Traveling with Tamron: Can the 28-200mm Handle 61MP?

I was very pleasantly surprised with the Tamron 28-200mm f2.8-f5.6 Di3RXD lens for

Sony E-mount cameras back when I reviewed it now nearly four years ago and about three years ago

I did my first video where I looked at this lens as a travel option

Now, since that point, Tamron has released their amazing 35-150mm f2 to f2.8

and that is the lens I probably reach for the most when it comes to event shooting

and even for some travel, so long as I'm not too concerned about the weight

I've held on to this lens, however, because it is just such an incredibly useful focal length

and because I know it punches above its weight optically. so more recently in August I took a trip down to the Cancun area and I took this lens as my

primary kind of multi-purpose travel type lens while there and I was interested to see how it

handled the higher resolution point of the Sony a7R Mark V. 61 megapixels of resolution is a really

kind of pushes the envelope of what a lens how well it's going to look with that high of resolution

so I was kind of curious how well is it going to hold up for that and is it still a viable option

for travel? Well, I'm happy to say that the short answer to that question is yes. This lens continues

to impress me in its overall performance. And while Tamron's more recent lenses have more features

and have a nicer build, this lens continues to hold up really well in what matters most, namely

its image quality and also its autofocus performance. So first of all, let's just dive

into a quick look of some real-world images and how it actually performed in that kind of setting

for a variety of different photography applications. So first of all, let's see if this lens holds up to the 61 megapixel sensor

So this is at 100% magnification. And as we look down, we can see that while it's a little bit softer into the corners

we can see that elsewhere in the frame, we are seeing a really sharp result here

And so even going off into the distance, we've got a lot of detail all across the frame

and a lot of textures good contrast everything holding up pretty nicely in that shot Likewise here we can see that if we pop into 100 magnification we can clearly see the waiting staff here clearing off tables here at a detail level

You can see all the various textures in the the stone work there going off to the side right off

to the corners we can see that there is a good amount of detail looking on the other side

we can see once again, yes, good detail right into the corner. Now, we will get back to this in just a moment

You can see a little bit of some fringing that is there towards the edge of the frame

Not the end of the world kind of amount, but definitely some present. Another shot here, and so this shows a lot of straight lines

Obviously, architecture in this, and you can see that, again, as we punch in

the detail looks really, really good in various places that we look. There's a lot there in that frame

We can see a little bit of that fringing, but most importantly, as we look in close and then we step back we can see that all of these various lines are actually

looking quite good. Now coming back to that fringing for a moment first of all once again

in this image colors look nice and clean as we can see going in at 100% magnification we can see

great detail and contrast there in the palm fronds but if we look down towards here particularly as

we get towards the edge so I mean for example if you look at the poles for the umbrellas here

they're nice and clean. As we get towards the edge here, you can see that number one

this one's damaged a little bit, but secondly, we can also see that there is some lateral CA that

shows up near the edge of the frame. Now, I did feel that the lens delivered nice color

and that's really important for travel. I've taken some really, really beautiful images with this particular lens, and again, here you can just see that it's done a really

effective job of capturing the various colors that I have as a part of traveling

So a couple of other things that I want to break down. First of all, when you're shooting on the telephoto in 200 millimeters

that obviously opens up a lot of other various subjects. And so, for example, with this shot of a traveling iguana

I want to see how it does for its focus, which as we can see there, it's managed to grab the eye accurately

even though the eyes are kind of in profile there. Likewise, we can see that the bokeh quality is really quite nice here

Another shot here where we have a little bit simpler a view but we can see that the amount of detail that is there is really quite pleasing This does not feel at all like a kit type lens or a super zoom lens where image quality is only so and you get the trade of the convenience but at the cost of a reduced image quality

In this case, that's really, really sharp and that's an image that I would be happy with pretty much no matter what I was shooting with

Now, while I didn't have an opportunity to shoot a lot of birds in flight, we can see that I had no problem in accurately getting a photo of birds in flight

I took some of also Pelican's dive bombing. Here, a Pelican had perched on these, I guess, leftover supports for a pier

And what we can see here is that if we pop in, again, this is at the 200 millimeter mark

We can see that the detail there is really amazing. It's quite good how that is and very good contrast in all of the various feathers there

And then the background is obviously not going to be as blurred as if I were shooting with a lens with a larger maximum aperture than this

But at the same time, the background is not at all ugly. And so as a byproduct, here's another completely different type of image that you can pull off with the lens

I also found that in a pinch, it's not a bad kind of travel portrait lens

It's obviously not a lens I would reach for if I were just shooting portraits, period

But we can see here that even in kind of this is late light in the day, so it's not all that bright

But we can see that focus is very, very good. There's a lot of detail there in the image

And as you look at the out of focus area, this doesn't look like a, you know, a camera phone photo

This looks like a professional image with a nice subject separation and a nice blurred out background

Now, here myself being the subject here, and so the distance is a little bit further away

and so the background is not terribly blurred out but we can see that the detail and the focus

is very very good here likewise in one final shot we can see once again that the overall colors are

nice here and because the you know distant background is uh further away it's it's more

out of focus but kind of most importantly here we can see once again that focus is very good there's

a lot of various detail and information on my face there and you can see that overall once again this

is a nice looking overall shot and portrait. So useful for that application as well

Now on top of that, I was impressed with the autofocus performance as well And as you can see from some of these video clips I was happy with its ability to for example track birds in flight We already pointed out it worked really well for shooting portrait type settings and you know focus very well focus well for a little bit of

wildlife that was there, be it the birds or iguanas. But for video as well, it just delivered

really great looking footage. And so it was just the versatility of it and the fact that you can

have the versatility of that focal length while having a relatively compact and lightweight lens

It also happens to deliver really great looking images. Makes this continue to be really one of

the top choices for travel that I know of on the Sony platform. Even with all the lenses that are

out there and the newer lenses that have come, this lens is still impressing me. And so it

represents a really strong value if you're looking for a multi-purpose lens, but you don't want to

compromise image quality all that much. This is a lens that really holds up really quite well

I'm Dustin Abbott and I will link to my text review as long as the original video review of

this lens in the description down below. There are buying links there. Please like and subscribe

Thanks for watching. Have a great day and let the light in. Thank you