Tamron 17-70mm F2.8 VC RXD for Fuji X Review | Still a System Seller?

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Hi, I'm Dustin Abbott and I'm here today to give you my video review of the Tamron 17-70mm
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f2.8 Di3a VCR XD. Now I have reviewed this lens previously on Sony E-mount a couple of years ago
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they have now released it on Fuji X-Mount. And so as Tamron starts to release some of these zooms
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here, I am stood at least in some of them and revisiting them and seeing how they hold up in
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a couple of areas. First of all, how they handle the transition towards the different autofocus
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system on a Fuji camera. Then also how they handle the rigors of a much higher resolution point
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namely in the X-H2, which I've used for this review, how it handles the 40 megapixels of
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resolution, which is at this point, in terms of the amount of pixels packed onto a sensor size
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it is the highest pixel density of anything that I'm currently reviewing. That creates a really
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strong challenge for a lot of lenses, and particularly a zoom lens that can't be optimized
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for just one focal length, but has to cover a number of focal lengths. And so are these zooms
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like this, are they going to be able to survive? Are they going to be able to work on a high
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resolution body like this. That's what we're here to explore today. I called this lens a system
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seller when I reviewed it for Sony e-mount and that was for a few reasons. It offered up a bigger
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zoom range 17 to 70 millimeters so that goes from this which is 25 and a half millimeters full frame
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equivalent up to 70 millimeters which is 105 millimeter full frame equivalent. So what we have
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got here is something very close to the typical 24 to 105 millimeter focal range that we'll see on
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full frame zooms, but with one major difference. Rather than an f4 maximum aperture, we have an
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f2.8 maximum aperture throughout. Added to that, whereas a lot of f2.8 zooms in the past have not
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had an image stabilizer built into them, this lens does have an optical stabilizer in Tamron's
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VC. And then also it has its RXD focus motor, which is a very quality autofocus system
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So all of those things obviously continue to be true here, but is this still as compelling
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So at the moment, one of the big things going for this particular zoom lens from Tamron
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is that it comes at a very compelling price point, considering all those things that I just mentioned that are a part of the design
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Right now, the price is $699 for this lens, whereas the chief competitor probably is Fuji's own 16-55mm f2.8, which retails for $1,199
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And so we're talking about a $500 different price point. That's pretty huge
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Now, there is a competitively priced option, actually a little bit cheaper, in the form of Sigma's own 18-50mm f2.8 that has been released on Fuji as well
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Advantages for that lens, obviously, is a lower price. It is also considerably physically smaller
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Beyond that, however, the Tamron has a lot of advantages. It has a bigger zoom range on both the wide and the telephoto end
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It has an image stabilizer, which the Sigma does not. And in some ways, it has a little bit stronger optical quality
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So I think Tamron is kind of in a league of their own and not really having any kind of direct competition here on Fuji
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It's got a bigger focal range or zoom range over four times than what competing lenses does
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It has an optical stabilizer and the f2.8 maximum aperture. So that makes it somewhat unique
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It is a better fit here in many ways than what it was on Sony
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To this point, Sony's APS-C bodies have been fairly small. And in this case, I'm reviewing it on the Fuji X-H2
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which really is more like a full-frame camera in terms of its size. It's a much more natural fit here because this is a fairly large lens
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So if you're shooting on the X-T series, and particularly on the X8-H type series
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you're going to find this to be a very natural fit and a really good kind of size match
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It is 74.5 millimeters in diameter, so not too huge there, but it is quite long, 119.3 millimeters
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That's 2.9 inches in diameter and 4.7 inches in length. And it weighs in at 525 grams or 1.2 pounds
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It does have the common 67 millimeter front filter thread that is shared across most of Tamron's lenses
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designed for mirrorless in recent years. It continues the same design philosophy that we saw in the Sony right down to all of those details
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but also the fact that there are no switches or dials, which means as we transition to Fuji
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where it's much more common to have an aperture ring, there is no aperture ring here and nothing
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else on the outside. This is an externally zooming lens. So as you can see that as you zoom out to
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70 millimeters, there is a fair amount of extension. It's about 27 millimeters by my estimation
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And so, you know, the lens does grow to a significant length here
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Lens hood is included. Lens hood is actually pretty decent quality. It is plastic, yes, but it is strongly engineered
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It doesn't feel flimsy like I see a lot of hoods. Sometimes even I'm surprised by the lack of quality
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even on some of the higher end Fuji lenses. This lens hood, I would say, is a cut above what I see on a number of them
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It does have a thorough weather sealing as well And so there are seven different seal points as you can see from this diagram inside the lens there is a flooring coating on the front element and so we are getting some of the premium features that you would expect on the nicer fuji lenses at least in
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terms of that there's not the r for aperture ring but there is the wr for the weather resistance
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it has a variable minimum focus distance it can focus as closely as 19 centimeters on the wide end
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giving you a 0.21 times magnification. On the telephoto end, you're a little bit further out
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39 centimeters, but you're only dropping to 0.19 times magnification. So not losing a lot of
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magnification and getting the advantage of a little bit more working distance. So other than
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not having an aperture ring, this is pretty much in the ballpark of what I would expect from a
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premium lens on Fuji. It doesn't look quite the same as the Fuji lenses, maybe not quite as premium
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looking or in terms of materials, but in terms of what is here and the overall physicality of the
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lens, this is a nice lens and hopefully one that will hold up well. I've used lenses like this
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not this exact one, but used lenses like this on the Sony platform for years and they've held up
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okay for me on that front. So let's talk about autofocus. Autofocus comes from their RXD focus
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motor, which stands for rapid extra silent stepping drive. And so this is much like a
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linear type motor is what you would see again on the nicer Fuji lenses. However, you know
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while the autofocus is fantastic for stills, there's still a little bit of a nuance that is
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missing for video that I'll get to in just a moment. For stills, this is fantastic. Autofocus
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is fast, it is smooth, it's quiet, and is also very, very accurate. I found that I had great
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results in terms of auto detection, whether I was shooting shots during a wedding, which I took this
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lens along for. I wasn't the actual official photographer, but just kind of supplementing
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the bride and groom whom I knew, supplementing their photos. And I got very, very good eye
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detection and accurate focus with the lens. I actually found it really, really handy for that
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kind of setting. And I think it is a good application. If you happen to be a wedding shooter, this is a really versatile focal length. And so that's going to be very, very useful in
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that kind of setting. I got good shots of Nala kind of stalking through the grass and again
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getting good focus on her eye without getting caught up. Even for some insect photos on the
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insect detection at my beehive, I got some good photos there. So all of those various tracking
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capabilities that are in the body, like the X-H2, they work just fine with this lens. And the
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autofocus system is snappy. It is quiet. It is accurate. All the things that you would want in
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that. As I mentioned video, I'm a little less blown away in that focus pools, while they are
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smooth and nicely damped, I did see some visible stepping in that I would arrive near the
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destination. There would be a visible step, kind of a momentary pause before going to the final
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focus lock. As you can see here, if I was just doing more minor focus changes as a part of
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moving with the camera, I didn't see that stepping quite as much. I also got a better result when it
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came to my eye test, or my hand test, blocking the lens from focusing on the eye and then allowing
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it to snap back. So I would say that if you're looking at this for video applications, it is a
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very, very versatile lens. And the fact that it has the image stabilizer, the VC does make a huge
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difference. It allows you, particularly if you're operating with a body without image stabilization
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or IBIS inside, it does allow you to really get much better handheld results for either stills
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and for video, making it a viable lens for those of you that are shooting with the many Fuji bodies
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that still don't have in-body image stabilization. And that will up to and including, you know, like the X-T3
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which really adds versatility to that platform in a way, for example, that the Fuji's own 16 to 55 millimeter will not
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You still got the big f2.8 aperture, but you also have the stabilization in it
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It's obviously a little less of a big deal to have the image stabilization in the lens
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when you have good stabilization in the body. And because you can't turn one or the other off independently
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it means that it's hard for me to tell you what the lens stabilization is doing and what the body
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stabilization is doing. If they work in conjunction, if they work separately, I can't really tell you
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any of those things because there's no way of differentiating the behavior of one from the other
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It is a very, very valuable thing to have, however, if you happen to have a camera that does not have
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it. And I'm hoping that we're getting a little bit extra of a boost having both lens and body
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stabilization in the cameras that do have IBIS. It is very good for autofocus, but in one particular
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situation where you're doing those big focus changes, just a little bit more stepping, which
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frankly is something that I have seen more on Fuji than what I've seen on other cameras. I didn't
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see this on Sony bodies, and so it tells me that maybe it's still a little bit more of the camera
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and its focus system or the combination of the two, the focus motor and the focus algorithms
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in the camera. It's not completely 100% tweaked, but that is very possibly something that can be
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improved via firmware in the future. So here's hoping for that to happen. Let's break down the
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optics here today. This is a lens that I was very impressed by optically on the Sony platform
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Let's see if I'm as impressed with it on the much higher resolution Fuji 40 megapixel frame here
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So we'll take a quick look at that focal range. So this at 17 millimeters f5.6, you can see that
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there is a nice amount of detail across the frame, obviously a nice wide angle of view
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And then if we move into 70 millimeters, obviously that is a pretty huge difference in magnification
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You can see right here, this is the area of the screen being magnified, obviously metered
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differently for looking just in this area. And so once again, we can see that there is a good
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amount of detail. Again, the detail and contrast, as we're going to see, are not shockingly good on
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this higher resolution sensor, but there's a nice amount of information that is there. Contrast
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isn't off the charts here because there is a bit of longitudinal chromatic aberration. And so we can
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see here that, first of all, our overall contrast on the subject is not amazingly good. And you can
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see as we begin to transition there is a little bit of fringing that is there that shows up also
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on a test chart where you can see on the plane of focus primarily more the green fringing after the plane of focus a little bit of magenta before that and then we can see that if we take a look at a video
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sequence that you can see that same kind of effect as focus moves along. You can see primarily
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the green fringing after the plane of focus. There is also a bit of lateral chromatic aberrations
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You can see down here near the edge, those clear up quite easily with the one-click lens aberration correction
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or they will correct in the JPEGs in-camera, but there is certainly a bit of that near the edge of the frame
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Not strong, but definitely present. Now, we can see at 17mm that there is a minor amount of barrel distortion
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It's present, but it's not extreme, and definitely some very strong vignette. Now, the nature of the distortion is it's not entirely linear, as you can see here
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I corrected with a plus six, but it's not, everything is not perfectly even
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The actual correction profile does a little bit better job. You'll see I had to max out my vignette in the corners, however, and it is something
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that I have observed now over multiple of these Tamron lenses that I'm seeing considerably
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more, about two stops more of vignette in the corners than what I did on the Sony version
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There's something about the difference in the mount diameter perhaps, or something similar
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that is causing more vignette on these Tamron lenses on a Fuji platform than what I saw on a
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Sony platform. Now by 70 millimeters, you can see the distortion is turned to a pin cushion type
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distortion somewhere along the middle of that range. We can see that as far as correcting the
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distortion, a minus nine. However, it's more linear. You can see everything corrects nice and straight
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no curvature left over. Vignette has dropped about a stop. It's now a plus 70 to correct for in the
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corners. So here's a quick look at our overall test chart. Now, as mentioned, this is an extreme
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torture test, the most difficult that any lens has to pass at the moment, at least that I'm
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testing, because there are so many pixels packed onto this small APS-C sensor. A brief caveat
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and that is that on Lightroom, Adobe is still not great when it comes to Fuji in terms of
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sharpening. And it's something that I struggle with to try to get good sharpening without getting
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that kind of wormy effect as it's often described. So I've used their enhanced feature here. I am
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showing it 200% magnification and I've tried to do a sharpening that does as cleanly as possible
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I think I've done a fairly good result here and so you can see that in the center of the frame
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while contrast isn't you know magnificent it's quite good and there is a lot of resolution. It's
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a sharp lens at the center of the frame. We can see here in the mid frame a little less sharp but
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still quite good as we come down towards the corner we can see that there is resolution into
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the corners contrast however is not off the charts a quick look around shows that we have a fairly
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decent centering here that we have quite consistent results in the four corners all delivering about
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the same now if we start to stop the lens down at f4 we see that there is more contrast so there is
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an improvement on that front that's also true in the midframe where you can see a better contrast
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result. Down here in the corner, you can tell the contrast is still not intense. However, it is
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improved and thus the details pop just a little bit more. Stopping on down to f5.6 produces only
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a moderate further improvement in the corners. However, we can see that we have kind of hit a
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practical limit that it's really not getting a lot sharper than that. And that's going to be true as
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we stop it on down. Now the effects of diffraction come very early on a very high resolution, very
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pixel-dense sensor like this on the X-H2. So as a byproduct, you're going to see that already by
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f11, it's starting to visibly show. By f22, which is minimum aperture here, you can see that all
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contrast is lost due to the effects of diffraction. You're probably going to want to avoid anything
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beyond f11, if at all possible. Now at a more typical 100% magnification, we can see looking
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at an image at f5.6 that there's nice looking detail across the frame there's good contrast
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here it looks very very nice and that is true all the way up here into this front corner where
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there's a nice amount of detail there it's just a nice looking lens that performs well in this
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kind of setting even at f2.8 here we can see that contrast isn't top notch here in some of this area
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But we can see in the primary area of focus that there is detail that holds up pretty close off to the very edge of the frame
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So even on that very high resolution sensor, you are capable of getting a credible looking landscape image even at f2.8
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Now if we move on to 24 millimeters, we see that we get just a little bit stronger performance here
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So in the middle of the frame, a little bit more contrast. Mid-frame is looking really quite good, very strong
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And down here into the corner, we can see that there is better contrast and better detail here, even wide open
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So certainly an improvement there. Stopping on down to f5.6 gives us probably the strongest corner performance that I have seen or that you're likely to see
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So if you really want very strong image quality, say for a landscape, and 24mm is wide enough
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it's probably where you're going to get your highest performance out of this lens. At 35mm, we're fairly close to the same good center performance, very strong mid-frame performance
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And as we come down here towards the corner, we can see that the corners are just slightly less good, but not far off
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By f5.6, we've got a nice looking corner performance as well. By 50mm, we are seeing a very slight regression
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Not quite as good as what we were in the middle of the zoom range
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but still at a very good level, strong performance there in the mid-frame
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And as we come down here towards the corner, the corner is really looking quite good still
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We can see by the time we're stopped down to f5.6, the corners are looking quite excellent
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Now by 70mm, we see the weakest part of the zoom range
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You can see that there's just not quite as much detail or contrast that is there in the center of the frame
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The mid-frame is looking just a little bit softer compared to what we have been seeing
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And down here on the corner the corners don suffer quite as much It fairly even across the frame but you can just see that in general not quite as sharp You can see that in a real world shot here of my bees You can see that while focus is good and there is some detail there contrast is really not fantastic And so it robs some of the fine details from showing up In this case stopping down to F4
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makes an improvement in the overall contrast. You can definitely see more. You start to see more
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contrast and detail emerging in the mid frame and down into the corners. Corners looking better
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though not great as we saw earlier. From F4 to F5.6, however, there is another improvement
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So again, you're not getting quite to the level we saw in the mid-frame, but certainly you can still get nice looking results here, nicely detailed results even at this 70mm focal length
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You can see that difference even at minimum focus. You can see here that while the plane of focus is reasonably flat, not a lot of distortion
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If we look here, contrast is affected by the fact that you can see just some fringing that is everywhere
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whereas if we go to the 17mm we don't get quite as flat a plane of focus
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but you can see how much better contrast is and that's basically what we're losing
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as you move throughout the zoom range and get to that 70mm point
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now some good and bad when it comes to the bokeh so first of all on the positive side
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you can see that the geometry is really quite good the specular highlights are fairly circular all across the frame
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in this brighter one however it isn't even a source of light but you can see that even where it's brighter
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you can see that there is some busyness, kind of some concentric circles, not full on onion rings there
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but certainly it's not fantastic. And that's something I observed with like Christmas lights
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I did the previous review over Christmas time and I definitely saw that more on the Sony version
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At F4, very circular, specular highlights all across the frame at F5.6
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still keeping quite a circular shape. So that's the upside here. The general busyness inside the bokeh circles is not so great
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This image right here, I actually thought that the quality of the bokeh up close is really quite nice
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That's a fairly creamy looking shot and obviously some rich color capture
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Another shot here when you're shooting up close, you can see that the background is nicely blurred out
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So those are strong. In this case here, I've chosen to go with a monochrome look
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something that Fuji does really, really well, by the way. And this is an Acros type look
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But you can see here that as we transition towards defocus, there's just maybe a little bit more outlining than what I would like
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So the bokeh isn't like magical per se, but you can see here it's not bad either
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Now in this shot, we can see middle of the day sun and you can see that it's being handled quite nicely
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There's very little issue with flaring here stopped on down. You can see that there's a little bit of a veiling effect
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actually quite a nice sunburst effect and in this image you can see that even with the sun right in
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the frame right at the top of the frame we're not dealing with any kind of ghosting artifacts so
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that is quite nice if we do a little bit of a panning with the lens wide open you can see that
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there is very little flare artifacts a little bit more when stopped down but nothing overly
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significant here flare results are really quite good from this lens so overall there's some
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nuances there, but I would still consider the optical performance to be quite strong
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So in conclusion, I asked the question, would I be as impressed by the sharpness on the higher
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resolution body? And my answer here is no. That higher resolution body does show the limits of
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the optical design here, which is good for this kind of lens, but it isn't as wowing as a lens
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say like the Viltrox 75mm f1.2 or the Fuji's own recent 33mm f1.4 that I review. Both of those are
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very, very good lenses and so maybe it's not a fair comparison as those being prime lenses that
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are really, really strong at their particular focal length. But this lens is good and images
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look very good on a global level and they look fairly good at a pixel level. They just don't
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blow my mind quite to the way that I was impressed on a lower resolution Sony sensor
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At the same time, however, I was a little more tolerant of the bokeh performance. And maybe it
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was the season in which I reviewed these, the two different lenses, just for summer type shooting
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this lens, the bokeh seemed to have a little bit nicer quality to it and less maybe of the bright
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specular highlights that I would see during the winter months, you know, with Christmas type lights
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and so it showed up more of the strengths of the bokeh quality and fewer of the weaknesses
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This is, at the end of the day, an incredibly useful focal range and maximum aperture combination
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Add to that the image stabilization built into the lens, and this is a lens that you can pretty much leave glued onto the camera
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and it's going to deliver very, very good results. I would say professional-looking results in a wide variety of situations
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You can shoot landscapes with it. You can shoot people photos with it
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You can shoot interiors because really the distortion is not all that bad on the lens and it corrects fine in camera or in software
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It is going to be nice for a wedding photographer, particularly to have this maybe on one body and then to supplement it with a longer telephoto on another
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It could be a great combination if you shoot Fuji and you do weddings or portraits, you know, engagement, all those various people type photos
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I think it's going to be very useful for that. It could even be useful for those of you that are shooting street and you appreciate the ability to have a nice zoom range, but also sometimes the ability to separate a subject from the background
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There's a lot of stuff going with this, and I actually view this as being an attractive travel lens on Fuji
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Not that it has a huge, huge zoom range, but it also has that constant f2.8 aperture and is still reasonably discreet
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You can carry this around, I would say, all day and not be too blown away with the weight and get some really great looking photos
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So a very, very attractive lens with a great price to performance ratio
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Certainly one that should be on your short list if you're looking for a jack of all trades zoom
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that happens to have a maximum aperture of f2.8. I'm Dustin Abbott
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And if you look in the description down below, you can find linkage to my full text review. There's buying links there for the lens
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linkage to do all the follows on social media and things like that
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Please like and subscribe if you haven't already. Thanks for watching. Have a great day and let the light in

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Tamron 17-70mm F2.8 VC RXD for Fuji X Review | Still a System Seller?

Dustin Abbott