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Tamron 150-500mm F5-6.7 VC VXD Fuji X mount Review | Affordable Reach
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Jul 24, 2023
Photographer Dustin Abbott shares a deep dive review into the Tamron 17-70mm F2.8 VC standard, stabilized zoom for Fuji X-mount. | This video is sponsored by Fantom Wallet. Visit https://store.fantomwallet.com and use code DUSTIN15 to get 15% off | Read the Text Review: | Visit the Image Gallery: | Purchase the Tamron 17-70mm F2.8 RXD @ B&H Photo https://bhpho.to/3XzEB2Z | Adorama https://howl.me/cj4S4Kf2Qqk | Amazon https://amzn.to/3JIg9qG | Camera Canada https://shrsl.com/44rpf | Amazon Canada https://amzn.to/46AGG2L | Amazon UK https://amzn.to/3pxmlL7 | Amazon Germany https://amzn.to/435tnV7 Purchase the Fujifilm X-H2 @ B&H Photo https://bhpho.to/3KAInTC | Adorama https://howl.me/cjyzbiO5lVp | Amazon https://amzn.to/41zMzKl | Camera Canada https://shrsl.com/4128o | Amazon Canada https://amzn.to/40gY4W7 | Amazon UK https://amzn.to/43Grn7a | Amazon Germany https://amzn.to/3L6hwjR Purchase the Fujifilm X-T5 @ B&H Photo https://bhpho.to/3uJsXFg | Amazon https://amzn.to/3WzxHsZ | Camera Canada https://shrsl.com/3un59 | Amazon Canada https://amzn.to/3v8IiiJ | Amazon UK https://amzn.to/3YEpLs6 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 Make a donation via Paypal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/dustinTWI ============================= Table of Contents:
View Video Transcript
0:00
Hi, I'm Dustin Abbott and I'm here today to give you my video review of the Tamron 150 to 500
0:17
millimeter. This is an f5 to f6.7. It is di3, meaning it's designed for mirrorless. It is VC
0:25
It has their image stabilization and it has their VXD linear focus motor
0:30
I've reviewed this lens previously on Sony a few years ago, but there is now a fresh release of this lens for the Fuji X-mount
0:39
Now, I've been reviewing some of the Tamron X-mount lenses over the last several months
0:45
And many of them, of course, are very logical transitions. They were designed for APS-C cameras on Sony initially
0:51
And so now because Fuji has opened up their X mount to third parties, it is allowing them to now bring those lenses over to Fuji where they are a welcome addition
1:01
This lens, however, is the oddity of the bunch in that this isn't actually an APS-C lens
1:07
This is a lens that Tamron designed and released for Sony full-frame E mount
1:12
And so it's a full-frame lens being ported to an APS-C specific mount, which is not really something that I have seen before
1:20
Now, fortunately for Tamron, the design was compact enough that it actually slots right
1:24
in between the 100 to 400 millimeter from Fuji, although this lens is roughly similar
1:30
to that. And it's obviously considerably smaller than the 150 to 600 millimeter Fuji lens that I
1:37
reviewed a few months ago. It undercuts both of those in price by a large margin
1:42
But the question is, does this lens survive that porting over to Fuji
1:46
and does it make sense on an APS-C mount camera? Well, we'll explore that today after a word from our sponsor
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That's Ridge.com forward slash Dustin Abbott. So let's talk about the build and the design here
2:50
And I will note that as noted, this is a, it's not a compact lens by any stretch of the imagination
2:56
This is automatically going to be one of the larger, largest lenses on the Fuji mount in the top five
3:02
However, because of its relatively compact size for a full frame design, it actually doesn't feel all that out of place here
3:08
Now, how big and heavy it is is going to be somewhat dependent on the body you're mounting it to
3:13
On my X-H2 here, which frankly is as big and as far as the grip goes more comfortable than any of my Sony full frame bodies, it feels completely natural and a natural fit there
3:24
And so that's not necessarily a big deal. The lens itself is 93 millimeters in diameter, giving you an 82 millimeter front filter thread, which is the same as the 150 to 600 from Fuji
3:36
And it is 210 millimeters in length. So that is 3.7 inches by 8.3 inches, which if you look at the dimensions is actually within a millimeter, essentially, of the exterior dimensions of the Fuji 100 to 400 millimeter
3:51
That being said, the Tamron is considerably heavier. It's got a little bit more sturdy design
3:56
It's also, remember, designed for full frame. And so as a result, it has more glass to cover a larger sensor size
4:03
And as a byproduct, it is heavier, even though it's the same size. In fact, it's even heavier than the 150 to 600 millimeter coming in at 1.7 kilos or about three and three quarters pounds
4:15
It has an incredibly useful range from 150 to 500 millimeters, which translates to a full frame equivalency on Fuji's X-mount with a 1.5 times crop as 225 millimeters
4:28
So from this out to 750 millimeters, it looks like this. Also, a strength for this lens relative to the Fuji competition is it does offer a higher level of magnification
4:40
You can get up to about 0.32 times magnification, almost one-third life-size
4:46
and so that is considerably higher than what either of the Fuji lenses has to offer
4:51
Now, you will find that the dimensions are relatively compact for the lens when it is retracted
4:56
but this is, unlike the 150-600mm, this is an externally zooming design
5:02
And so it will extend another roughly eight centimeters, about three inches when you zoom it all the way out
5:09
I will note that the zoom action is nice and smooth. It is, for that reason, it's actually no less rough than the zoom action than what I saw on the 150 to 600 millimeter
5:19
which I found a little bit stiff for an internally zooming lens. And so I was very pleased with that regard of it
5:24
And I will note that if you are so inclined, you know, you can grab onto the hood
5:30
and you can use kind of a push-pull type design if you want that as a quicker action
5:35
It's not all that bad, however, for the rotation. You can quickly zoom in and out by using the ring as well
5:42
This is a thoroughly well-built and well-sealed lens designed for professional grade use
5:48
It has about 11 internal seal points. It has a flooring coating on the front element
5:53
And so all of that translates as being very nice. And I will say, having held the lenses side by side
5:58
the Tamron certainly feels just as nice as the Fuji lenses do in terms of its construction
6:03
It also does come with a tripod collar. Some of the things that I like about the tripod collar
6:09
it is fully removable. The foot itself is Arca-Swiss compatible. And so in that sense it has a little bit of a leg up on either one of the Fuji cameras as the tripod collar is not fully removable on the 150 And it is removable on the 100 but the foot there is not ARCA compatible
6:27
The 150-600mm does have an ARCA compatible tripod foot. That's a big deal to me because a lot of times I want to go right onto a tripod and just crank it down
6:36
And so it saves you having to mess with a quick release plate. And so I like both of those aspects of the design
6:42
Now, of course, coming to a new platform, the standard for features is a little bit different
6:47
And so the main thing that the Tamron is missing relative to the Fuji lenses is there is no aperture ring
6:53
So you're gonna have to control aperture from within the camera. And unlike the 150 to 600, there's also no custom buttons
7:00
And so that's another thing that you may miss there. However, it does have a few of its own unique features
7:06
And one of those I really, really love. and that is that there is a clutch lock mechanism here
7:12
that will keep you from, you can just lock it into place. And the nice thing about this is you can use that clutch mechanism
7:18
at any focal length and lock it into place. And that way you can hold that certain length
7:23
I did notice that when it came to the 100 to 400, for example
7:27
it suffered from zoom creep really bad. But you can see here, I've locked this lens into place using that clutch
7:32
And even upside down like this, there is no creeping at all. Now for storage, there's also a traditional lock that is here and on the side
7:41
But what I really prefer about this clutch mechanism is it allows for a one-handed operation
7:46
You can lock it into place, say if you're carrying it on a strap or on some kind of harness
7:51
But the moment you go to shoot, all you've got to do is use those fingers, release that clutch mechanism, and zoom without having to mess with any kind of locking mechanism on the far side of the lens
8:01
So I really, really like this particular design. and so it makes this one handle more nicely in the field than what some alternatives do
8:10
There are four switches and a bank here on the side and I will note that those switches are nicer
8:14
feeling than the ones on the Fuji counterpart. Those switches include a focus limiter, a unique
8:20
to Fuji manual focus speed here and so there's not an AF-MF switch. Instead of that you have the
8:26
ability to control the speed of the manual focus action either a little bit slower or a little bit
8:31
faster. And I will note that neither one of them are particularly fast, at least from my expectation
8:36
There is an on-off for the image stabilizer. And then there is a fourth button that allows
8:41
or a switch that allows you to control various VC or image stabilization modes. So the first of
8:47
those being the standard or the balanced, number two being for panning action. And the third is
8:52
kind of a dynamic one where it does less of stabilizing the viewfinder and just focuses on
8:57
stabilizing the image at capture. A lot of times you get a slightly better stabilization result
9:03
but if you're moving with erratic action, it also keeps the lens from trying to stabilize the
9:08
viewfinder and thus messing up the flow of your tracking of action. And so it can be a useful
9:13
mode there as well. Now, I wasn't particularly blown away by the VC performance on Sony
9:20
and probably the lens performance has not improved. However, I do find that Fuji's in-body
9:25
stabilization if you have a body that's so equipped. It's a little bit better. So here on my X-H2
9:30
I was able to hand hold photos without too much trouble all the way down to about six stops
9:35
which is obviously very, very useful. I will note, however, for video use that it's still hard to get
9:42
a really steady shot handheld with these longer focal lengths. It's just a little too much for the
9:48
stabilization to handle. So if you're going to want to get like, actually, if you're looking for
9:53
stable long distance shots, you're probably still going to want to utilize a tripod for that
9:58
The lens hood itself is very nice. I would say nicer actually than the Fuji counterparts. It has
10:04
that rubberized front transition. It's made of a little bit tougher feeling plastics than the
10:09
counterpart. But one final negative on the design here is that this lens is not designed for use
10:15
with any kind of teleconverters. And so you're not going to get that option, whereas you can have
10:22
that option with the Fuji counterparts. This lens is just not designed around use with teleconverters
10:28
Autofocus comes courtesy of Tamron's VXD focus motor, which is currently their fastest focusing
10:34
motor that they're putting in any of these lenses, and it's the equivalent of Fuji's linear motors
10:39
And for the most part, I found that focus speed was quite good, though I will note that you will
10:44
get faster focus at 150 millimeters than you will if you go all the way out to 500 millimeters
10:50
where big transitions are just a little bit slower. However, I did find that I had plenty of speed for tracking birds in flight
10:59
and it had no problem keeping up with those. The biggest challenge for birds in flight, as with any long telephoto lens
11:05
is actually just acquiring the subject in the frame because it's such a narrow angle of view that it's hard at first
11:11
to get yourself on a rapidly moving subject. Once you lock on, however, it tracked really well
11:17
Less demanding is that I saw very easy use for use in tracking softball action
11:23
and I was able to get very good focus results there. I also found that it had very good animal tracking
11:28
I had a couple of sequences where I was tracking a squirrel out, moving around and foraging
11:35
and the eye detect and then the AI tracking was doing a great job of just staying up with the squirrel
11:40
and ignoring the various distractions as it foraged around. Then likewise with a snake, I had very good focus on the eyes
11:47
Depth of field was very shallow because I was quite close to it, but I was able to get really good and consistently well-focused results during that sequence
11:56
I also caught a cool sequence of a kid on a beach doing a soccer flip kick football
12:03
and it was able to track him throughout that kind of rapid action without any problem
12:08
I will also note that unlike on Sony, where Sony artificially limits burst speed
12:13
third-party lenses. Fuji seemed to have no such limitation, so I was able to access the full
12:18
burst speed of my X-H2 without any kind of slowdown by using a third-party lens
12:24
all of those being good things. So autofocus in general was quite good for stills. I was far less
12:30
impressed however for video work not so much if I was just using it to track things For example you can see in the shot of tracking action at my beehive no issues there But if I needed to do any kind of focus pull it was just downright painful
12:45
And that is that I just saw very, very, it was very sluggish to start the focus pull
12:51
And then there was a number of visible steps in the actual focus action
12:55
It's nothing but frustrating and you're not gonna be satisfied with that. It's just an area that it didn't perform
13:00
nearly as well on Fuji as what it did on Sony. I suspect that is both a Tamron and a Fuji thing because I've already been able to see that the lens alone on Sony is able to do that just fine
13:11
So it's an issue in the transition to Fuji. I will also note that unsurprisingly for a lens that has a maximum aperture of f6.7 on the long end, in low light conditions, autofocus is going to slow down
13:24
The sensor's got less light to work with and thus it's just more of a challenge
13:28
But that's going to be true for any lens with a smaller maximum aperture like this
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In general, autofocus was good for stills, not so great for video
13:38
Let's talk about image quality now. See, there are pros and cons when you bring a full frame lens over onto APS-C
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The pros include the fact that you are cropping off some of the outer portions of the frame
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where there tends to be more problems. So that means you often end up with less distortion, a lot less vignette
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because the heaviest areas of vignette are actually clipped off, and you have lower amounts of chromatic aberration
13:59
particularly the lateral type, which is consolidated to the edges of the frame
14:04
But in this case, in particular, bringing a full-frame lens onto an APS-C platform
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means that often you're stepping up in terms of the pixel density, and that's never been truer than on bodies like the X-H2 with its 40 megapixel sensor
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If you do the math from the sensor size with the amount of pixels packed on there
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you would need somewhere a little over 90 megapixels on a full-frame camera
14:27
to have similar pixel density. So obviously there is no such camera on the market right now
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That's a good 50% higher than the 61 megapixels found on the a7R Mark V or similar cameras
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And so as a byproduct, this lens is in its most challenging condition for sharpness than we've
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ever seen. So let's see how it holds up as we dive into our image quality breakdown
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Let's take a quick look at chromatic aberrations here. First, the longitudinal type. Here I've got
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a high contrast subject with the white lots of potential for longitudinal chromatic aberrations
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not really an issue here as you can see there is no fringing as we transition out towards defocus
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and so a nice neutral result there likewise here looking for lateral chromatic aberrations near
15:14
the edge of my test chart this is at a very high level of magnification with any corrections turned
15:19
off and again nice and clean so no issues on that front so let's take a quick look at vignette
15:25
and distortion here at 150 millimeters. There is the tiniest amount of pin cushion distortion
15:31
not really hardly enough worth correcting, and a little tiny bit of vignette, though as you can see
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nothing in particular there showing up. Manual correction took the form of just a minus two to
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correct for the distortion and a plus 21 to correct for the vignette. So obviously not a significant
15:48
issue at all. Vignette is going to be lower here because this is a full frame lens and so we're
15:53
putting it on a smaller sensor thus most of the area that is going to be affected by vignette is
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actually cut off looking in the middle of the zoom range at about 300 millimeters you can see that
16:03
there continues to be a little bit of pincushion distortion very little in terms of vignette and
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then right out to 500 millimeters at this stage there is very very little distortion to show there
16:15
and again just a very minor amount of vignette distortion corrected with a minus one and vignette
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with a plus 24 on the telephoto end. So obviously nothing to be concerned about at all on those fronts
16:27
Now, this is a unique test to throw at the 40 megapixel Fuji X-mount sensor
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because it's just such a unique thing. It is very, very rare that we have seen a full frame design released on X-mount
16:39
And so I was actually really interested to see how it holds up. So as we're going to see here at 200% magnification on my high resolution X-H2
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this is a hard test for a full frame lens making this transition and as you can see image sharpness
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is okay but it's not exceptional here at 150 millimeters as we move on towards the mid frame
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again result is pretty decent but not exceptional and a fairly consistent result off into the corner
17:09
though as we can see here some of these textures just are a little bit loose feeling just by the
17:14
way to let you know I did do a 10 second delay on all of these shots to make sure that vibration
17:20
was not part of the package here and and so what you see is basically what you're going to get in
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optimal situations so here wide open at 150 millimeters resolution is good but not exceptionally
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good now we'll check in a couple of times just for comparison with the most logical competing
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lens, which would be the 150 to 600 millimeter f5.62 f8. So the Fuji lens is slower all throughout
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the zoom range. So that's one thing to observe. So here it's f5 versus f5.6. However, it represents
17:53
wide open for both lenses. So in the center of the frame, quite obviously the Fuji is the sharper
17:58
lens. It's actually engineered for this particular sensor point. And so it is delivering the stronger
18:04
end result. As we get towards the edge of the frame, there is still an advantage for the Fuji
18:09
It is not significant, but there is a clear win all across the frame for the Fuji lens
18:15
So what if we stop the Tamron down? It is giving it an opportunity to sharpen up a bit before the
18:20
diffraction point. We can see looking in the center of the frame, there is just a very slight
18:25
improvement of contrast. Looking here in the mid frame, you can also see just a little bit more
18:30
contrast. Look at the lips by comparison and here at the eye, they're just a little bit more sparkle
18:35
and sharpness. If we move off towards the edge of the frame, again, there is an improvement. It's
18:40
just quite mild. Now, in this case, stopping on down to f8 provides a more noticeable improvement
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So it shows there is quite a bit of improvement on the lens because we have passed the point where
18:51
diffraction begins And so this is something that happening kind of just as a result of the lens being that much sharper that the diffraction actually isn reducing sharpness Now interestingly we don have the same impact in the center of
19:05
the frame. It's more on the edges where you see that noticeable improvement. Now, minimum aperture
19:10
is f22, but I don't recommend going really any smaller than f8 or f11 at most because as you're
19:16
going to see, diffraction just continues to take a hit at the image. Now, in this case, it doesn't
19:21
show up all that strong but you can see here that there is a softening effect we didn't see it so
19:27
much in the center but we definitely see it here in the mid frame and you're going to see it pretty
19:31
strongly here towards the edge as well so by the time we get to 300 millimeters our minimum our
19:37
maximum aperture is f 5.6 let's see how sharpness holds up here in the center of the frame it looks
19:43
pretty much similar as to what we've seen uh to this point and again at the mid frame it you know
19:49
there's resolution and contrast there. It's just not off the charts. And here towards the edge of
19:54
the frame, pretty consistent with what we saw earlier on. It is a useful amount of resolution
20:00
It's just not mind-blowingly good. Now, if we check back in with the Fuji 150 to 600 millimeter
20:06
we can see once again that it is the slower lens. And so here, even by 300 millimeters
20:11
we're working with a maximum aperture of f6.4 versus f5.6 for the Tamron. How about sharpness
20:18
In the center of the frame, as you can see, there really isn't any difference between the two
20:23
If we look here at the mid-frame, the Tamron has given us just a little bit better contrast and a little better detail
20:28
And that's also true as we go towards the edge of the frame. And up at this point, the Fuji is looking better here up at this corner
20:36
But there's really not a whole lot of difference between the two. Here's a look at some real-world sharpness at 100% magnification, so more typical
20:44
and as you can see contrast isn't any you know a detail it's not off the the charts but it certainly
20:49
is very usable here the middle of the range and as you can see the bokeh quality is really really
20:55
soft and creamy so in the middle of the range stopping the lens down to f8 that's a full stop
21:00
closed again in the center of the frame not a lot of improvement here in the mid frame again pretty
21:06
similar down into the corners also very similar not a whole lot of improvement not a big jump like
21:12
we saw before. Up in this corner, there is a little bit more improvement at f8, but by and large
21:18
we're not really seeing any kind of huge gains here. And so you can see here at 500 millimeters
21:23
there's good detail that's showing up there. Real world context here, here is 500 millimeters wide
21:29
open. And you can see that, you know, the image obviously looks sharp. If you look at it on a
21:34
global level, if you punch into a pixel level, you know, the fur detail is okay, but you can tell the
21:40
contrast is not off the charts. And so as a byproduct, it's not quite as sharp on this very
21:46
demanding sensor as what it could be. I did find the color rendition from the Tamron to be quite
21:51
nice. And so you can see here on the one of these hazy days due to the forest fires, but overall
21:57
color still looks good in this image here. Again, there's a bit of haze as you can see throughout
22:02
but the colors are just nice and soft. The overall image looks good here. And if I look at a pixel
22:08
level, you can see that there's good detail, just not amazing contrast. This lens actually has really
22:14
nice bokeh. That gives you the ability to really crush backgrounds and the bokeh from the lens is
22:20
quite nice. You can see that the background is just totally blurred out in this shot. Likewise
22:24
here, even though I'm not quite as close, you can see that the rendering of the out of focus areas
22:29
is quite nice. Once again here, you know, good enough detail that the image looks really
22:34
really crisp here but a beautifully blurred out background and this image right here I thought was
22:40
just really really lovely a simple subject but really made beautiful between the compression
22:45
and then the bokeh from the lens and as you can see the detail even on the 40 megapixel sensor
22:50
looks really quite good there in those needles I also found just out and about for shooting
22:55
you know environmental subjects here this little snake I was able to get a you know a nice shot of
23:00
lots of reach to get in close and I waited for the moments when he was flicking out its little
23:05
tongue there and as you can see there's plenty of detail there to make for a very interesting image
23:10
likewise here of this squirrel that was intent on showing off for me and as he foraged and you can
23:17
see that even punching into a pixel level lots of detail that's there again it's not the best that
23:23
I've ever seen but really not bad for such a high resolution sensor and this obviously gives you a
23:28
lot of cropping capabilities shooting on such high resolution. So in conclusion, there is, you know
23:34
some good and bad to take away from the image quality section, kind of like the autofocus
23:38
section. That is that the sharpness and contrast are not quite as good as what I saw on the 150 to
23:44
600 and no better than the older 100 to 400 millimeter. What I did find, however, is that I
23:50
felt like the bokeh and the rendering was actually nicer on the Tamron than either one of those
23:55
lenses. It does a lot of things well optically. It just isn't incredibly sharp on this Fuji platform
24:02
which is kind of a recurring mantra in that I have found very few lenses so far that really excel
24:08
in this very pixel-dense environment. At the same time, it makes for a great value of a lens
24:14
At $1,300 US dollars, that is undercutting the price of the 100-400 from Fuji by about $600
24:20
and the $150 to $600 by about $700. That is a significant difference
24:27
And it means that those that have wanted to have a long telephoto lens but couldn't afford it
24:32
might be able to afford this one. And as a by-product, it obviously is a welcome addition to the Fuji platform
24:39
Yes, it's a little bit of an odd transition and an odd porting over, and it's not perfect
24:43
but it does a lot of things well. And I suspect for the actual uses of a lot of people
24:48
it will probably meet their needs just fine. I'm Dustin Abbott, and if you look in the description down below
24:53
you can find linkage to my full text review, also to my image gallery. There are some buying links there if you'd like to purchase one for yourself
25:00
and the typical linkage to follow me on social media, to get channel merchandise, or become a patron
25:06
If you haven't already, please like and subscribe. Thanks for watching. Have a great day, and let the light in
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