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Tamron 50-300mm F4.5-6.3 VC VXD Review | Now with Macro!
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Jun 9, 2024
Photographer Dustin Abbott shares a deep dive review of Tamron's new and super versatile 50-300mm F4.5-6.3 Di III VC VXD zoom lens. | This video is sponsored by Fantom Duffel. Visit https://store.fantomwallet.com and use code DUSTIN20 to get 20% off | Read the Text Review: https://tinyurl.com/50-300VCreview | Visit the Image Gallery: https://tinyurl.com/50-300VCpics | Purchase the Tamron 50-300mm VC VXD @ B&H Photo https://bhpho.to/3yPltFT | Adorama https://howl.me/cmqaIqY4XCh | Amazon https://amzn.to/3Rf2xH9 | Camera Canada https://shrsl.com/4kig3 | Amazon Canada https://amzn.to/3KyHVWn | Amazon UK https://amzn.to/3RiO64F | Amazon Germany https://amzn.to/3VzGpKe Check out the DA Merch here: https://bit.ly/TWIMerch | Become a Patron: https://www.patreon.com/dustinabbott | On the Web: http://dustinabbott.net/ | Sign up for my Newsletter: http://bit.ly/1RHvUNp | Instagram: http://bit.ly/DLAinsta | Facebook: http://on.fb.me/1nuUUeH | Flickr: http://bit.ly/1UcnC0B | 500px: http://bit.ly/1Sy2Ngu Follow Craig @ https://www.instagram.com/craigstoffersen/ Want to support this channel? Use these affiliate links to shop at: B&H Photo: http://bhpho.to/1TA0Xge Adorama: https://howl.me/cjU0LKdp3LN Camera Canada: http://bit.ly/DLACameraCan Sony Canada: https://www.thesonyshop.ca/?ref=abbott Amazon: https://amzn.to/3HrY64d Amazon Canada: https://amzn.to/3qG1p18 Ebay: http://bit.ly/DustineBay Into the AM Clothing: https://bit.ly/intotheAMda and use code DUSTIN10 for 10% off Make a donation via Paypal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/dustinTWI ============================= Table of Contents: ============================= 0:00 - Intro and Concept 1:50 - Fantom Duffel
View Video Transcript
0:00
Hi, I'm Dustin Abbott and I'm here today to give you my video review of the Tamron 50-300mm f4.5-6.3
0:17
This is the Di3 VCVXD lens and I'll tell you what all of that means in just a moment
0:26
Back in 2020, Tamron released a 70-300mm lens for Sony E-mount that I gave a largely positive
0:34
review to because it had good autofocus, good optics, and it was very affordable at $550
0:43
I did wish in that review for image stabilization, a zoom lock to prevent some zoom creep on
0:48
it, and better corner performance on the wide end of the zoom range
0:53
Tamron clearly heard those requests and they are back with a new and improved lens in 2024
0:59
though in this case they've done a whole lot more than just my wish list
1:03
We've now got image stabilization, their VC, we've got a bigger zoom range going as wide
1:08
as 50mm rather than 70mm, we have an improved and faster autofocus system, we have better
1:15
optical performance, we have more features, we have a zoom lock, and we even have a 1-2
1:21
macro mode. The price has increased to $799, but in many ways I think as we're going to see, this is
1:29
an interesting alternative to Sony's excellent 70-200mm f4G macro lens that I gave my Zoom
1:38
Lens of the Year award to back in 2023. And this lens costs a whopping $900 less than that one
1:46
So is this lens worth considering? That's what we're here to explore in today's review
1:51
Today's episode is brought to you by the Phantom Duffel, a new unique convertible duffel
1:55
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2:00
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The interior has a high visibility reflective finish that allows you to easily see what's
2:13
inside, even in a dim hotel room. A large foam pouch on the side has a cable pass through to allow for charging and the
2:20
removable straps use a Fidlock system to easily and securely connect them
2:24
I've been using it for the gym and it has room for my water bottle, a change of clothes
2:28
a basketball, my massive shoes, a towel and a charger for my cell phone
2:32
Visit store.phantomwallet.com to check it out and use code Dustin20 for 20% off when
2:38
you're ready to check out. So I promised I would break down what all of those letters mean and the description
2:46
of the lens itself. And so very quickly DI3 is Tamron's rather obscure designation for mirrorless based lenses
2:57
So in this case DI3 being full frame mirrorless design. VC stands for vibration compensation which is their name for their optical stabilization
3:07
system and lens. And then VXD stands for voice coil extreme torque drive
3:13
Again a rather wordy name for a high thrust, high torque, linear type focus motor that
3:20
is the autofocus system in the lens itself. Now as noted we have an increased zoom range
3:26
We saw Tamron do this with their typical 100-400mm formula bringing us a 50-400mm which obviously
3:35
is an even bigger zoom ratio, 8x zoom ratio. That lens however is about $500-600 more than this one and considerably larger and heavier
3:43
But in this case adding that additional 20mm to the zoom range really does open up the
3:49
possibilities for what you can do with the particular lens. You can go from as wide as this to as tight as framing as this at 300mm
3:59
So obviously as you can see from these series of images that's a whole lot of focus possibilities
4:04
framing options within one zoom range. It's a very versatile zoom range and I really, really appreciate it particularly when it
4:10
comes in as small a package as what we're getting here. As noted we do get the vibration compensation system here and so lens based stabilization
4:20
to augment what you get in camera if you happen to have a camera with IBIS
4:25
Now a few notes on that. Number one there is no like SIPA rating that is given by Tamron which tells me it's probably
4:32
not top tier in terms of stabilization performance. It seems to work in conjunction with the camera based stabilization system and the reason
4:40
why I say that is that there is actually no on-off switch for the vibration compensation
4:46
on the lens itself. Meaning that if you turn IBIS on in camera it turns on, if you turn it off in camera
4:53
in theory it turns off. Though I suspect what happens is that it's probably a smart system to where it's kind
4:59
of on all of the time. However it does definitely make a difference and so here's what it looks like without
5:05
stabilization turned on at 300mm handheld. This is 1 20th of a second and then here's what it looks like with stabilization turned on
5:14
Obviously a pretty huge difference and so that makes a difference for hand holding stills
5:18
and that helps. I really did notice the lack of lens based stabilization in the original 70-300
5:24
Definitely an improvement here and obviously it also helps with your shooting handheld
5:28
video footage as well and that's going to be really useful and it helps to augment that
5:33
macro mode. And so even when you're shooting video it is possible to get really close to your subject
5:38
and stay pretty stable at the same time. And so it is certainly very welcome to have here
5:44
There now is the addition of a weather sealed USB C port and through that you can do easy
5:51
firmware updates and also tweak some or customize the lens itself and its behavior through Tamron's
5:57
free lens utility software. That software allows you to do more tweaks either through a computer or through Android
6:05
based devices and there's even more kind of remote options that are being brought out
6:11
in the most recent version 3.0 version of that app and or software
6:17
There now is a zoom lock as requested. I've got the actually the Nikon Z mount version of the original 70-300 here
6:26
So the only change is that they did add that USB C port but I did note that with that lens
6:31
when I was out kind of backpacking or whatever that after a while it would start to creep out
6:36
In this case you have the ability to lock it at 70 millimeter position and so as a byproduct
6:40
it is an easier lens to bring along. Tamron has also added a function button here which can be programmed either from within
6:48
camera or through that lens utility software depending on how you want to handle it and
6:53
so that adds a little bit of extra versatility here. This lens is thoroughly weather sealed
6:58
Now it had good weather sealing on the original as well but probably even more so here
7:03
Lens gasket, flooring, front coating, internal seals inside. This lens holds up just well when you take it outside which is obviously very welcome
7:11
I will note a little bit of a redesign to the lens hood. They've made a scallop design for the new lens that suits the look of the lens a little
7:19
bit better. It also makes it as you can see a little bit shorter even though the lens itself is 2 millimeters
7:25
longer than the previous lens. When you have the lens hoods attached it actually is the shorter of the two and so that is a
7:31
welcome change. It is a nice and robust feeling hood. It doesn't feel lightweight or weak
7:38
Bayonets into place very precisely. No problems on that front. So let's talk about the size for a moment
7:44
We have a 78 millimeter diameter here that's 3.1 inches. We have retained the 67 millimeter front filter thread that is shared with the vast
7:52
majority of Tamron's mirrorless designs which is obviously very welcome for filters sharing
7:58
across them. The lens length is 150 millimeters or 5.9 inches. So as noted that's only a 2 millimeter growth in overall length despite adding that additional
8:08
20 millimeters of focal range. Obviously very appreciated and of course adding a host of other features here as well along
8:14
with the optical stabilization. The fact that they've essentially kept the lens pretty much the same size is welcome
8:19
though I will note there is some additional weight here. Now weighs in at 665 grams or 23.5 ounces
8:27
That is about 120 grams heavier than the 70 to 300 millimeter but they've added a whole
8:33
lot here so that's pretty justified and I will note that it's still 200 grams lighter
8:38
than Sony's own 70 to 300 millimeter GOS S lens. Another thing that I noted between the original lens and this new one is that in the original
8:49
lens the zoom action was a little less smooth and it also had a bit of that pump action
8:53
If you've ever done externally zooming lenses sometimes it feels like there's a bit of a
8:57
pump in a certain section and for me that feels like it's sucking, potentially sucking
9:03
air and dust into the lens barrel. In this case we have a smoother more precise zoom action with none of that sucking action
9:12
I also note that the focus ring feels better. The original design both the focus and the zoom ring were flush and so particularly the
9:21
manual focus ring was hard to feel and it just it doesn't feel very good either
9:27
The zoom ring is obviously really really wide. It's a little bit narrow here but because they have added more sculpting to the lens
9:33
barrel itself, for one thing the new lens actually looks a little bit narrower though
9:38
it's not but it also is much more ergonomically pleasing. The manual focus ring is much easier to find
9:45
In fact I really like the scallop design and how it holds out because it fits perfectly
9:50
into the way that I would grab and support this which means that the custom button is
9:55
right there at my thumb. There's this kind of scallop section that kind of naturally sits there and on the other
10:00
hand I can even engage the zoom lock with just that one hand say if I was putting it
10:04
back on to some kind of carry system. So that is much appreciated and it also means that there's a little bit of a kind of a scallop
10:12
forward that allows that zoom ring to also fall very smoothly to hand
10:16
This is a it's subtle changes but they make for a much more ergonomically pleasing lens
10:23
to use. I will also note that like before there is no tripod ring or tripod collar included here
10:32
It's not compatible with teleconverters either but to be fair basically that is a very very
10:37
rare feature on any kind of 70 to 300 millimeter zoom anyway and so it's it's not like Sony's
10:44
own has either one of those things despite being considerably more expensive
10:50
Now there is one area where there is a little bit of a step back relative to the original
10:55
70 to 300 and that is that this lens is a little less bright and so it loses aperture values
11:01
It has the same basic range f4.5 to f6.3 on the telephoto end but it gets to the smaller
11:08
apertures a little bit faster. So to give you the breakdown of that it's f4.5 from 50 to 70 millimeters whereas the
11:17
original 70 to 300 millimeters it was 112 millimeters before it hit f5
11:25
In this case we're hitting f5 starting at 71 millimeters and only holding it through
11:29
101 millimeters whereas the older lens held it all the way through 154 millimeters
11:36
In this case we're going to at 102 millimeters we're at f5.6
11:40
We hold that till 181 millimeters. The old lens got you all the way to 241 millimeters before hitting f6.3
11:48
Obviously this one hits it at 182 millimeters and so from 182 millimeters to 300 millimeters
11:54
f6.3 is your maximum aperture. So it's a little bit less bright and I think it maybe compensates for that a little bit
12:01
by having lens based stabilization so it's going to be a little steadier to handhold
12:06
but at the same time I do need to point out that it is a little less bright and a little
12:10
bit less light gathering compared to the old lens. Now one of the final features I want to highlight is the improved close focus capabilities
12:20
This lens is better at close focus both at the telephoto and at the wide end particularly
12:26
on the wide end. So on the telephoto end you can focus as closely as 90 centimeters and you have a very high
12:33
0.32 times magnification. That's enough to obliterate backgrounds pretty easily but on the wide end you can focus as
12:42
closely as 22 centimeters which is only about this far in front of the lens barrel once
12:47
you compensate the lens length and get to the sensor point. And there however you can achieve a very high magnification of 0.50 times
12:57
Now the one slight advantage here is that because it's brighter on the wide end means
13:02
that in some situations it might be a little bit easier to handhold a result but nonetheless
13:07
getting that one to two macro level is enough that you know Sony calls it macro in their
13:11
own lens. Tamron isn't necessarily saying macro but it is a one to two or half size macro performance
13:18
here that obviously adds a huge amount of versatility to this lens
13:22
I love it. So let's talk autofocus. Autofocus has been upgraded from the RXD focus motor which was a high quality I think stepping
13:31
style motor that Tamron originally had on Sony E-mount. They've now gone to their VXD motor and this is a high thrust linear motor
13:41
And so you're getting faster thrust so quicker focus changes. It is smoother and it is quieter in operation as well
13:48
This is one of those lenses that I can put it right up next to my ear and during focus
13:54
I just don't hear anything. And so it is as close to silent as what you could ask for really in operation
14:01
So obviously that's pretty fantastic. Now one thing I do want to highlight just it may help people that buy this lens
14:07
If the lens is disconnected you will hear a rattle inside. It has floating elements to allow it to achieve that good up close focus performance
14:15
And so it will rattle as you shake it a little bit. That's natural
14:19
Now the way that you can know that this is what you're hearing is that the moment you
14:23
power everything on you can shake it and all of that sound goes away
14:27
And that's because those floating elements are now activated. This is the way that the lens is designed to function
14:32
A lot of modern lenses are like this. It's part of their design but it does sometimes freak out people that are unfamiliar with
14:39
that process. Now in terms of autofocus speed as you can see here from my test autofocus speed is basically instant
14:46
Even indoors where this is you know it's not as bright a lens as a lot of what I test
14:50
being a variable aperture zoom. But there's so much power there in that focus motor that it's just instant back and forth
14:57
And of course outdoors in better light it's effortless in terms of the focus speed
15:02
I did find that I had no problem keeping up with the cats as they were moving around
15:06
You know these series of shots of Ferrari walking towards me. And then in a second series there was for some reason even though I keep Nala on a leash
15:15
attached to a clothesline outside so she can move around but not stray away
15:20
There was a chipmunk that was dumb enough to come into her range and so she played with
15:24
it for a while. To my knowledge no chipmunks were actually harmed in the long run in this process but
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I was able to easily keep up with you know the pounces and the jumps and all of those
15:34
things that were a part of that moving around there. Accuracy is excellent here and I was able to focus with precision
15:41
In fact this shot stood out not because it was special but because up in the air I was
15:46
out trying to capture birds which you'll see no bird shots. None of them showed up but I was on the beach and I noted just a little bit of fluff up
15:53
in the air. So I was kind of curious and so I zoomed in on it 300mm, focus immediately locked onto
15:58
it and I could see that there was in fact like a fishing line that was stretched in
16:02
between two trees with a little bit of maybe leftover from a lure on there or just from
16:07
a bird, some fluff caught on that line. So anyway the fact that it locked onto that was pretty impressive to me considering it
16:14
was a tiny little amount to lock onto just up against just a sky backdrop
16:21
So it was pretty cool there. One thing I do have to point out for sports related action is that if you're shooting
16:27
on a sports related Sony body like my Alpha 1 that I've been shooting a lot on during
16:32
the series, with third party lenses Sony limits burst speed on the sports bodies at only 15
16:39
frames per second. So that's half of what my Alpha 1 is capable of
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So just be aware it's not really Tamron's fault it's just a Sony thing
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And by the way I've actually been really enjoying being able to get full burst speeds when shooting
16:51
with my new Nikon Z8 and this older 70-300mm from Tamron along with other lenses
16:58
The fact that it doesn't have that limitation makes me hope that maybe Sony will abandon
17:02
that in the future and it also makes me very interested in this new lens coming out on
17:07
Nikon Z mount because it'll be even more fun to use there
17:12
On the video side of things there was really nothing to complain about
17:15
I found that my video focus pulls, they were smooth, they were confident, no issue there
17:21
My hand test worked fine as far as transitions from the hand to the eye and then even outdoors
17:27
in real world shots as I transitioned from a close focus subject to a distant focus subject
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it wasn't jumpy or abrupt. Focus breathing didn't seem too bad. It seemed like a fairly natural transition there and back and overall I found video focus
17:44
to be quite good. This is an attractive video lens for the simple reason that it's still small and light enough
17:50
to maybe work on a gimbal if you were so inclined wanting longer shots and obviously that's
17:55
a really versatile focal range, zoom range and that also makes it very attractive for
18:00
a decent amount of money there. So overall auto focus is excellent and this lens, zero complaints about that
18:09
Now as far as the optical performance here I will give you an overview and then there
18:13
will be a deep dive breakdown at the end of the video. The EMTF charts show a definite improvement on both ends of the zoom range but most notably
18:21
on the wide end of the zoom range. This is a whole new optical formula, a little bit more complex
18:28
It is now 19 elements in 14 groups so we've got about I believe 4 new elements in the design
18:35
As far as distortion and vignette I found no distortion at 50mm so there's no barrel
18:41
distortion on the wide end. I used a plus 50 to correct for the vignette so in between a stop and a half and two stops
18:49
not bad at all for that. Zooming on to 100mm I found that the distortion was strongest there and it changed to a pin
18:57
cushion distortion but I say strongest it still wasn't particularly strong. It was a minus 7 to correct, very nice and linear, easy to correct for
19:05
Vignette actually reduced to just a plus 39 to correct for a little over a stop
19:10
Then at 300mm the distortion actually minimized back again to where I was down to just a minus
19:17
5 to correct a little bit of pin cushion distortion. Vignette was at the lowest in the zoom range, just a plus 28 around a stop to correct for
19:25
so awesome on that front. I also found zero longitudinal chromatic aberration, that's fringing before or after the plane
19:33
of focus, super well controlled for that. Likewise lateral chromatic aberrations near the edge of the frame, very very minimal
19:40
no issue with that either. So really strong results in some of those basic optical features there
19:47
I also found when I began to test for sharpness and contrast that the 50mm results were really
19:54
excellent in the center and mid-frame, super sharp and I did still find that the corners
19:59
were the weakest area. Improved over the 70 to 300 but still a little bit weaker than what I expected based on the
20:05
EMTF chart. I did note that everywhere else in the zoom range the corners were fine, just at 50mm
20:11
they were still a little bit weaker than what I would like. You stop it down a bit and those corners did improve however and so that certainly helps
20:19
With a variable aperture zoom like this not only does the maximum aperture vary but also
20:23
the minimum aperture varies between F22 and F32. No matter what it is however you should avoid it if you're shooting on a high resolution
20:31
body like I did with my Sony A7R Mark V, 61 megapixels
20:36
I found that diffraction is quite obvious at F22 through F32 so avoid that
20:42
Moving on to 100mm I found that the middle was a little bit less sharp than 50mm but
20:48
stronger in the corners. A more consistent maybe performance across the frame
20:52
Moving on to 200mm there was some give and take versus 100mm, a little bit better in
20:57
the center, corners a little worse, in some areas in the mid-frame better, in other places
21:02
just a hair worse. So really some give and take but still a very strong, very consistent performance
21:07
At 300mm it was nearly as sharp as 200mm, not quite as sharp, not quite as high contrast
21:13
but still very high performing allowing me to get results that I really, really liked
21:18
at 300mm. Now if you're shooting at 300mm and you're close to the subject you're able to achieve
21:23
a very high compression in the background which means you get that kind of perfectly
21:28
just a color of bokeh behind it which looks really, really flattering if you have something
21:33
that's a nice contrast like these red blossom versus the green background
21:38
It looks really, really great and so you can get really great bokeh like that and even
21:42
when you back off a bit, less ideal circumstances I found that the quality of the background
21:46
blur was generally quite nice. The one area where it's not going to be as nice is when it comes to subject isolation
21:53
If you're comparing it to something like a high end f2.8 zoom at 300mm you're going
21:58
to have, you know, you're talking over two stops difference of light, not only light
22:02
gathering but also a much shallower depth of field due to that. It's two and one third stops faster
22:08
So what that means is if you're shooting at medium distance you're going to have a much more blurred out background from that more shallow depth of field from the faster zoom
22:15
lens as compared to this lens but you know for the actual comparison of the class that
22:21
it is I thought that just the overall look of images was really quite nice overall
22:27
Finally I did note that this lens has Tamron second generation G2 B-bar coatings and they
22:33
seem to do a great job. You can see in this shot where the sun's in the frame
22:36
It doesn't happen as often with the telephoto zoom but I purposely put the sun in the frame
22:41
here and you can see that it held up just fine. No ghosting, no flare artifacts, no veiling or loss of contrast
22:49
The coatings are doing their job. Overall this is a pretty impressive optical performance for this price point and for having
22:55
a six times zoom range. So in conclusion this is a thoroughly versatile lens most obviously
23:02
Great zoom range, great features, that macro area, great auto focus. There's just a lot going on in this package and so yes the price is increased about $250
23:14
from what the first generation lens was but when you look at all that this lens has to
23:18
offer relative to the original you could argue that this is even a greater value when
23:24
you consider the extra features and the fact that it is stabilized, has that macro mode
23:29
a wider zoom ratio, more features, you know a better handling and performance
23:34
You're getting a lot for that extra $250 at this point and in many ways I think that it
23:40
does a lot of the similar things to the very excellent Sony 70-200mm f4 macro G OSS lens
23:48
I loved that lens but the truth matters you've got a bigger zoom ratio here, a slower maximum
23:54
aperture and that does have a difference but you also have that similar 1-2x macro, you've
23:59
got image stabilization, you've got a lot of great stuff going on here
24:03
So this is a lens that I think is going to be a really convenient one to use when backpacking
24:09
when going out where you're wanting to have some zoom but you also want to still travel
24:14
relatively small and light. A great option here and frankly a great price for all that you're getting for it
24:21
Now if you want more information you can check out my written review which is linked in the description down below
24:26
There's an image gallery there if you want to check out some photos. Now beyond that we're going to take a deep dive in the optical performance if you're
24:32
interested in that. Stay tuned, here we go. Okay let's start by taking a look at this incredible zoom range here and so you take
24:38
a look at this shot you can take a little bit longer to consider it. You can see at 50mm that we've got beautiful detail you know all throughout the frame here
24:46
it looks fantastic. But then also we can zoom all the way in to 300mm and obviously you have some atmospheric
24:53
issues that are going to prevent sharpness from looking quite the same as we reach out here
24:59
You can see the difference there if I go back and forth that is massive and it's obviously
25:04
a lot of very useful framing options there. So as far as vignette and distortion at 50mm you can see I didn't end up correcting anything
25:11
I tried doing very minor corrections either direction. I sort of created distortion rather than eliminate it so this is left at a zero
25:19
I used a plus 50mm in the corners to correct the vignette. You can see it all corrects very easily and of course there is a correction profile where
25:26
you don't have to do what I've done. I move towards the middle of the zoom range here 138mm to see how it behaved in the middle
25:33
You can see this is the strongest amount of distortion. We have some pincushion distortion here that required a minus 7mm to correct for
25:41
You can also see here on the right side this is just the manual correction. Very nice and linear, corrects perfectly
25:47
Vignette reduced a little bit to a plus 38mm and so very easy to correct for that
25:52
Then finally at the telephoto end you can see that the pincushion distortion has reduced
25:57
It's now a minus 5mm to correct for and the vignette is really insignificant
26:01
A plus 28mm which frankly is one of the lowest figures that I've ever had to correct for
26:07
So I mean pretty fantastic on that front. Longitudinal chromatic aberrations are basically perfectly controlled
26:13
You can see no evidence of fringing either before or after the plane of focus
26:18
There's nothing to complain about there. If I jump over to a real world example you can see here that along the plane of focus
26:26
everything is fine. As you transition towards defocus there's really no fringing there
26:31
We can look down here and see no fringing marring the white edges of this
26:35
So great job on that point. Likewise when it comes to lateral chromatic aberrations near the edge of the frame there's
26:41
no correction here but you can see there's not really any fringing to see
26:46
Tamron has basically eliminated all fringing on this lens. So that leads us to pretty good expectations for optical performance and here we're going
26:55
to look at 61 megapixels on a Sony a7R Mark V. I'm going to show you results at 200% and so this is a more extreme torture test than
27:03
what you're going to encounter in real world work. That's just what I do
27:07
So taking a look in the center of the frame, really it's basically perfect
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Very high contrast, very high detail even at f4.5 here, 50mm. Mid frame is likewise flawless and that's true if I look here, if I look here and if
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I look up in this area. Everything looks really really great. Now as I get all the way down to the corners you can see that the corner contrast and detail
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just isn't quite as good. Not bad by any stretch of the imagination but not nearly as good
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And if I pop up to the upper left corner it's about the same. So it's not like a centering or a tilting issue, it's just what we're getting out
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of this lens in terms of performance. So if I look at a stop down f5.6 version on the right and compare it to the f4.5 on the
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left you can see there is a little bit more contrast and detail in the center of the frame
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though again it was already pretty much perfect. Same here in the mid frame, just a hair better
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Down in the corner the results are just less apparent. I think there is a very minor improvement but you don't see much of it
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There is a hair more from f5.6 to f8 but it never looks exceptional
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Over on this side I thought that this result is starting to look pretty good here but at
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f8 on the left side of the frame but you know overall as you get towards the edges it's
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just not as impressive at 50mm though we did see out in that real world shot that corner
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performance looked just fine on a real world landscape shot. Now on high resolution bodies diffraction in particular is an issue
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At f11 we're still holding our own just a little bit of loss but by f22 which is minimum
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aperture here by 300mm it's f32 you can see the image is really softened due to the effects
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of diffraction. Now if we compare 50mm to 100mm you can see in the center of the frame it's close but
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I favor the 50mm result. We look at the mid frame if we look at the mid frame the results are very very similar
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but again very very minor favor towards the 50mm result but then if we go to the corners
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the opposite is definitely true. Corners look really great here at 100mm much better than what they do at 50
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Now if we compare the 100mm to the 205mm on the right we can see that in the mid frame
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I would say there's a slight uptick in progress for the 200mm as far as the center performance
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Mid frame performance is very very similar just not a lot to distinguish the two
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We'll look over here to see if there's much of a difference. To me it's very very slightly better at 200mm and in the corners the corners are better
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than at 50mm but not as good as what we saw at 100mm but overall a really consistently
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strong performance at 200mm. So then if we compare 200mm to 300mm you can see that the center still looks good but
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it is softer than what we saw at 200mm. So a mild regression there
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The mid frame there's less of a regression though there is a little bit there
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If I look down in this zone near the edge of the frame we can see again it's a very
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very mild amount less but not by much. Over on this side I would say that I don't know 300mm looks pretty good to me not really
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any kind of regression that I can see there. Likewise in this zone looking good and up in this left corner I would say it is very
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close about the same. So I mean there's some give and take there across the frame but the point is that 300mm
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remains pretty strong. So here is what minimum focus distance looks when you're shooting at the 300mm end
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My focus area is this zone over here and you can see that it looks quite good up close
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and then at the 50mm point you can see the magnification is higher
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The plane of focus isn't it's not as flat as at 300mm but we can also see that the contrast
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and detail is optimized for up close work at 50mm. So you're actually going to get better detail here at 50mm
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A macro-ish shot like this at 50mm is pretty impressive. I mean it's not as good as a dedicated macro lens but that is really great detail for up
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close and I will note this is a handheld not a tripod based shot here
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Here's a handheld 300mm shot at f6.3 and once again if you take a look at this at a pixel
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level it looks pretty fantastic really. Stepping back for a moment the amount of detail and contrast and then the blur of the background
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really pretty impressive overall. And here's how the same scene looks composing a little bit differently here at 50mm
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I could get closer than this but this gives you an idea for comparison
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Bokeh looks pretty soft and then stepping back and shooting at 300mm you can see that
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the background is compressed even further but you know in both cases it's a good look
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at the same scene and so overall I'm impressed with those results
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Another shot here at 300mm and I'm nowhere near minimum focus distance here but you can
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see that the look of the overall image is really nice. I'm impressed with that
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I also really love this image of Ferrari for a couple of reasons
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First of all 300mm f6.3 the amount of detail there is fantastic but look how good focus
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has done focusing on the eye through the layers of grass to get to that eye
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You can see that the focus is perfect right there on the eye itself you know not somewhere
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else and so really impressive end results. A look at this shot that I showed you for flare resistance it was small on screen before
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but now you can see if we look up at the area of the sun there's a couple of little
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tiny dots there that you really can't hardly see. You can see the sparkle off of the water there's no fringing around that
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There's great detail no loss of contrast. Those b-bar coatings are doing a great job
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9 aperture blades here so we're stopped down and we're getting what would be an 18 pointed
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sunburst or sun star effect and really it doesn't look too bad
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One final shot that I'll show you from a golf course and had the ability to kind of
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shoot down towards the golfers here and you can see that if we punch in at to a pixel
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level you can see there's just a lot of great detail all throughout the frame and an interesting
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perspective that's compressed somewhat due to that long focal length. Overall this optical performance is really pretty great
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Thanks as always for hanging around to the very end of the video and I hope that the
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optical deep dive is of some benefit to you and helps you make an informed decision as
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to whether or not this new Tamron lens is the one you want to add to your bag
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I'm Dustin Abbott. Thanks for watching. Have a great day and let the light in