistic. It is very quiet in most operation
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You can hear almost, if you put your ear up close, you can hear a kind of a faint scratching kind of sound
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when it's making major focus changes. And first, let me show you one clip
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where I'm making more moderate changes, kind of smaller changes, and you can see that it is quite quiet for video capture
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By the way, that this video footage comes from the EOS R
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and it also shows you how the lens operates via the adapter on there
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But what we can also see in this second clip is the fact that if you're making a major focus
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change, you will definitely hear some whirring and clicking as it kind of moves more quickly
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to make fast changes. what I noted when I put the lens on my say 5d mark 4 is that when shooting through the viewfinder
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phase detect autofocus that autofocus changes were very quick and you know it is when they
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talk about the optimized portion it's optimized for a couple of different scenarios and so in
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phase detect it is set up for speed and it does focus quickly even significant focus changes come
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you know sometimes there's a tiny spool up to make a big focus change but it's pretty quick
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all around. What I noted when I switched to live view or which then becomes contrast AF
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was interesting. The lens rather than trying to make very fast rapid changes it was actually
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optimized once again for making smooth transitions and so it's not as fast going from
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close to infinity or back you know minor focus changes are very fast but if you're making major
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focus changes it emphasizes a a smoother transition rather than just a jump the advantage
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for video capture is that it allows it to make more gradual smooth transitions and so that's
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where the optimized part of the drive comes. Now, as far as the motor's sophistication, what I kind
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of view this motor as being is basically a modern and call it a rich man's or a premium alternative
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to the buzzy micro motors of the past. The reason why I say that is obviously, as I've noted, it is
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it's quick, it's quiet, no problem there, but it doesn't have full-time manual override. And so
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If you try to move it with AF on, you can feel there's a lot of resistance there
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If you switch it into manual focus, it has basically no feel to it at all. I mean, it's just like extremely light
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There no damping no weight on there And so in that way it behaves very much like a micro motor of years past and so there not a distance window here but this is not a stepping motor The input is going directly to the elements
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it's just really really light and kind of without a whole lot of feel. And so bottom line is that if
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you're using the just just for autofocus purposes it works fine. If you want to manually focus it's
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it's definitely not a Zeiss type of experience. Let's just say that. So I used it on both the new
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Canon EOS R as long as well as the Sony A7RMR3. And actually in both cases, I was quite happy with
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what I found. It actually works. Focus comes quickly here and it basically behaves
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like a native lens. I mean, I would say that the 24-105 RF lens, L-series lens may be a hair
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quicker. I think it is a little bit quicker, but I mean, this behaves pretty much like just exactly
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as it did on my 5D Mark IV. And so no concerns or problems there. And then surprisingly, I found
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pretty much the same experience on the a7R Mark III. And so it focused very well. Now, the one
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difference being that on the EOS R body I also had good performance in servo AF. In fact the video
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clips I showed you earlier were on the EOS R and so the nice thing about that is the fact that
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autofocus does work fine and servo AF works fine. On the a7R Mark III basically the only adapted
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lenses that I've had good video servo AF results are Sigma's own art series lenses adapted on the
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MC-11, which kind of goes back to the fact that I continue to think it would be wise of Tamron to
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develop a equivalent to the MC-11 because a number of their prime lenses, for example, 35 millimeter
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45 millimeter 85 millimeter etc and then there's some of their zoom lenses could work quite well
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on a sony platform and be nice alternatives to some of the more expensive sony lenses
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if they would do something like that right now sigma's got a bit of a leg up when it comes to
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that but ironically the sigma lenses being larger aren't really as natural lenses to adapt to a
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mirrorless body is what tamron's are and so anyway i'll give one more kick the can to see if someone
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Tamron is listening about that. Let's take a look at the image quality together and if you missed it
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I've got an episode where I break all of this down in detail. The good news is that this lens
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is actually remarkably sharp at basically all tested focal lengths and it is sharp pretty much
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from wide open. At 17 millimeters was where I saw the most benefit from stopping down but a lot of
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that along the edges of the frame had to do with improving vignette and that is one of the major
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optical shortcomings of the 17 to 35 millimeter it does have very heavy vignette not quite to the
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extreme I saw on the Canon 16 to 35 f 2.8 L mark 3 which has horrendous vignette so it's a little
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milder than that but certainly worse than a lot of lenses that I have tested and certainly much
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than the 15 to 30 millimeter F 2.8 from Tamron. And so fairly heavy vignette fairly pronounced barrel distortion as well The good news about the barrel distortion is that the standard profile in Lightroom or Adobe Camera Raw it clears it up really nicely
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It's a fairly linear distortion, and so it fixes pretty well. Vignette, in most situations, also fixes fine
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but I did note that while the lens is actually really good
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in its coma performance, it has very low amounts of coma, and of course, at 17 millimeters, got an f2.8 lens
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which does make it a very functional option for shooting astrophotography. The one thing that holds that back is that very heavy vignette at f2.8
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And if you're shooting at higher ISO values like, you know, 6,400 or whatever
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you may end up with some noticeable noise after vignette lift, vignette correction in that area
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And so it's not as good as the 15 to 30 millimeter for that reason
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but certainly it's well worth using if you buy the lens. It does show low levels of coma. It does
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produce very sharp, nicely defined star points. And so some pluses on that front as well. And so
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Vignette clears up in most situations fine. Distortion clear, it clears up fine, but your
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downside is, is that as a third party lens, Tamron does not currently have the support of Canon's
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lens aberration correction if you're shooting on a Canon body, which means that those things
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are not going to be fixed for JPEGs inside the camera. And so at the end of the day, this lens
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does have a lot going for it. It's got some strong performance, very low levels of chromatic
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aberration, no lateral CA, no longitudinal CA. It does fairly well when it comes to flare
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resistance there is some ghosting patterns but not anything particularly terrible and so it
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actually does quite a lot of things well it's not a fancy or feature-rich lens it doesn't have their
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vibration compensation as I've noted it has a what I would consider a good quality budget focus system
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in it but at the same time it is also a full frame wide-angle lens that you can get for under 600
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bucks MSRP in the United States. So it has a very attractive price point, obviously. It has a very
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good extended warranty in most countries that you're going to buy it from. So a lot of good
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things going for it when you're comparing it to more expensive first-party lenses. It does have a
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few shortcomings, as I've noted in this review. And so as long as those aren't deal breakers for you
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the 17-35mm f2.8-4 OSD lens maybe should be on your shopping list if you're on a budget and you
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want a wide angle option. I'm Dustin Abbott and if you'll look in the description down below you
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can find linkage to my full written review. You can also find linkage to my image gallery there
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and find a lot more photos to help to support what you have seen in this review today. You can also
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find buying links in the description down below to a number of different retailers. And beyond that
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you can follow me on social media, sign up for my newsletter, become a patron to help support this
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channel. And if you haven't already, please click that subscribe button. Thanks for watching. Have a
